Motherhood Or A Career?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 343, 2 May 1928, Page 5

Motherhood Or A Career?

NO WOMAN CAN MANAGE BOTH

“We All Think We Can”

¥1 just .cannot be done,"’ declares Miss Storm Jameson, <t zL h lO well-known English novelist, in an article in the "Daily Chronicle” on the question. She writes: “I do not believe that any woman lias the vitality, or the ability, to look after a chosen career, a husband and her children. We all think we can do it. . with all her heart and soul she wants a career, she will have to make up her mind not to attempt the impossible task of practising motherhood as well.”

Of all the thoughts sent rushing through my mind by the title of this article, when I first wrote it down, the most significant is one that failed to rush, and came creeping in afterwards. It ought to have been impossible to write “Motherhood or a Career.” Motherhood is a career, the second oldest feminine career in the world—wifehood being the first. Half the troubles of these troubled times would vanish if the world ceased to think of motherhood as an accident or a blessing or a burden, or any other of the thousand kindly or unkindly things it has been called by poets, politicians and mere ordinary people, and began thinking of it as it actually is—a career of first-rate importance, calling for skill, devotion, and natural gifts far above the ordinary. Restless Women We have, to be sure, changed a little since the Stone Age in our attitude to motherhood. Whereas we used to say that women must have children, we now say that any women can have children, and allow them, in theory, at any rate, the right to choose between children and some other form of career. In practice we are more than a little inclined to write grave articles condemning the woman who chooses a career, and at the same time to prefer her company to that of a domesticated mother of a family. It is all very confusing and very unfair. The net result is a world of restless, dissatisfied women, some engaged in

DECLARES MISS STORM JAMESON

trying to carry career and children at the same time, some looking after children and longing for the fuller glories of a career, and some triumphing in public and longing secretly for the children, they have denied the

chance of life. What is to be done for them? It is foolish to condemn the careerist, and cruel to find the devoted mother dull. Vain Regrets Of all these three classes of women, the first is having the hardest time. A career and children. Can one woman manage both? And a husband? There are plenty of women who have been driven, by financial pressure, into attempting the twofold task. If they have succeeded, it should be written to their credit, and if they have failed, they deserve all sympathy. But it is very likely that these women, who did not choose to have a career, did not give their hearts to it, were never tempted to give their hearts to it. The rub comes when a woman, passionately keen on her career, finds herself torn between the necessity of giving less of herself to it in order to give her children more, or of giving her children less so that she has more time, strength and vitality to give to her career. If she sacrifices the children she is tortured with regrets. And If it is the career that suffers, she becomes restless and unhappy, thinking of what she has lost. Disillusioned For I do not believe that any woman has the vitalit3' or the ability to look properly after a chosen career, a husband and her children. It just cannot be done. We all think we can do it. For a time, until we grow tired and lose energy, perhaps we do do it. And the end at best is disillusion, and at worst a bitter and cruel disappointment. Assuredly a woman who wants a.ll these three will have to choose. Two she can manage. But not three. One of them must take an inferior place in her life. But what is to be done for the woman who, realising that she cannot have th© best of all worlds, decides to be a mother before anjffhing else? For the children grow up and she finds

herself, still young enough to want to live fully, with her occupation gone. Sometimes it is her own fault. She has dropped out, not tried to keep herself in touch with the current of life. But more often it is the fault of our common attitude to motherhood. Because any woman can be a mother we forget how exquisitely difficult a job it is. We talk grandly and nobly about the joys and the privileges of motherhood. The first are heavily overshadowed by the necessity, among all but wealthy mothers, of a ceaseless round of tasks, most of them tiresome and some unpleasant. The second too often come down to resigning oneself to be left behind by the eager young minds one has trained, and regarded as “Mother” by husband and friends as well as by children. There was a time, just before the war, when reformers talked a lot about what was called Endowment of Motherhood. Mr. Wells put it in a novel. Pamphlets were written about it. The idea was that mothers should be paid by the State for their difficult task, and eager young men and women argued in Fabian meetings about the beauties of State supervision and the future of the race. Many of those eager young men are now dead, and the young women are no longer so young, and, like the rest of us, have perhaps lost faith in those glorious pre-war dreams of a revised and supervised world. Motherhood a Career But the idea behind that rather vague and dubious Endowment of Motherhood was a right one. It added everything that is now missing in our conception of motherhood. It meant that motherhood would become what it ought to be—a career for which a woman trained, and one which she did not enter until she was fitted to do so. It would have created a respect for the career of motherhood, which was not merely the traditional respect accorded by sentimentalists, songwriters and politicians makingspeeches. It would have created real respect, the respect due to people who are doing a difficult job, and doing it with knowledge, skill and courage. But since neither the State nor anyone else will do it for her, modern woman will have to tackle the problem for herself. If with all her heart and soul she wants a career, she will have to make up her mind not to attempt the impossible task of practising motherhood as well. If she wants motherhood, she will have to see to it that when her children leave her she is not merely tired to death and used up, but able to turn her mind and her energy to another occupation. She can do it. For I do not believe that a mind which has seriously tried to make a career of motherhood has had any chance to get rusty or dull. The dull, rusty women are those whose minds have slumped, whose children leave them stranded, and whose husbands grow bored.