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“Being there”
Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 463 – 470, 2002 Copyright D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/02/$ – see front matter
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‘‘BEING THERE’’: MOTHERS WHO STAY AT HOME, GENDER AND TIME Elizabeth Reid Boyd Centre for Research for Women, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
Synopsis — This paper is focussed upon mothers who stay at home to care for their children, in the context of the Australian child care debate between mothers at home and mothers at work. The doctoral research on which it is based was carried out between 1996 and 2000. One aspect of this qualitative research was interviews with 20 mothers at home in suburban Perth, as one of several sites of exploration of the child care debate. In these interviews, the phrase ‘‘being there’’ recurred. ‘‘Being there’’ is also part of public child care rhetoric. While the phrase could be regarded as a version of ‘‘quantity time,’’ as opposed to ‘‘quality time’’ invoked by mothers in paid work, the term also points to the emotional dimension of child care. ‘‘Being there’’ is bio-social and political. It must be reviewed as such, for new discussions, beyond division (beyond work/home, public/private and male/female) to take place. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION In 1996, I began my research with two questions I wanted to ask mothers at home—Why are you at home, and how is this experienced? But in the early stages of my explorations, these initial questions became disguised. The more I read about mothers at home—in the media, in child care literature, and the more I spoke to mothers, the more I realised that mothers at home were usually discussed in tandem with mothers at work. There was rarely an article, discussion or conversation about mothering at home, which did not include a weighing up of the relative merits of being at home versus being at work. The dichotomy of mothers at home versus mothers at work was powerful. I became absorbed in the debate. It ran through every aspect of my research, which incorporated interviews with mothers at home, interviews with advocates for mothers at home (leaders of groups such as The Australian Family Association, Choice for Families and the Women’s Action Alliance, all who support mothering at home); as well as analyses of politics; the media; child care literature and feminist debates. As such, the child care debate contextualised each site of investigation in this study. The child care debate framed the experiences of mothers at home: their ‘‘being there,’’ which is how the women I interviewed overwhelmingly termed staying at home. The phrase ‘‘being there’’ proved to be significant and more than two thirds of the 463
women interviewed used it. In this paper, I will argue that rather than viewing ‘‘being there’’ as simply the oppositional rhetoric of mothers at home versus against mothers at work, the stay at home mothers’ concept of ‘‘being there’’ may be viewed as a potential lever for dislodging the dualist constructions that shape and constrain the experience of mothering.
INTERVIEWS WITH MOTHERS AT HOME The interviews with mothers at home were carried out in predominantly middle class North Western suburbs of Perth in 1997 and 1998. Mothers were contacted through schools and playgroups. When seeking a sample, I asked for respondents who had been at home for more than 4 years and had a child in pre-school. I also sought respondents who were married, in line with statistical groupings for staying at home. I chose these criteria since a common time for women to return to work is when their children start school (ABS 1991, p. 30) and the M shaped1 paid work pattern is marked for married women (ABS, 1998, p. 112). I also specified an age range for potential interviewees, asking that respondents be under 40 years of age. This was in order to discuss any impressions the women had about the impacts of their own mothers working, or not. I wanted to speak to women whose
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mothers, as well as themselves, may have been affected by the second wave of feminism. In the end, not all the mothers were under 40 (three were not) but the age range provided a generational perspective. I asked mothers who had only worked casual hours while they were at home. Three mothers were doing casual work at the time of interview. Two of the women were completing tertiary study. There were differences among the interviewees, along the lines of socio-economic status and ethnicity. While the suburbs in the interview location had all been variously advertised as ‘‘ideal’’ for families as real estate, some houses in some suburbs were more expensive than others. There were two statistical areas covered. One (Wembley Coastal) significantly richer than the other (Stirling West), providing socio-economic contrast. In both areas, however, some mothers were at pains to tell me they could ‘‘afford’’ to stay at home. This suggests that there remains in staying at home an element of what Phillips (1992) has called classing the woman and gendering the class. In all cases except one, I met the women in their homes. A semi-structured interview schedule allowed me to follow their stories, accounts and rationales. The interviews were later analysed by theme. More than two thirds of the women I interviewed used the term ‘‘being there’’ in a variety of ways. They said, Maria: Actually, I was quite happy to always be there for her. Jennifer: I’m finding, even though I’ve got a grade one, there’s still a lot of things that you can be involved in at school, or just to pick him up now and then, or just to keep up. As long as they want me, I’ll be there. Samatha: I just think, for them to know that you’re always going to be there. I mean I just hope that by spending the extra time with them, they will realise that the extra time that you’re with them, the extra time that you put in must make a difference. I just think it’s got to. You know, like every time they turn around and I’m here, although it’s a pain in the bum for them probably at the moment, when they’re older they will realise that is the way it’s going to be. I will always endeavour to always be here. (my italics) In these examples, ‘‘being there’’ is not singular or particular; it is continual, and constant. It is more than physical. It engenders a sense of not just physical but
emotional presence, evoking the colloquial ‘‘I’ll be there for you’’ (for support) as well as ‘‘I’ll be there with you.’’ It implies constancy and indeed constant availability: ‘‘being there’’ means being there always, as well as being on demand, when needed, when called for. ‘‘Being there’’ is also important ‘‘in case.’’ This was highlighted by the way some mothers cited children’s illnesses as an example of the necessity of being available, especially in an emergency: Tracey: When they’re sick, I’m home. I just go and get them. They ring me up. The high school and sometimes the primary school still, I go and get her, and I’m on the emergency list. Some of the mothers that work, they know me, and I go and get their children and bring them home here too. I’ve got to know the boys here and they know me from the canteen and a couple of them have been home sick with me on the emergency list. I’m just here, for them all. It doesn’t matter. Someone’s got to be there. Tracey stayed at home for 17 years. Trina thought ‘‘it’s love and knowing that the child knows that he’s loved. Mum’s always there if they need her,’’ as did Antoinette, who felt her being at home provided: Antoinette: The constant, unconditional love. That sounds awful, because it sounds as if I don’t think women that put their children into daycare don’t feel the same way. I don’t mean that. Maybe I’d like to think that the children could always say— mum’s there. If you’re worried, come and see my mum, maybe she can help you out, or I don’t know. Just that security. Antoinette also described ‘‘being there’’ as providing ‘‘placid care.’’ This is pertinent to ideals of good mothers as peaceful and passive in suburban homes (Richards, 1994). Further, ‘‘being there’’ had a timeless quality. No particular amount of time was specified as sufficient, or enough, indeed: Enough is the permissive description, since the requirement leaves up to negotiation the central question of how much is enough? The phrase ‘all the time’ in this context is the strongest indicator of non-negotiable demands. It is manifestly ridiculous to specify that any one person should spend all her time in any one role, yet that assertion carries appalling plausibility (Richards, 1994, p. 80).
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‘‘Being there’’ does suggest that a person should primarily spend their time in one role. If a mother must be there ‘‘when needed,’’ ‘‘in case,’’ ‘‘for love’’ and ‘‘for security,’’ this suggests a probable perception that she should be there ‘‘all the time.’’ Mothers at home may not in actuality be attending to their children on a constant basis, but their constant presence is called for, and is often, by them, considered crucial, ‘‘in case.’’ I suggest, however, that ‘‘being there’’ is not only significant for mothers at home. The constant, timeless qualities in ‘‘being there’’ for children shape women’s lives, across the public and the private. But as these accounts of mothers at home reveal, ‘‘being there’’ is inexorably connected with its being part of the reproductive, private, ‘‘female’’ sphere. The public ‘‘male’’ sphere is constructed as separate from reproduction and child care.
DICHOTOMY AND DUALISM The constructed separation of the sphere of paid work in Western society rests upon a number of definitive dualisms. These dualisms support dichotomies not only between women and men, but also between women. In defining dualism, dichotomy and difference, I draw on Nancy Jay’s (1981) seminal discussion of dichotomy. Not all dichotomous distinctions form dualisms. A dualism takes the form of an A/not-A distinction (Jay, 1981, p. 44). That is, they are not mere contraries, but logical contradictions. In the A/not-A binary pair, only one term has a positive reality and not-A is defined as being the lack of A. Continuity between A and not-A is also impossible (Jay, 1981, p. 44). Dualism, A/not A, requires an either/or. This is particularly explicable with regard to gender, as Jay points out, ‘‘thus men and women may be conceived as men and not-men, or women and not-women’’ (Jay, 1981, p. 44). A dualism is not the same as a dichotomy that can be conceptualised as A/B. In A/B distinctions, both terms may have a positive reality. As a conceptual framework, imposing an interpretative order on the world, dualism and dichotomy are powerfully simple ideological devices. This can be demonstrated by exploring the Australian child care debate in these (distorting) terms. Mothers at home versus mothers at work form a dichotomy (A/B). They are not strictly a dualism, since they are not mutually exclusive (A/not A). A mother at home may do some part time work (and still define herself as a mother at home, i.e. one who does not work, as did some of the mothers at home I
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interviewed). Mothers who work are also mothers at home when they are not doing their paid work and crucially, mothers at work do not cease to be mothers, or necessarily cease to do mothering work while ‘‘at work.’’ Further, ‘‘work’’ considerations are issues for mothers at home—casual work, study, considerations about returning to work or staying at home. More fundamentally, the need to affirm that mothering is work, underlies the complaint many mothers express about the social under-valuation of their labour. These issues complicate and cross over the division between mothers at home and mothers at work. I argue that child care is a process which crosses the work/home divide. However, the mothers at home/mothers at work debate has many dualistic hallmarks. In view of the continuity and links between A and B, mothering at home and mothering at work, how the debate works in terms of dualism may seem limited. The two states do not logically contradict each other, there is continuity and commonality, both have a positive reality. Yet this debate is often played out in terms of positive and negative, virtue and vice, presence and absence, and these representations are strongly reminiscent of dualism (Jay, 1981, p. 44). This still does not make the dichotomy of mothering at home/mothering at work a dualism. But these dualistic features are not inexplicable. I contend that the ideological power of dualism in this debate is not in the dichotomy of mothering at home versus mothering at work itself. This breaks down, as a dualism, under preliminary examination. The strength of the mothers at home/mothers at work dichotomy (A/B) is that it rests upon, and is upheld by, a number of more persistent dualisms. The conceptual dualism at the heart of the child care debate is male/female, or, as it is played out, man/not-man and woman/not woman. I am not simply referring to biological manifestations of sexual difference: ‘Men’ and ‘women’ and their ‘interests’ rest not on biological difference, reproductive relations, or the sexual division of labour, but on the discursive practices which produce them (Pringle & Watson, 1998, p. 216). As a discourse, the child care debate operates as both reflector and producer of the male and the female, with powerful effects for the parameters of male and female responsibility for children. The male productive worker (using his mind) and the female reproductive carer (using her body and emotions) are familiar ideological figures. In this dualistic frame-
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work, a male is worker/not carer, and a female carer/ not worker. Thus the dichotomy between mothers arises, because men are deemed not carers, based upon them being not-mothers. Even though mothers do paid work, the male/female dualism holds: the debate is between mothers, because mother equals carer. Other dualisms uphold the separation between men and care and women and work by reinforcing and reinventing male/female. Those that are especially pertinent to the debate between mothers at home versus mothers at work, are public/private; production/reproduction; mind/body and culture/ nature. Sameness/difference is also relevant, especially in line with Carol Bacchi’s (1990) argument that these two function as a dualism. These dualisms work together, as well as separately. The dualisms I have identified form old divisions. According to Mary O’Brien, they rest upon the separation of man from nature and continuous time (O’Brien, 1981, p. 34). For O’Brien, it is not women’s nature that excludes them from culture, public, and work. It is the construction of the historically male public world of work, which separates men (and ‘‘pseudo men’’) from the so-called private care of children (O’Brien, 1981, p. 34). Today, this hierarchical ‘‘man-made’’ separation lies largely unaltered. But in the Australian context, it is (women’s) child care, rather than (men’s) work, which is problematised. Implicitly, work is valued over care, production over reproduction, and historically, ‘‘malestream’’ (O’Brien, 1981) social and political theory has reflected this value.
‘‘BEING THERE’’ ACROSS WORK AND HOME ‘‘Being there’’ is a response to how paid work is organised in Australian culture, due to its incompatibility with child work, and a rationale for women’s place in relation to that system. Mothering at home is a private or personal response to, and negotiation with, the domination of the public. But mothering at home is supported, represented and advocated publicly and politically in recursive relation to the personal. ‘‘Being there’’ is not simply a private response, but a phrase becoming embedded in public rhetoric: Most deeply, there is the McDonaldisation of love. Extracting maximum output from both parents in downsised industries requires the speeding up of family life. No more inefficient, wasteful tract of ‘quantity time’ just ‘being there’ (Anne Manne, 1999, March 13 – 14, my emphasis).
Women who get caught in the Supermum trap are stuck between two generations like a shred of cheap steak in a broken filling. One the one side, we are pulled by images and memories of our own childhoods. Of mum wearing an apron and a welcoming smile. Or an apron at least. Of mum being there—always—when we needed her. For many of us, that’s where our hearts remain. Yet our heads, blast them, have learnt a different story. (Susan Maushart, 1998, March 18, p. 2, my emphasis). ‘‘Being there’’ in these examples, is part of the dichotomous ‘‘talk,’’ which has grown up around mothering at home versus mothering at work. This talk incorporates ‘‘quantity time’’ and ‘‘quality time.’’ Quantity time has links with mothering at home, and providing quality time was a 1980s buzz phrase for working parents. If quantity time, like ‘‘being there’’ and being available when needed, is a virtue of athome mothering; quality time is perhaps the working mother’s answer (or defence): when they are there, they are really there for their children. But quantity time and quality time are not phrases which accurately reflect contemporary child caring. They are the types of phrases that portray dichotomy at the expense of an understanding of dialectic, in the processes of reproduction across the boundaries of work and home. The quantity of quality time and the quality of quantity time are concerns for mothers at home and mothers at work—quality and amounts of time are not necessarily separate concerns. Either/or ‘‘talk’’ does not capture the experience of mothering at home or at work. The argumentative component of rhetoric is one of its definitive features (Billig, 1987). ‘‘Being there’’ may be a rhetoric for quantity time, taken up by mothers at home, as argument, in opposition to the rhetoric of ‘‘quality time’’ used by working mothers. But such rhetoric does not fully capture reality. I suggest that there is a broad expanse between the rhetoric and the reality of many women’s lives. The rhetoric of quality versus quantity time obviates the processes and relations of child care, which do not fall into neat temporal demarcations. ‘‘Being there’’ as a rhetorical phrase also draws upon the ‘‘form-giving or form lending’’ techniques of rhetoric, which make it appear as if indescribable, hazy, fluid and unspecified areas of human lives are ‘‘well ordered and structured’’ (Shotter, 1990, p. 158). As such, ‘‘being there’’ can be proffered as planned reasoning, when it also acts as a response to a gendered status quo. It usually ‘‘turns out’’ that she is the one who must ‘‘be there,’’ whatever the original
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intention. ‘‘Being there’’ gives form to a gendered function. Because ‘‘being there’’ is gendered, that a mother will ‘‘be there’’ is an expectation she carries with her into the workforce, in ways not fully explicated by terms such as ‘‘the double burden.’’ If this facet of child care cannot be managed (by the individual mother), in her situation as a paid worker, ‘‘being there’’ can be more simply be accommodated by staying at home. The requirement to ‘‘be there’’ may alter women’s opportunity or ability to work. The mothers I interviewed, for example, said because they are needed to ‘‘be there,’’ they could not work. The expectation of a female availability, not necessarily all the time, but in the case (of sick days, holidays, pupil-free school days) of the mothers I interviewed, was a definitive feature in their explanations and decisions to stay at home. Such concern about time is perhaps not ill founded. In The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997), Arlie Hochschild argues that paid work has left parents in a time bind at home. Contributing to the pressure at home was the Taylorization and compartmentalisation of multiple domestic tasks, including childcare, or, ‘‘quality time’’ with children. Hochschild states that: The premise behind quality time is that the time we devote to relationships can somehow be separated from ordinary time. Relationships go on during ‘‘quantity time’’ of course, but then we are only passively, not actively, wholeheartedly, specialising in emotional ties. We aren’t ‘on’. . .. Quality time holds out the hope that scheduling intense periods of togetherness can compensate for an overall loss of time in such a way that a relationship will suffer no loss of quality. . .. But the lack of family time and the Taylorization of what little of it remained was forcing parents to do even more of a new kind of work: the emotional work necessary to repair the damage caused by time pressures at home (1997, pp. 50 – 51). Hochschild referred to this work as ‘‘the third shift’’ (Hochschild, 1997, p. 51). The term ‘‘the third shift’’ is useful (Hochschild, 1997, p. 51). It can be paralleled with what I describe as the emotional dimension (in time and space) of child care, a dimension which is powerfully gendered. This emotional dimension can be discerned in the way that motherhood can be experienced. Women
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may be unprepared for the physical demands of working motherhood, but it can be the emotional demands that take the greatest toll (Triedman, 1989, July – August, p. 59). Women can struggle alone in the privacy and quiet of their inner selves, challenged by expectations beyond physical and emotional capacities (Triedman, 1989, July – August, p. 60). Women who feel responsible for the emotional dimension of care may feel guilty if they do not fulfil their perceived role. Shaw and Burns (1993, cited in Wearing, 1996, p. 132) found that while both women and men experienced role conflict and guilt, it was only for women that any guilt was related to parental responsibility. Women made up for this guilt by giving extra time or hugs as a replacement for lost time or hugs. Women’s responsibility for children is a powerful internalised belief (Wearing, 1996, p. 132). Making up in hugs is indicative of women’s responsibility for their children’s emotional state—women’s responsibility for the emotional dimension.
THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION It is the emotional dimension of child care that is particularly significant in the context of this research. I believe it is this dimension that the women at home I interviewed tried to capture when they spoke of ‘‘being there.’’ The women I interviewed were not simply speaking of a number of domestic and child care chores that needed to be done, when they spoke of their desire to ‘‘be there’’ for their children. They were describing emotional shift work, which, in their view, would need to be done by them, regardless of whether they worked or not (although, by implication, they are also suggesting women who work may not emotionally ‘‘ be there’’ for their children). But whether at home or at work, mothers are required to ‘‘be there’’ at an emotional level. Hochschild (1997) has suggested that the third shift work parents were carrying out in her study was in part due to the lack of time they were able to spend with their families. However, women have always done emotional shift work. It is part of the practice and ideology of mothering (and of wifehood), and, intertwined in the historical ‘‘female’’ process of reproduction, is especially revealed in the notion of ‘‘being there.’’ I suggest that it is women’s lack of time and space to ‘‘be there’’ that is particularly acute and evident in Hochschild’s (1997) study. It is invisible work made visible, through its not being done, through women not ‘‘being there’’ to do it. The dynamics within relationships ‘‘are often invisible (and indeed may
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depend for their effectiveness on their invisibility). They become visible only on the breakdown of or other disruption to the relationships’’ (Van Every, 1995, p. 3). What is potentially problematic, however, is any assumptive extrapolation that the physical presence of a mother at home will ‘‘always’’ guarantee a certain state of emotional presence, or ‘‘being there’’—any more than a mother at work will not. Haavind and Andenaes (1992) argue that being a mother means being part of the social construction of the human capacity to follow the cyclical time of children.2 ‘‘Being there’’ has no time limitations—it is cyclical (and perhaps perpetual). This resonates with O’Brien’s (1981, p. 34) argument, that production is separated from reproduction, a problem created for men by their alienation from genetic continuity, a separation of man from nature and from continuous time. O’Brien (1981) referred to the nature of historical reproductive time, of the continuance of the cycle of birth through the ages. Child care, an aspect of a reproductive process, is equally continuous. As the mothers at home I interviewed described, ‘‘being there’’ was ‘‘constant,’’ ‘‘placid’’ and in some cases perceived as unrelenting and overwhelming. The need to physically ‘‘be there’’ all the time can affect the requirement to fully ‘‘be there’’ emotionally. This constant aspect of (reproductive) time is fully revealed when women’s (reproductive) experiences are made central. O’Brien (1981) differentiates between moments or points of the reproductive process to demonstrate that some are involuntary— such as ovulation, or sometimes conception—and some are voluntary such as nurture (Hartsock, 1999, p. 65). ‘‘Being there’’ is a facet of continuous reproductive time, but it is a voluntary state. That it is voluntary, and perhaps not even ‘‘natural,’’ is disguised, because the responsibility ‘‘rests with’’ women, linked to their children in cyclical, continuous time, in reproduction. Haavind and Andenaes (1992) suggest that this link to others, or dependency, has traditionally been interpreted as female strength; valued and respected as a naturalised femininity. In contrast, being a man means participating in the social construction of the human capacity to compensate for human weakness and dependency. In men the effort to reach those results is achieved by a cumulative organisation of time (in the workplace). This is valued and respected in a way that makes the results an expression of masculinity (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 10). This cumulative organisation of time, in contradistinction to cyclical time, has traditionally charac-
terised the public sphere of paid work in postIndustrial societies. The contemporary nine to five allotment for work contrasts with the pre-Industrial ‘‘task oriented’’ working day, when time was measured by how long it took to complete a task (Probert, 1989, p. 5). Further, increasingly, technological time, as another facet of work time, has also become a dominant pulse in Western lives and consciousness: ‘‘We’re all plugged into it, paced to its pacing, driven by its pulse’’ (Menzies, 1999, p. 70). What characterises the life of modern women is their effort to combine within one person the activities that are regulated by both modes of time. This effort follows from their realisation that on one hand, the exclusive affiliation with cyclical time leaves you in subordination, and on the other hand, the exclusive organisation with the cumulative time leaves others helpless (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 10). This effort to combine both cumulative and cyclical time creates a time bind and the potential management of a first, second and third shift (Hochschild, 1997). Women at home I interviewed worried about combining paid work and what they viewed (and experienced) as their child care responsibilities. They worried about sick children, and holidays, and not ‘‘being there’’ ‘‘in case,’’ or for an emergency, or for important moments. For women at work, as Virginia Held points out ‘‘such concerns as whether a child is ill, or in danger, or whether outside child care arrangements are adequate [are] frequently present in women’s minds’’ (Held, 1993, p. 180). These concerns are shared by mothers at home in their reality and imaginings. This is the commonality between women that is cloaked by the dualistic framework of the present child care debate. It is the running wheel (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 12) of the emotional dimension, fluid and constant, crossing the boundaries of public and private time. This further resonates with Goodnow and Bowes’ (1994) point that: Scholars analysing the nature of work have challenged the idea of separate spheres of work by pointing to the widespread presence of ‘spillover.’ People may take their household or their familial work to the office, in the form of worries, phone calls or children. People may also bring their marketplace work into the home, in thought or in the form of paper and phone calls. Spillover, then, rather than separateness, should be what we
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ought to take as given and study (Goodnow & Bowes, 1994, pp. 31 – 32).
CONCLUSION The emotional dimension of care constantly spills over, between the productive and reproductive, public and private. It cannot be contained by neat, linear, public/private gendered splits and defensive renderings of ‘‘quality’’ versus ‘‘quantity’’ time. Instead, ‘‘being there’’ may be viewed as a rhetoric of possibility. It could offer opportunities for more than a gendered physical and/or emotional presence in a separate sphere. ‘‘Being there’’ evokes more than actuality. It evokes the potentiality and possibility of a caring presence. It is this potentiality which currently constrains many women, but which may offer the possibility for change, in order to move beyond the dichotomy of paid work versus staying at home. Today, the potential as well as the actual aspect of ‘‘being there’’ currently rests with women. They stay at home, ‘‘in case,’’ they take part time work, ‘‘in case,’’ and they become caught in a time bind in full time work because within many contemporary workplaces, there is no time and space for ‘‘in case.’’ Current meanings of flexibility must be challenged. The ongoing, cyclical quality of ‘‘being there’’ is in contrast to the fragmented, discrete quality of time as quantitatively measured in the public sphere, especially in work settings but measures for integration can be explored. The concept of ‘‘being there’’ may suggest some way of reconceptualising the understandings of time that are implicit in the public/private distinction. As Bacchi (1999, p. 65) suggests, it is not ‘‘that particular framings can be dispensed with, but rather that a sharp eye to their effects can provide a basis for interacting with them’’ (her italics). Refusing to view the issues of time pressures surrounding child caring, and impacting child care choices, as different issues for mothers at work and mothers at home is one way of doing this. As important is a continued rejection of the division of male and female time and labour. A sharp eye must persist in perceiving that both women and men exist in the reproductive and productive spheres, and ensure that old divisions, in new manifestations, do not obscure sightings. Changes in child caring will stem from moving beyond limited notions of nature, and gender and socalled gender appropriate child care choices. New child care choices may emerge when the emotional/ caring needs of children, women and men and a
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caring community may begin to be envisaged, beyond male and female, beyond the public and the private, beyond mothers at home and mothers at work. New child care choices may emerge from a new conversation. ENDNOTES 1. The M shaped pattern of paid work refers to two peaks of employment for Australian women, before having children (in their 20s) and are having children (in their late 30s). 2. Anne Manne (1998, October 10 – 11, p. 23) suggests that children’s time is marked by questions such as ‘‘What day is it?’’
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‘‘BEING THERE’’: MOTHERS WHO STAY AT HOME, GENDER AND TIME Elizabeth Reid Boyd Centre for Research for Women, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
Synopsis — This paper is focussed upon mothers who stay at home to care for their children, in the context of the Australian child care debate between mothers at home and mothers at work. The doctoral research on which it is based was carried out between 1996 and 2000. One aspect of this qualitative research was interviews with 20 mothers at home in suburban Perth, as one of several sites of exploration of the child care debate. In these interviews, the phrase ‘‘being there’’ recurred. ‘‘Being there’’ is also part of public child care rhetoric. While the phrase could be regarded as a version of ‘‘quantity time,’’ as opposed to ‘‘quality time’’ invoked by mothers in paid work, the term also points to the emotional dimension of child care. ‘‘Being there’’ is bio-social and political. It must be reviewed as such, for new discussions, beyond division (beyond work/home, public/private and male/female) to take place. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION In 1996, I began my research with two questions I wanted to ask mothers at home—Why are you at home, and how is this experienced? But in the early stages of my explorations, these initial questions became disguised. The more I read about mothers at home—in the media, in child care literature, and the more I spoke to mothers, the more I realised that mothers at home were usually discussed in tandem with mothers at work. There was rarely an article, discussion or conversation about mothering at home, which did not include a weighing up of the relative merits of being at home versus being at work. The dichotomy of mothers at home versus mothers at work was powerful. I became absorbed in the debate. It ran through every aspect of my research, which incorporated interviews with mothers at home, interviews with advocates for mothers at home (leaders of groups such as The Australian Family Association, Choice for Families and the Women’s Action Alliance, all who support mothering at home); as well as analyses of politics; the media; child care literature and feminist debates. As such, the child care debate contextualised each site of investigation in this study. The child care debate framed the experiences of mothers at home: their ‘‘being there,’’ which is how the women I interviewed overwhelmingly termed staying at home. The phrase ‘‘being there’’ proved to be significant and more than two thirds of the 463
women interviewed used it. In this paper, I will argue that rather than viewing ‘‘being there’’ as simply the oppositional rhetoric of mothers at home versus against mothers at work, the stay at home mothers’ concept of ‘‘being there’’ may be viewed as a potential lever for dislodging the dualist constructions that shape and constrain the experience of mothering.
INTERVIEWS WITH MOTHERS AT HOME The interviews with mothers at home were carried out in predominantly middle class North Western suburbs of Perth in 1997 and 1998. Mothers were contacted through schools and playgroups. When seeking a sample, I asked for respondents who had been at home for more than 4 years and had a child in pre-school. I also sought respondents who were married, in line with statistical groupings for staying at home. I chose these criteria since a common time for women to return to work is when their children start school (ABS 1991, p. 30) and the M shaped1 paid work pattern is marked for married women (ABS, 1998, p. 112). I also specified an age range for potential interviewees, asking that respondents be under 40 years of age. This was in order to discuss any impressions the women had about the impacts of their own mothers working, or not. I wanted to speak to women whose
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mothers, as well as themselves, may have been affected by the second wave of feminism. In the end, not all the mothers were under 40 (three were not) but the age range provided a generational perspective. I asked mothers who had only worked casual hours while they were at home. Three mothers were doing casual work at the time of interview. Two of the women were completing tertiary study. There were differences among the interviewees, along the lines of socio-economic status and ethnicity. While the suburbs in the interview location had all been variously advertised as ‘‘ideal’’ for families as real estate, some houses in some suburbs were more expensive than others. There were two statistical areas covered. One (Wembley Coastal) significantly richer than the other (Stirling West), providing socio-economic contrast. In both areas, however, some mothers were at pains to tell me they could ‘‘afford’’ to stay at home. This suggests that there remains in staying at home an element of what Phillips (1992) has called classing the woman and gendering the class. In all cases except one, I met the women in their homes. A semi-structured interview schedule allowed me to follow their stories, accounts and rationales. The interviews were later analysed by theme. More than two thirds of the women I interviewed used the term ‘‘being there’’ in a variety of ways. They said, Maria: Actually, I was quite happy to always be there for her. Jennifer: I’m finding, even though I’ve got a grade one, there’s still a lot of things that you can be involved in at school, or just to pick him up now and then, or just to keep up. As long as they want me, I’ll be there. Samatha: I just think, for them to know that you’re always going to be there. I mean I just hope that by spending the extra time with them, they will realise that the extra time that you’re with them, the extra time that you put in must make a difference. I just think it’s got to. You know, like every time they turn around and I’m here, although it’s a pain in the bum for them probably at the moment, when they’re older they will realise that is the way it’s going to be. I will always endeavour to always be here. (my italics) In these examples, ‘‘being there’’ is not singular or particular; it is continual, and constant. It is more than physical. It engenders a sense of not just physical but
emotional presence, evoking the colloquial ‘‘I’ll be there for you’’ (for support) as well as ‘‘I’ll be there with you.’’ It implies constancy and indeed constant availability: ‘‘being there’’ means being there always, as well as being on demand, when needed, when called for. ‘‘Being there’’ is also important ‘‘in case.’’ This was highlighted by the way some mothers cited children’s illnesses as an example of the necessity of being available, especially in an emergency: Tracey: When they’re sick, I’m home. I just go and get them. They ring me up. The high school and sometimes the primary school still, I go and get her, and I’m on the emergency list. Some of the mothers that work, they know me, and I go and get their children and bring them home here too. I’ve got to know the boys here and they know me from the canteen and a couple of them have been home sick with me on the emergency list. I’m just here, for them all. It doesn’t matter. Someone’s got to be there. Tracey stayed at home for 17 years. Trina thought ‘‘it’s love and knowing that the child knows that he’s loved. Mum’s always there if they need her,’’ as did Antoinette, who felt her being at home provided: Antoinette: The constant, unconditional love. That sounds awful, because it sounds as if I don’t think women that put their children into daycare don’t feel the same way. I don’t mean that. Maybe I’d like to think that the children could always say— mum’s there. If you’re worried, come and see my mum, maybe she can help you out, or I don’t know. Just that security. Antoinette also described ‘‘being there’’ as providing ‘‘placid care.’’ This is pertinent to ideals of good mothers as peaceful and passive in suburban homes (Richards, 1994). Further, ‘‘being there’’ had a timeless quality. No particular amount of time was specified as sufficient, or enough, indeed: Enough is the permissive description, since the requirement leaves up to negotiation the central question of how much is enough? The phrase ‘all the time’ in this context is the strongest indicator of non-negotiable demands. It is manifestly ridiculous to specify that any one person should spend all her time in any one role, yet that assertion carries appalling plausibility (Richards, 1994, p. 80).
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‘‘Being there’’ does suggest that a person should primarily spend their time in one role. If a mother must be there ‘‘when needed,’’ ‘‘in case,’’ ‘‘for love’’ and ‘‘for security,’’ this suggests a probable perception that she should be there ‘‘all the time.’’ Mothers at home may not in actuality be attending to their children on a constant basis, but their constant presence is called for, and is often, by them, considered crucial, ‘‘in case.’’ I suggest, however, that ‘‘being there’’ is not only significant for mothers at home. The constant, timeless qualities in ‘‘being there’’ for children shape women’s lives, across the public and the private. But as these accounts of mothers at home reveal, ‘‘being there’’ is inexorably connected with its being part of the reproductive, private, ‘‘female’’ sphere. The public ‘‘male’’ sphere is constructed as separate from reproduction and child care.
DICHOTOMY AND DUALISM The constructed separation of the sphere of paid work in Western society rests upon a number of definitive dualisms. These dualisms support dichotomies not only between women and men, but also between women. In defining dualism, dichotomy and difference, I draw on Nancy Jay’s (1981) seminal discussion of dichotomy. Not all dichotomous distinctions form dualisms. A dualism takes the form of an A/not-A distinction (Jay, 1981, p. 44). That is, they are not mere contraries, but logical contradictions. In the A/not-A binary pair, only one term has a positive reality and not-A is defined as being the lack of A. Continuity between A and not-A is also impossible (Jay, 1981, p. 44). Dualism, A/not A, requires an either/or. This is particularly explicable with regard to gender, as Jay points out, ‘‘thus men and women may be conceived as men and not-men, or women and not-women’’ (Jay, 1981, p. 44). A dualism is not the same as a dichotomy that can be conceptualised as A/B. In A/B distinctions, both terms may have a positive reality. As a conceptual framework, imposing an interpretative order on the world, dualism and dichotomy are powerfully simple ideological devices. This can be demonstrated by exploring the Australian child care debate in these (distorting) terms. Mothers at home versus mothers at work form a dichotomy (A/B). They are not strictly a dualism, since they are not mutually exclusive (A/not A). A mother at home may do some part time work (and still define herself as a mother at home, i.e. one who does not work, as did some of the mothers at home I
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interviewed). Mothers who work are also mothers at home when they are not doing their paid work and crucially, mothers at work do not cease to be mothers, or necessarily cease to do mothering work while ‘‘at work.’’ Further, ‘‘work’’ considerations are issues for mothers at home—casual work, study, considerations about returning to work or staying at home. More fundamentally, the need to affirm that mothering is work, underlies the complaint many mothers express about the social under-valuation of their labour. These issues complicate and cross over the division between mothers at home and mothers at work. I argue that child care is a process which crosses the work/home divide. However, the mothers at home/mothers at work debate has many dualistic hallmarks. In view of the continuity and links between A and B, mothering at home and mothering at work, how the debate works in terms of dualism may seem limited. The two states do not logically contradict each other, there is continuity and commonality, both have a positive reality. Yet this debate is often played out in terms of positive and negative, virtue and vice, presence and absence, and these representations are strongly reminiscent of dualism (Jay, 1981, p. 44). This still does not make the dichotomy of mothering at home/mothering at work a dualism. But these dualistic features are not inexplicable. I contend that the ideological power of dualism in this debate is not in the dichotomy of mothering at home versus mothering at work itself. This breaks down, as a dualism, under preliminary examination. The strength of the mothers at home/mothers at work dichotomy (A/B) is that it rests upon, and is upheld by, a number of more persistent dualisms. The conceptual dualism at the heart of the child care debate is male/female, or, as it is played out, man/not-man and woman/not woman. I am not simply referring to biological manifestations of sexual difference: ‘Men’ and ‘women’ and their ‘interests’ rest not on biological difference, reproductive relations, or the sexual division of labour, but on the discursive practices which produce them (Pringle & Watson, 1998, p. 216). As a discourse, the child care debate operates as both reflector and producer of the male and the female, with powerful effects for the parameters of male and female responsibility for children. The male productive worker (using his mind) and the female reproductive carer (using her body and emotions) are familiar ideological figures. In this dualistic frame-
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work, a male is worker/not carer, and a female carer/ not worker. Thus the dichotomy between mothers arises, because men are deemed not carers, based upon them being not-mothers. Even though mothers do paid work, the male/female dualism holds: the debate is between mothers, because mother equals carer. Other dualisms uphold the separation between men and care and women and work by reinforcing and reinventing male/female. Those that are especially pertinent to the debate between mothers at home versus mothers at work, are public/private; production/reproduction; mind/body and culture/ nature. Sameness/difference is also relevant, especially in line with Carol Bacchi’s (1990) argument that these two function as a dualism. These dualisms work together, as well as separately. The dualisms I have identified form old divisions. According to Mary O’Brien, they rest upon the separation of man from nature and continuous time (O’Brien, 1981, p. 34). For O’Brien, it is not women’s nature that excludes them from culture, public, and work. It is the construction of the historically male public world of work, which separates men (and ‘‘pseudo men’’) from the so-called private care of children (O’Brien, 1981, p. 34). Today, this hierarchical ‘‘man-made’’ separation lies largely unaltered. But in the Australian context, it is (women’s) child care, rather than (men’s) work, which is problematised. Implicitly, work is valued over care, production over reproduction, and historically, ‘‘malestream’’ (O’Brien, 1981) social and political theory has reflected this value.
‘‘BEING THERE’’ ACROSS WORK AND HOME ‘‘Being there’’ is a response to how paid work is organised in Australian culture, due to its incompatibility with child work, and a rationale for women’s place in relation to that system. Mothering at home is a private or personal response to, and negotiation with, the domination of the public. But mothering at home is supported, represented and advocated publicly and politically in recursive relation to the personal. ‘‘Being there’’ is not simply a private response, but a phrase becoming embedded in public rhetoric: Most deeply, there is the McDonaldisation of love. Extracting maximum output from both parents in downsised industries requires the speeding up of family life. No more inefficient, wasteful tract of ‘quantity time’ just ‘being there’ (Anne Manne, 1999, March 13 – 14, my emphasis).
Women who get caught in the Supermum trap are stuck between two generations like a shred of cheap steak in a broken filling. One the one side, we are pulled by images and memories of our own childhoods. Of mum wearing an apron and a welcoming smile. Or an apron at least. Of mum being there—always—when we needed her. For many of us, that’s where our hearts remain. Yet our heads, blast them, have learnt a different story. (Susan Maushart, 1998, March 18, p. 2, my emphasis). ‘‘Being there’’ in these examples, is part of the dichotomous ‘‘talk,’’ which has grown up around mothering at home versus mothering at work. This talk incorporates ‘‘quantity time’’ and ‘‘quality time.’’ Quantity time has links with mothering at home, and providing quality time was a 1980s buzz phrase for working parents. If quantity time, like ‘‘being there’’ and being available when needed, is a virtue of athome mothering; quality time is perhaps the working mother’s answer (or defence): when they are there, they are really there for their children. But quantity time and quality time are not phrases which accurately reflect contemporary child caring. They are the types of phrases that portray dichotomy at the expense of an understanding of dialectic, in the processes of reproduction across the boundaries of work and home. The quantity of quality time and the quality of quantity time are concerns for mothers at home and mothers at work—quality and amounts of time are not necessarily separate concerns. Either/or ‘‘talk’’ does not capture the experience of mothering at home or at work. The argumentative component of rhetoric is one of its definitive features (Billig, 1987). ‘‘Being there’’ may be a rhetoric for quantity time, taken up by mothers at home, as argument, in opposition to the rhetoric of ‘‘quality time’’ used by working mothers. But such rhetoric does not fully capture reality. I suggest that there is a broad expanse between the rhetoric and the reality of many women’s lives. The rhetoric of quality versus quantity time obviates the processes and relations of child care, which do not fall into neat temporal demarcations. ‘‘Being there’’ as a rhetorical phrase also draws upon the ‘‘form-giving or form lending’’ techniques of rhetoric, which make it appear as if indescribable, hazy, fluid and unspecified areas of human lives are ‘‘well ordered and structured’’ (Shotter, 1990, p. 158). As such, ‘‘being there’’ can be proffered as planned reasoning, when it also acts as a response to a gendered status quo. It usually ‘‘turns out’’ that she is the one who must ‘‘be there,’’ whatever the original
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intention. ‘‘Being there’’ gives form to a gendered function. Because ‘‘being there’’ is gendered, that a mother will ‘‘be there’’ is an expectation she carries with her into the workforce, in ways not fully explicated by terms such as ‘‘the double burden.’’ If this facet of child care cannot be managed (by the individual mother), in her situation as a paid worker, ‘‘being there’’ can be more simply be accommodated by staying at home. The requirement to ‘‘be there’’ may alter women’s opportunity or ability to work. The mothers I interviewed, for example, said because they are needed to ‘‘be there,’’ they could not work. The expectation of a female availability, not necessarily all the time, but in the case (of sick days, holidays, pupil-free school days) of the mothers I interviewed, was a definitive feature in their explanations and decisions to stay at home. Such concern about time is perhaps not ill founded. In The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997), Arlie Hochschild argues that paid work has left parents in a time bind at home. Contributing to the pressure at home was the Taylorization and compartmentalisation of multiple domestic tasks, including childcare, or, ‘‘quality time’’ with children. Hochschild states that: The premise behind quality time is that the time we devote to relationships can somehow be separated from ordinary time. Relationships go on during ‘‘quantity time’’ of course, but then we are only passively, not actively, wholeheartedly, specialising in emotional ties. We aren’t ‘on’. . .. Quality time holds out the hope that scheduling intense periods of togetherness can compensate for an overall loss of time in such a way that a relationship will suffer no loss of quality. . .. But the lack of family time and the Taylorization of what little of it remained was forcing parents to do even more of a new kind of work: the emotional work necessary to repair the damage caused by time pressures at home (1997, pp. 50 – 51). Hochschild referred to this work as ‘‘the third shift’’ (Hochschild, 1997, p. 51). The term ‘‘the third shift’’ is useful (Hochschild, 1997, p. 51). It can be paralleled with what I describe as the emotional dimension (in time and space) of child care, a dimension which is powerfully gendered. This emotional dimension can be discerned in the way that motherhood can be experienced. Women
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may be unprepared for the physical demands of working motherhood, but it can be the emotional demands that take the greatest toll (Triedman, 1989, July – August, p. 59). Women can struggle alone in the privacy and quiet of their inner selves, challenged by expectations beyond physical and emotional capacities (Triedman, 1989, July – August, p. 60). Women who feel responsible for the emotional dimension of care may feel guilty if they do not fulfil their perceived role. Shaw and Burns (1993, cited in Wearing, 1996, p. 132) found that while both women and men experienced role conflict and guilt, it was only for women that any guilt was related to parental responsibility. Women made up for this guilt by giving extra time or hugs as a replacement for lost time or hugs. Women’s responsibility for children is a powerful internalised belief (Wearing, 1996, p. 132). Making up in hugs is indicative of women’s responsibility for their children’s emotional state—women’s responsibility for the emotional dimension.
THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION It is the emotional dimension of child care that is particularly significant in the context of this research. I believe it is this dimension that the women at home I interviewed tried to capture when they spoke of ‘‘being there.’’ The women I interviewed were not simply speaking of a number of domestic and child care chores that needed to be done, when they spoke of their desire to ‘‘be there’’ for their children. They were describing emotional shift work, which, in their view, would need to be done by them, regardless of whether they worked or not (although, by implication, they are also suggesting women who work may not emotionally ‘‘ be there’’ for their children). But whether at home or at work, mothers are required to ‘‘be there’’ at an emotional level. Hochschild (1997) has suggested that the third shift work parents were carrying out in her study was in part due to the lack of time they were able to spend with their families. However, women have always done emotional shift work. It is part of the practice and ideology of mothering (and of wifehood), and, intertwined in the historical ‘‘female’’ process of reproduction, is especially revealed in the notion of ‘‘being there.’’ I suggest that it is women’s lack of time and space to ‘‘be there’’ that is particularly acute and evident in Hochschild’s (1997) study. It is invisible work made visible, through its not being done, through women not ‘‘being there’’ to do it. The dynamics within relationships ‘‘are often invisible (and indeed may
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depend for their effectiveness on their invisibility). They become visible only on the breakdown of or other disruption to the relationships’’ (Van Every, 1995, p. 3). What is potentially problematic, however, is any assumptive extrapolation that the physical presence of a mother at home will ‘‘always’’ guarantee a certain state of emotional presence, or ‘‘being there’’—any more than a mother at work will not. Haavind and Andenaes (1992) argue that being a mother means being part of the social construction of the human capacity to follow the cyclical time of children.2 ‘‘Being there’’ has no time limitations—it is cyclical (and perhaps perpetual). This resonates with O’Brien’s (1981, p. 34) argument, that production is separated from reproduction, a problem created for men by their alienation from genetic continuity, a separation of man from nature and from continuous time. O’Brien (1981) referred to the nature of historical reproductive time, of the continuance of the cycle of birth through the ages. Child care, an aspect of a reproductive process, is equally continuous. As the mothers at home I interviewed described, ‘‘being there’’ was ‘‘constant,’’ ‘‘placid’’ and in some cases perceived as unrelenting and overwhelming. The need to physically ‘‘be there’’ all the time can affect the requirement to fully ‘‘be there’’ emotionally. This constant aspect of (reproductive) time is fully revealed when women’s (reproductive) experiences are made central. O’Brien (1981) differentiates between moments or points of the reproductive process to demonstrate that some are involuntary— such as ovulation, or sometimes conception—and some are voluntary such as nurture (Hartsock, 1999, p. 65). ‘‘Being there’’ is a facet of continuous reproductive time, but it is a voluntary state. That it is voluntary, and perhaps not even ‘‘natural,’’ is disguised, because the responsibility ‘‘rests with’’ women, linked to their children in cyclical, continuous time, in reproduction. Haavind and Andenaes (1992) suggest that this link to others, or dependency, has traditionally been interpreted as female strength; valued and respected as a naturalised femininity. In contrast, being a man means participating in the social construction of the human capacity to compensate for human weakness and dependency. In men the effort to reach those results is achieved by a cumulative organisation of time (in the workplace). This is valued and respected in a way that makes the results an expression of masculinity (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 10). This cumulative organisation of time, in contradistinction to cyclical time, has traditionally charac-
terised the public sphere of paid work in postIndustrial societies. The contemporary nine to five allotment for work contrasts with the pre-Industrial ‘‘task oriented’’ working day, when time was measured by how long it took to complete a task (Probert, 1989, p. 5). Further, increasingly, technological time, as another facet of work time, has also become a dominant pulse in Western lives and consciousness: ‘‘We’re all plugged into it, paced to its pacing, driven by its pulse’’ (Menzies, 1999, p. 70). What characterises the life of modern women is their effort to combine within one person the activities that are regulated by both modes of time. This effort follows from their realisation that on one hand, the exclusive affiliation with cyclical time leaves you in subordination, and on the other hand, the exclusive organisation with the cumulative time leaves others helpless (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 10). This effort to combine both cumulative and cyclical time creates a time bind and the potential management of a first, second and third shift (Hochschild, 1997). Women at home I interviewed worried about combining paid work and what they viewed (and experienced) as their child care responsibilities. They worried about sick children, and holidays, and not ‘‘being there’’ ‘‘in case,’’ or for an emergency, or for important moments. For women at work, as Virginia Held points out ‘‘such concerns as whether a child is ill, or in danger, or whether outside child care arrangements are adequate [are] frequently present in women’s minds’’ (Held, 1993, p. 180). These concerns are shared by mothers at home in their reality and imaginings. This is the commonality between women that is cloaked by the dualistic framework of the present child care debate. It is the running wheel (Haavind & Andenaes, 1992, p. 12) of the emotional dimension, fluid and constant, crossing the boundaries of public and private time. This further resonates with Goodnow and Bowes’ (1994) point that: Scholars analysing the nature of work have challenged the idea of separate spheres of work by pointing to the widespread presence of ‘spillover.’ People may take their household or their familial work to the office, in the form of worries, phone calls or children. People may also bring their marketplace work into the home, in thought or in the form of paper and phone calls. Spillover, then, rather than separateness, should be what we
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ought to take as given and study (Goodnow & Bowes, 1994, pp. 31 – 32).
CONCLUSION The emotional dimension of care constantly spills over, between the productive and reproductive, public and private. It cannot be contained by neat, linear, public/private gendered splits and defensive renderings of ‘‘quality’’ versus ‘‘quantity’’ time. Instead, ‘‘being there’’ may be viewed as a rhetoric of possibility. It could offer opportunities for more than a gendered physical and/or emotional presence in a separate sphere. ‘‘Being there’’ evokes more than actuality. It evokes the potentiality and possibility of a caring presence. It is this potentiality which currently constrains many women, but which may offer the possibility for change, in order to move beyond the dichotomy of paid work versus staying at home. Today, the potential as well as the actual aspect of ‘‘being there’’ currently rests with women. They stay at home, ‘‘in case,’’ they take part time work, ‘‘in case,’’ and they become caught in a time bind in full time work because within many contemporary workplaces, there is no time and space for ‘‘in case.’’ Current meanings of flexibility must be challenged. The ongoing, cyclical quality of ‘‘being there’’ is in contrast to the fragmented, discrete quality of time as quantitatively measured in the public sphere, especially in work settings but measures for integration can be explored. The concept of ‘‘being there’’ may suggest some way of reconceptualising the understandings of time that are implicit in the public/private distinction. As Bacchi (1999, p. 65) suggests, it is not ‘‘that particular framings can be dispensed with, but rather that a sharp eye to their effects can provide a basis for interacting with them’’ (her italics). Refusing to view the issues of time pressures surrounding child caring, and impacting child care choices, as different issues for mothers at work and mothers at home is one way of doing this. As important is a continued rejection of the division of male and female time and labour. A sharp eye must persist in perceiving that both women and men exist in the reproductive and productive spheres, and ensure that old divisions, in new manifestations, do not obscure sightings. Changes in child caring will stem from moving beyond limited notions of nature, and gender and socalled gender appropriate child care choices. New child care choices may emerge when the emotional/ caring needs of children, women and men and a
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caring community may begin to be envisaged, beyond male and female, beyond the public and the private, beyond mothers at home and mothers at work. New child care choices may emerge from a new conversation. ENDNOTES 1. The M shaped pattern of paid work refers to two peaks of employment for Australian women, before having children (in their 20s) and are having children (in their late 30s). 2. Anne Manne (1998, October 10 – 11, p. 23) suggests that children’s time is marked by questions such as ‘‘What day is it?’’
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