ON April 5 new rights came into force in Britain to allow parents to share leave following the birth or adoption of a child, with a similar move also being considered in Ireland by Minister for Children Dr James Reilly. Author and academic Clare O’Hagan believes real change must now be implemented in the areas of parenting and that it's time to abandon the traditional image and myth of mum, dad, two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence...
For women who combine motherhood with paid work, Ireland is no country for working mothers.
Families are currently combining working and caring in many different ways, but with little social support.
As part of the research for my book Complex Inequality and ‘Working Mothers’ 30 working mothers took part in focus groups and interviews.
They demonstrated the heroic efforts women make in combining motherhood with paid work.
Current ideas about ‘ideal mothers’ and ‘ideal workers,’ are promoted in dominant discourses, taken up by institutions and by women themselves, which reveals the depth and extent of Ireland’s attachment to traditional gender roles.
That women find it difficult to reconcile work and family life is not surprising, that women tolerate the situation, blaming themselves and other women is remarkable.
Having it all means doing it all and these working mothers’ stories reveal they really are on a treadmill.
In the complete absence of a childcare infrastructure, with employers increasingly demanding more and more work, and the image of the traditional Irish homemaking mother looming large, women make their own arrangements with little social support.
When they make good arrangements they attribute this to ‘luck’, and when they don’t, they blame themselves for making poor decisions, not realising that there were insufficient choices offered to them in the first place.
Women are made to carry the responsibility because of the persistence of the gendered order of caring.
Women who attempt to combine motherhood with paid work are a silent majority, blaming themselves for poor choices, not blaming the system which sets clear and defined limits to the choices available.
Women experience powerless responsibility, and because they are seduced by the illusion of choice, they do not see the operation of power, but accept their inequalities as personal troubles.
The inequalities women experience are constructed as private troubles, and their privileges are constructed as the outcome of their freely made choices, which is why women appear to accept a situation which is patently unfair.
By blaming themselves, this complex inequality is created and sustained for ‘working mothers’.
These inequalities are maintained as women’s own individual problems to address in their own individual ways, thus maintaining women in subordinate roles in public and private spheres.
The privatisation of the difficulties women experience allows partners, employers, society and the state to abdicate responsibility for gender equality, childcare, and child-minders.
Women are divided and conquered, because women are silenced and ignored.
By privileging some women sometimes, enduring inequalities are created for all women.
By looking at the lives of ‘working mothers’, we can explore important and serious issues in Irish society including childcare, child-minders, family life and employment.
The marriage bar was lifted in 1973, yet there has been no coordinated response by the state to women’s participation in paid work.
The traditional father-breadwinner/mother-homemaker model no longer reflects dominant practice, yet the myth and the imagery of mum, dad, two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence persists in the popular imagination and it is high time this traditional, outdated image was abandoned.
There is a compelling argument is made for the development of social policy which supports and rewards men’s, as well as women’s, involvement in care and caring work.
Something that promotes a balance of needs, and which regards children and childcare as public goods, which regards workers as people, and recognises that families need to see and spend time with each other.
Not is the time for structural changes in the areas of gender equal parenting, valuing children, care and care workers.
Clare ‘Hagan is a Research Fellow working on gender equality at the University of Limerick. Her book Complex Inequality and ‘Working Mothers’ is out now, published by Cork University Press (2015)
To read our article All change in 2015 for employment law – shared parental leave explained click here
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