“As a mother…”
As a mother… argh, how many commentaries do we read that start with these words?
I see it all the time. I see it all the time because each, and every, time I feel excluded from what comes next in that statement.
As a mother I understand the love, the loss, the situation, the pain, the community, being tired.
As a mother I can empathise with the situation.
As a woman who hasn’t had children and spent years suffering with disenfranchised grief and had a miscarriage later in life, I understand loss, I understand love, I understand pain, I understand being tired and I understand exclusion, not having a community, not feeling supported and I understand loss with crushing reality.
Its true that I will never understand home schooling during lockdown, but I do understand feeling isolated, feeling overwhelmed, feeling lonely, feeling unheard.
While public conversation during Covid lockdowns was flooded with support and empathy for families with children and how difficult that time was, it took much longer to acknowledge the strain and impact lockdowns had on people who were isolated and living alone. Society and media focused on looking after those who delivered on the pronatalist agenda and as an afterthought and as a response to helpline calls, single people were provided a bubble buddy, to provide much needed human contact.
As a mother are the words that set up a statement to throw some weight to what comes next, like it’s a qualification to fact. A mother’s opinion is shrouded in some mystical powers of understanding.
The fact is that, as human beings we know that some individuals are just wiser and more empathetic, no matter what their “family” status is.
As a mother is never required in a statement because it doesn’t provide any real insight into their understanding, it is lazy journalism to give the reader a heads up that what comes next is meant to be taken with more concern or understanding. It illicits empathy from readers which reinforces the pronatalist agenda each and every time. If you haven’t had children, you can never really understand this situation.
I did find my community, so I understand being supported now with likeminded minds. I found people who see me for who I am, for a human being that suffers, that celebrates, that has wins, that has low days, that has successes.
This community is brimming with women who don’t have children but are bursting with talent, with empathy, with huge loss, bodies that have failed them, with overflowing love, with incredible successes, who suffer being tired through stress, overwork or chronic illness, who turn up regardless, who don’t turn up for selfcare or because its just all too much, who are carers for family members, who worry about their future, who share their stories openly, who don’t share their stories for fear of further exclusion in their public life.
In this community I have met some of the most incredible human beings.
Earlier in the year I was scrolling through Facebook for some inspiration and came across an advert for face products, targeted advertising. The caption read something like
“Giving mothers the skin, you deserve’.
Huh? I mean, a. I was targeted on Facebook with their advert.B. is there something about mother’s skin which is different?
So, I asked the question,
does your product work on women who are not mothers?
The response.
Hi Penny, we completely get your point here. Giving birth is the essence of our womanhood. After this wonderful event, we all want to build confidence and be a better version of ourselves. We have ladies that don’t have children who use the products and experience the same result. Love Admin xx.
I’m just going to let you digest that for a moment. The essence of a woman. We all want to build confidence.
I’m not going to go into the educational messages that were provided back to the admin on the uneducated, socially exclusive, pronatalist and frankly tone-deaf response they gave. The responses back were factual and clear.
What I am going to share is the rising and rallying of my new community of childless women (and friends who are mothers) to call out the insensitivity of these words and quite frankly, the complete lack of empathy.
The discussion went viral, friends globally reached out and entered into the discussion - on this adverts Facebook thread. They were being served with an outpouring of messages that wanted them to know exactly how their messaging made a large part of the population feel about their advert.
Heck, it even ended up being tweeted out first by Berenice Smith of The Full Stop Podcast and then by Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women.
Do I think this company learnt something about their marketing campaign? I’m not sure, they blocked me and curiously when I went to find the post it had been removed completely.
The result, I don’t see adverts for this company anymore in my Facebook feed and their messaging is more measured (I learnt as I scrolled through to find my post).
What I hope for is that other mothers reading that post, stopped to think about this conversation and gained an insight into friends of theirs that do not have children, or that it even started a conversation for someone. Conversations within our community are so empowering but it is the ones in public which will make the change in cultural understanding.
That said, the biggest learningfor me was, if you see a comment that unfairly excludes the childless woman and you speak up about it, you better believe you have a solid posse of people behind you who will link arms with you, hold you straight and amplify your words.
Let your community know when you see something and watch with warmth as they come to your support.
As a woman… I’ve never felt more included.