his father and the trained nanny [...]. The nanny that Ricardo had insisted on from the moment she had given birth, making her feel useless and inadequate, in a way that must have contributed to her breakdown. (36)As the above quotation indicates, Lucy's abandonment of her child is ascribed to a temporary cause, and since "The doctors said that she was well again now" (18) there is no reason for the reader to believe it will affect her ability to be a "loving mother," a "good mother" in the future.
What does one have to do, though, in order to qualify as a "good mother"? Lucy seems to convince her husband that she's a good mother at least in part by how she picks up the baby and changes his nappy:
She almost laughed as she laid Marco on his back on the brightly coloured changing mat. This was something she knew how to do.and how she feeds him:
'Let's get you cleaned up ...'
Unfastening the sleep suit, removing the dirty nappy, cleaning, was the work of moments. And she enjoyed it - doing this simple task for her baby. Even when Marco waved his arms and legs wildly in the air, wriggling so that it was a struggle to get the nappy on and fastened, she couldn't hold back the soft chuckle of appreciation of his life and energy. Forgetting about the dark, watchful man behind her, she bent her head and blew a loud raspberry on his exposed stomach, revelling in its soft roundness, the uncontrollable giggles that burst from him in response. (115)
She was looking down at Marco, laughing softly as the little boy squished his banana in his hand, obviously revelling in the mess he was making and the feel of it between his fingers. And Marco was watching her, his wide smile a beam of delight as he held up the sticky mess for her to see. (118)Obviously one has to interpret Lucy's happiness in these scenes in the context of her previous separation from her baby. Having feared she might never see him again, it's entirely understandable that she should feel delighted to have the opportunity to spend time with him. It's also important to remember that the book is about a heroine who had "Post-natal psychosis" (171). Nonetheless, what is depicted for the reader are scenes which present motherhood as a source of joy.
The depiction of motherhood in Angela Thirkell's High Rising (1933) is rather different. In part this is because of the very different circumstances in which the two mothers find themselves, but I think it may also reflect different attitudes towards motherhood. It should also be noted that Thirkell's novel is more "romantic fiction" than "romance" since the central protagonist, Laura, is not involved in a romantic relationship (she does get involved in a bit of matchmaking for others). She's a forty-five year old author and widowed mother-of-four who, at the beginning of the novel, is collecting her youngest from boarding school. I wonder how many modern heroine-mothers would choose this option for their children? Clearly the many billionaire/sheik etc heroes could easily afford to educate their children this way, and some have been to boarding schools themselves. Maybe the ages of the children in romances play a part in how schooling choices are depicted in the genre, but I wonder if nowadays more people feel that children should stay with their parents. The heroine of Janet Evanovich's Smitten in fact broke up with her husband over this issue rather than over his infidelity:
"It turned out we had different expectations about marriage. Paul expected me to close my eyes to constant indiscretions, and I expected him to be faithful to me."For Laura, and other mothers of her class and era, sending children to boarding school would have seemed entirely normal, and although she may wonder, "as she had often wondered with the three older boys, why one's offspring are under some kind of compulsion to alienate one's affections at first sight by their conceit, egotism, and appalling self-satisfaction" (4) she does love her sons. It seems unlikely, however, that she would respond with joy to a sticky mess, no matter how much a child was "revelling" in it. This is a woman who admits to feeling rather "exhausted" after bringing up so many children:
"I'm sorry."
Lizabeth waved it away. "Actually, I could have lived with that. What finally drove me out of the marriage was when he insisted that the boys go to boarding school. Paul had political ambitions. He wanted me to be a perfect hostess. He found the children to be a burden." (24)
When for about a quarter of a century you have been fighting strong young creatures with a natural bias towards dirt, untidiness, and carelessness, quite unmoved by noise, looking upon loud, unmeaning quarrels and abuse as the essence of polite conversation, oblivious of all convenience and comfort but their own, your resistance weakens. (21-22)And when she has finally got her son into his bed after his first day home for the holidays, she
shut the door and reeled downstairs. [...] Oh, the exhaustingness of the healthy young! Laura had once offered to edit a book called Why I Hate my Children, but though Adrian Coates [her editor] had offered her every encouragement, and every mother of her acquaintance had offered to contribute, it had never taken shape. Perhaps, she thought, as she stood by Tony's bed an hour later, they wouldn't be so nice if they weren't so hateful.The ways in which heroes respond to mothers also vary. Amanda Vickery describes one depiction of motherhood thus:
There lay her demon son, in abandoned repose. His cheeks, so cool and firm in the day, had turned to softest rose-petal jelly, and looked as if they might melt upon the pillow. His mouth was fit for poets to sing. His hands - spotlessly clean for a brief space - still had dimples where later bony knuckles would be [...] she tucked the bedclothes in, kissed her adorable hateful child, who never stirred, and turning out the light left the room. (39-40)
When Samuel Richardson singled out the breast-feeding mother in Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4), one of the most popular novels of the century, he presented a traditional duty in a haze of beguiling limelight. Witness the scene when the once naughty Lady G. is surprised with her babe at the breast by her estranged husband:Heroes in modern romances may not express themselves in quite these words, or feel "rapture" of exactly the same kind, but they too often react extremely strongly to motherhood:Never was a man in greater rapture. For lady Gertrude had taught him to wish that a mother would be a mother: He Threw himself at my feet, clasping me and the little varlet together in his arms. Brute! said I, will you smother my Harriet - I was half-ashamed of my tenderness - Dear-est, dear-est, dear-est Lady G. - Shaking his head, between every dear and est, every muscle of his face working; how you transport me! - Never, never, never, saw I so delightful a sight! (Vickery 93-94)
Her body was preparing itself for the birth of their baby and the thought of that was a massive turn-on. (Williams 107)There are, of course, plenty of romances involving pregnant heroines who become involved with a new man, but occasionally I've come across characters who would rather not begin a relationship with a woman who's a mother. In Janet Evanovich's Smitten, for example, the hero hesitates before kissing the heroine:
'You're very sexy, pregnant,' he whispered.
'No, I'm not.'
'You are to me. [...] We men are simple creatures [...] Evidence of our virility can't help but prove satisfying. Call it a weird macho thing.' (Williams 108)
He didn't want to come on too strong or too fast and frighten her away. And he didn't want to make working conditions awkward. And besides that, she was a mother. He'd never before been involved with a mother. In his eyes motherhood was in the same category as a PhD in physics. It was outside his sphere of knowledge. It was intimidating. And the thought of bedding someone's mother felt a smidgeon irreverent. Not enough to stop him, he thought ruefully. Just enough to slow him down. (17-18)The heroine herself seems to have some preconceptions about what is, or isn't, suitable for a mother to do, but by the end of the novel she appears to have revised at least some of them:
She was in a suggestive position on the trunk when he returned. "Do you think this is undignified for a mother?"So, is this novel grappling with the madonna/whore dichotomy? According to Caroline Myra Pascoe:
He pulled her panties down. "I think this is perfect for a mother." (176)
Images of motherhood in western society have most often ignored maternal sexuality, notwithstanding the sleight of hand that this entails. Anne Summers in Damned Whores and God's Police noted:The modern romance genre, however, provides a reader with plenty of sexually active mothers and mothers-to-be. I suspect that the portrayal of mothers and children varies not just across time (and cultures, classes and many other social variables), but also across different genres. Jennifer Weiner, who writes women's fiction, thinks thatIt is conveniently forgotten that married women must have sexual intercourse in order to reproduce: a general Australian puritanism has managed to convince itself that mothers are not sexual creatures and female sexuality is either denied or relegated entirely to the Damned Whore stereotype.
even though there are blogs and books and first-person essays about the everyday exhaustion and dreariness and frustration of motherhood, the prevailing cultural view is still that motherhood comes with this rose-tinged blissful glow.You might get rather a different view of children and childrearing from the horror genre, however. John Patterson at the Guardian suggests that
The most interesting evil-kid movies seem to rise up from the subconscious of their creators. Stephen King has said that he wrote The Shining when he was drinking a lot to numb his bleakest feelings about family life, and evil and/or seriously scary kids proliferate across his work in that period: Danny and the chopped-up Grady Twins in The Shining; Drew Barrymore in Firestarter; the dead child in Pet Sematary; Isaac in Children Of The Corn. David Cronenberg had a five-year-old daughter when he made his 1979 gyno-horror movie The Brood, with its murderous mutant children, and David Lynch memorialised his complicated feelings about fatherhood with the monstrously deformed baby in Eraserhead. Whereas most kid-slaying horrors play nakedly to the taboo, these films have a sense of anxiety, dread and profound ambiguity about parenthood that often makes them richer as works of art.Those examples were all created by fathers, whereas romances are far more likely to be written by women. Is that just a coincidence? And does the romance genre, as a whole, represent motherhood and children in an idealised way or is it relatively realistic?
-----------
- Evanovich, Janet. Smitten. 1990. London: Bantam, 1991.
- Pascoe, Caroline Myra. Screening Mothers: Representations of motherhood in Australian films from 1900 to 1988. PhD thesis. University of Sydney, 2006.
- Thirkell, Angela. High Rising. 1933. Osney Mead, Oxford: Isis, 2000.
- Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.
- Walker, Kate. Kept for Her Baby. Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2009.
- Williams, Cathy. The Italian's One-Night Love-Child. Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2009.
With thanks to Kate Walker for sending me a copy of Kept for Her Baby, Tumperkin for giving me The Italian's One-Night Love-Child, AgTigress for providing me with a copy of Smitten and Sunita, who recommended Angela Thirkell's novels. The illustration came from Wikimedia Commons.
The other point about Kept for Her Baby is that those happy scenes you have quoted are in the first glow of the reunion with Marco after the fear that Lucy would never see him again. But they also come after a scene, which I belive from my research into post-natal psychosis (and the many responses to this book from sufferers of PND) is far more typical of this condition. One where the heroine, Lucy is desperately afraid to even go close to or touch her baby. It is something that almost tears her apart. This is the first reaction that her husband sees, and which affects his opinion of her as a woman who would abandon her baby.
ReplyDeleteThe start of the story, when Lucy left because of the fears and depression her condition caused, was also as a result of the exhaustion, depression and lack of 'rapture' in motherhood she felt then.
So Lucy feels both responses to being a mother and I hoped to show in this book one more realistic side of being a mother is the problem of psot natal deprtession - which, at its worst becomes post-natal psychosis. At the end of the book, the hero and heroine will do the parenting together.
Thanks, Kate. In many ways Kept for Her Baby certainly isn't typical of the depiction of motherhood in the romance genre. As I've mentioned in the past, in my experience of reading romances it's extremely rare to find romances which include heroines with mental health problems. I've never previously encountered a romance whose heroine has had postnatal psychosis.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when I read "those happy scenes you have quoted [which] are in the first glow of the reunion with Marco" what struck me was that they recalled similar scenes in other romances I've read. In those romances the scenes were not intended to show any special "glow" but were presented as a normal scene of mother-child interaction.
In other words, while the "glow" in your novel has a very specific context, in other novels the same kind of "glow" seems to be presented as a normal part of motherhood.
I probably wasn't clear enough about that, and maybe it would have been better if I'd chosen a different romance to provide the examples of mother/baby interactions. It was just that Kept for Her Baby was the one that sparked my thinking about the issue, so I kept on using it.
I also didn't say anything about the "bad mothers" in the romance genre. I seem to have been taking a lot for granted and assuming that my readers would fill in the gaps with their own knowledge of the genre. There are, of course, plenty of "bad mothers" in the genre, but in my experience they don't tend to be romance heroines.
ReplyDeleteI think I was trying to fit a very large topic into too small a space and the result isn't entirely felicitous. Sorry.
Just a very small point about the popularity of boarding schools amongst certain levels of British society in the Victorian period and earlier 20th century.
ReplyDeleteMany people (especially Americans!) assume this was all about upper-middle-class Brits hating their young, but there was one rather common practical reason: Colonial service. Britain was then a major imperial power, and had nationals living in many remote regions of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. In families where the husband's job required such residence, the custom was for children to remain with the parents while young, and to have a local or British nanny, but at secondary school age, to be sent back to a school in Britain. This was regarded as essential to inculcate the required British education and cultural values (and to make contacts that would be useful in later life). Speaking fluent Urdu or Bengali was fine, but a British child needed also to learn Latin and read Shakespeare, or his future prospects in his own class would be ruined.
I think the same sort of problem has arisen with American 'Army brats', but I think it is more often resolved by the setting up of American (or international) schools in the foreign countries concerned. In the Victorian days of the British Raj in India or colonial officials in African countries, British families were often far too isolated and thinly scattered in country districts for that to be a viable option. A child would have had to be sent away to school anyway, even if the school were in the colonial country, so why not back to Britain, to make contact with British relatives, and learn to experience the climate...
The Durrell family (incl. Lawrence, literary novelist and Gerald, naturalist) was a typical Anglo-Indian family of an earlier generation: the mother was third-generation born in India British, a lover of Indian culture, a Hindi-speaker and expert curry cook. All the children were born in India, but the eldest (Lawrence) was packed off to England to school (which he detested) at the age of 11. (Because of the father's death, the other three children seem to have had no education to speak of, anywhere).
Sorry, long digression. It is just one element in a subject that is, as you say Laura, a complex one.
Thanks, Tigress, as you say there were practical reasons for that choice among families living overseas.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that's occurred to me is that the way mothers and newborns are treated in hospitals has also changed. It was often the case that babies were taken away to nurseries, I think with the idea that this would give the mothers time to get some sleep and recuperate from having given birth. But nowadays in the UK that's not what happens. I went off and did a tiny amount of Googling (so what follows is the abstract of only one paper, not a distillation of much accumulated knowledge derived from a variety of sources):
Background: A tradition of separation of the mother and baby after birth still persists in many parts of the world, including some parts of Russia, and often is combined with swaddling of the baby. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare possible long-term effects on mother-infant interaction of practices used in the delivery and maternity wards, including practices relating to mother-infant closeness versus separation. Methods: A total of 176 mother-infant pairs were randomized into four experimental groups: Group I infants were placed skin-to-skin with their mothers after birth, and had rooming-in while in the maternity ward. Group II infants were dressed and placed in their mothers' arms after birth, and roomed-in with their mothers in the maternity ward. Group III infants were kept in the nursery both after birth and while their mothers were in the maternity ward. Group IV infants were kept in the nursery after birth, but roomed-in with their mothers in the maternity ward. Equal numbers of infants were either swaddled or dressed in baby clothes. Episodes of early suckling in the delivery ward were noted. The mother-infant interaction was videotaped according to the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) 1 year after birth. Results: The practice of skin-to-skin contact, early suckling, or both during the first 2 hours after birth when compared with separation between the mothers and their infants positively affected the PCERA variables maternal sensitivity, infant's self-regulation, and dyadic mutuality and reciprocity at 1 year after birth. The negative effect of a 2-hour separation after birth was not compensated for by the practice of rooming-in. These findings support the presence of a period after birth (the early “sensitive period”) during which close contact between mother and infant may induce long-term positive effect on mother-infant interaction. In addition, swaddling of the infant was found to decrease the mother's responsiveness to the infant, her ability for positive affective involvement with the infant, and the mutuality and reciprocity in the dyad. Conclusions: Skin-to-skin contact, for 25 to 120 minutes after birth, early suckling, or both positively influenced mother-infant interaction 1 year later when compared with routines involving separation of mother and infant.
Abstract of "Early Contact versus Separation: Effects on Mother-Infant Interaction One Year Later" by Ksenia1 Bystrova, Valentina Ivanova, Maigun Edhborg, Ann-Sofi Matthiesen, Anna-Berit Ransjö-Arvidson, Rifkat Mukhamedrakhimov, Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, Ann-Marie Widström. Birth 36.2 (2009): 97-109. [See Ingenta Connect.]
So yes, it's a huge topic, and cultural, practical and biological factors interact in shaping expectations and outcomes.
That's fascinating stuff. Of course home births were the norm in many regions and most social classes before the Second World War, but there would still have been some situations where the infant was spirited away by a nanny or nurse very soon after birth.
ReplyDeleteThere was that weird phase of childcare theory that started in the 30s in America and came over here for a while after the war -- the Truby King thing, where babies were only to be fed on a strict schedule, and not picked up just because they were howling.
That, and the separate nurseries, would have suited 1950s hospitals in Britain, because they liked really, really strict rules (one reason why they were so clean, and nobody got hospital infections in those days).
I am wandering! So many interesting thoughts.
Truby King was from New Zealand, apparently.
ReplyDeleteGina King (not a relative of his, as far as I know) currently has a lot to say about routines and schedules for babies:
Babies come in all shapes, sizes and temperaments and I think I can safely say I’ve seen them all – and there isn’t one who, in my experience, hasn’t benefited from following my routine. What I offer is real and practical advice on how to establish a good feeding and sleeping pattern from day one, so that you avoid months of sleepless nights, colic, excessive crying, feeding difficulties and many other problems that we are so often told are a normal part of parenting.
She's not averse to leaving babies to cry:
I do stress that some babies will fight sleep and they should be allowed 5-10 minutes crying down period. They should never be left for any longer than this before they are checked again. I also stress that a baby should never be left crying for even 2-3 minutes if there is any doubt that he could be hungry or need winding.
It's called "controlled crying" apparently. And we also currently have people telling parents that this is totally wrong:
Controlled crying
Experts tell new parents to leave their baby to cry so that they'll learn to go to sleep at the right time, but according to Leach, young babies don't have the mental equipment to do this. She says a baby who is left crying for long enough will eventually stop, but not because they have learnt to go to sleep happily alone, but because they're exhausted and have despaired of getting help.
Being left to cry is stressful, and continued acute stress sets up a hormonal chain reaction that ultimately stimulates the adrenal glands into releasing the stress hormone Cortisol. Long continued or repeated crying can produce so much Cortisol that it is literally toxic to a baby's brain. (GMTV)
Dr Sears advocates "attachment parenting," and he's very much in favour of carrying babies and co-sleeping with them:
Babywearing
A baby learns a lot in the arms of a busy caregiver. Carried babies fuss less and spend more time in the state of quiet alertness, the behavior state in which babies learn most about their environment. Babywearing improves the sensitivity of the parents. Because your baby is so close to you, you get to know baby better. Closeness promotes familiarity. [...]
Bedding close to baby
Wherever all family members get the best night's sleep is the right arrangement for your individual family. Co-sleeping co-sleeping adds a nighttime touch that helps busy daytime parents reconnect with their infant at night. Since nighttime is scary time for little people, sleeping within close touching and nursing distance minimizes nighttime separation anxiety and helps baby learn that sleep is a pleasant state to enter and a fearless state to remain in.
Belief in the language value of your baby's cry
A baby's cry is a signal designed for the survival of the baby and the development of the parents. Responding sensitively to your baby's cries builds trust. Babies trust that their caregivers will be responsive to their needs. Parents gradually learn to trust in their ability to appropriately meet their baby's needs. This raises the parent-child communication level up a notch. Tiny babies cry to communicate, not to manipulate.
Gina King and Dr Sears were the two main parenting experts I came across when I had a baby, but I'm sure there are plenty more.
Yes, Truby King was a Kiwi, but I think it was in the USA that his methods became most popular in the 30s. Then of course Spock came along and changed all that later. Interesting that these debates still continue -- and that people really heed them. Throughout most of human history, mothers of young babies would simply have followed the traditions of their own communities, which varied.
ReplyDeleteThe one, huge factor that undermines all the generalisations is that babies are people, and people are not all the same; individual personality of both parent and child will affect the methods that work best in caring for the child. I think there is also an important difference between instinctive maternal feelings of love and protectiveness, and actual liking of one personality for another. There are plenty of parents who 'love' one or more of their children, but don't actually LIKE them all that much, don't understand a particular child's character or sympathise with his world-view. I suspect that that can start very early, and can give rise to life-long tensions.
"Those examples were all created by fathers, whereas romances are far more likely to be written by women. Is that just a coincidence? And does the romance genre, as a whole, represent motherhood and children in an idealised way or is it relatively realistic?"
ReplyDeleteI think it's probably horses for courses. More men write horror, I’m guessing. And I know more women write romance. The different expectations of each genre assign how the author can treat different subject matter. Which makes a romance author enduring school holidays, when there is anything but romantic thoughts swirling around your head, very envious of a horror writer!
But yes, with the exception of books like Kate Walker's Kept for her Baby, motherhood is perhaps a little idealised. And there are a goodly number of reasons for that.
The books - if we're talking category fiction - are short. Fifty thousand words in which to get a hero and heroine together, confront them with seemingly insurmountable odds, and get them to their happy ever after, or happy beginning, which is more often what it is. There is time for the hero and the heroine and what's happening between them. There is no space for complicated sub-plots and a cast of thousands.
Secondly, romances are upbeat. They are, especially in the case of the Presents/Modern/Sexy line, all about fantasy and escapism. It's entertainment. For example, we don't see the heroine washing dishes. Our readers (and we writers!) get to do that all the time. Who wants to read about it?
The same goes with babies/kids. Just as there is no space to detail real life with baby and those drudge days that never seem to end, (that is, unless it is crucial to the story line), the reader doesn't want to find pages detailing the day she's just had. There is no escapism in reading about real life. And the reader is fully aware of this. She knows this is fiction she's reading. But romance reminds her of those special moments. Romance brings back those precious snapshots that maybe this rotten day had made her forget. It reminds her of that heady thrill of falling in love, it reminds her of the first time she made love (or how she’d wished it had been), it reminds her of the first time her newborn baby opened her eyes and squinted up at her and she fell in love all over again.
You know, it’s really nice writing about the good stuff!
"I think there is also an important difference between instinctive maternal feelings of love and protectiveness, and actual liking of one personality for another."
ReplyDeleteI basically agree with you, but I think I'd also separate out the protectiveness from the "love" and the "liking" because I think you can feel protective of a baby (or any other small creature) without necessarily feeling either liking or love. Admittedly it probably depends on which definition of "love" one's using.
The different expectations of each genre assign how the author can treat different subject matter.
I'm sure you're right, and I suspect there are plenty of other romance conventions which I don't think about much, because I'm so used to them.
It's entertainment. For example, we don't see the heroine washing dishes. Our readers (and we writers!) get to do that all the time. Who wants to read about it?
Yes, but we do sometimes read about heroines cooking, and for me cooking is not entertainment! But perhaps I'm in a minority in feeling that way. I know TV cooking shows are very popular.
romance reminds her of those special moments. Romance brings back those precious snapshots that maybe this rotten day had made her forget. It reminds her of that heady thrill of falling in love, it reminds her of the first time she made love (or how she’d wished it had been), it reminds her of the first time her newborn baby opened her eyes and squinted up at her and she fell in love all over again.
I wonder if this is one of the reasons why some people really don't like romance: if you're someone for whom those "moments" bring back painful memories, romance isn't going to be entertaining or escapist, unless, as you suggest, you're a reader who enjoys imagining "how she’d wished it had been."
For some people, depictions intended to recall "precious snapshots" or inspire happy fantasies, may instead recall feelings of disillusionment, inadequacy or pain. For example, quite a few of the criticisms I've read of the genre seem to come from people who don't believe that romantic love can last, and so I'd assume that for them romances may act as a reminder of their disillusionment and/or appear to be a genre which perpetuates what they consider to be a lie.
This brings me back to a conclusion I've reached before, which is that readers differ widely from each other, not just in their personal experiences outside the fiction, but also in how they position themselves in relation to those texts (e.g. do they identify with a heroine, a hero, both, neither?) and what they hope to gain from reading (e.g. to have particular emotions evoked, to be intellectually stimulated, to be reassured, etc). An escapist story which delights someone who identifies with the heroine, might have the opposite effect on someone who contrasts herself with the heroine.
"For some people, depictions intended to recall "precious snapshots" or inspire happy fantasies, may instead recall feelings of disillusionment, inadequacy or pain."
ReplyDeleteOf course. Romance isn't trying to be everything to everyone. The fact of its huge worldwide sales means it's tapping into, indeed celebrating, universal emotions and experiences.
If you don't like them ,the choice is easy. Just don't read the books.
"I think I'd also separate out the protectiveness from the "love" and the "liking" because I think you can feel protective of a baby (or any other small creature) without necessarily feeling either liking or love. Admittedly it probably depends on which definition of "love" one's using".
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair point, Laura. An adult can feel protective towards a small child or an animal who is completely unknown to him/her, just on principle.
I agree with Ms. Money. Seems to me the point of romance fiction is to make the heroine an admirable representative of womanhood, which in most people's minds includes being a "good" mother. Even in the book cited, the implication seems to be that the heroine's abandoning her child was for the good of the child. Only by that action on the heroine's part could her image as a valid romance heroine be preserved. An unusual hook, though.
ReplyDeletedick
"The fact of its huge worldwide sales means it's tapping into, indeed celebrating, universal emotions and experiences."
ReplyDeleteI suppose it depends what you mean by "universal." Clearly not everyone experiences love and motherhood in the same way or feels the same emotions when they think about them.
"If you don't like them ,the choice is easy. Just don't read the books."
That solution would be the obvious one if the reader objected to any depiction of romantic love as something which can last a lifetime. Someone who found that objectionable would be likely to find all romances objectionable since they're all about romantic relationships which, either implicitly or explicitly, are shown to be permanent.
However, other readers may really enjoy the central aspects of the genre (i.e. the focus on the development of a romantic relationship and the promise of a happy ending) but find a few issues/story types/character types problematic. In some cases the advice to "Just don't read the books" may still apply, if the reader can identify "the books" which she needs to avoid. Covers, titles, and blurbs often help with that.
"Seems to me the point of romance fiction is to make the heroine an admirable representative of womanhood, which in most people's minds includes being a "good" mother."
I don't agree with you that "the point of romance fiction is to make the heroine an admirable representative of womanhood," but thank you for summarising a view of womanhood which, when expressed implicitly or explicitly in some romances, might make them problematic/upsetting/offensive to some romance readers.
Ms Money I wish:-))
ReplyDeleteBut thank you Dick. I'd refine what you wrote just a little and say the heroine has to be someone the reader can empathise with and a woman the reader can barrack for. She can be flawed - indeed she should be to be real - but our heroines don't, for example, go around speeding through school crossings or kicking cats.
@T. Morey: Sorry about the typo; eyes and hands sometimes quarrel.
ReplyDelete@L. Vivanco: I'm puzzled. Why would an "admirable" heroine be "problematic, upsetting, or offensive" to any reader?
dick
Why would an "admirable" heroine be "problematic, upsetting, or offensive" to any reader?
ReplyDeleteIf the minimum standard for being "an admirable representative of womanhood [...] in most people's minds includes being a 'good' mother," then a book which adopts this standard necessarily implies that women who do not wish to become mothers, or who for other reasons do not become mothers, are in some way deficient and therefore not so admirable, and that mothers who do not reach the standard set for "good" motherhood are also deficient and therefore not so admirable.
Women who are not mothers, women who are not perceived as "good mothers," and women who do not perceive themselves as "good mothers" are affected by prevailing cultural attitudes about motherhood:
Scholars have found that nearly all childless women felt that they faced some disapproval from friends and family. Somers (1993) reported that childless women believed that they were viewed negatively on a variety of measures (seen as selfish, abnormal, immature, unfortunate, unnatural, unhappily married, irresponsible, maladjusted, unfulfilled, having a dislike of children). (Kelly 165)
According to Maher and Saugeres,
Dominant constructions of good mothering suggest that mothers need to be intensely focused on childrearing, and this construction of mothering may be seen as engendering guilt in women who mother and encouraging women without children to view mothering as an all-encompassing and potentially engulfing experience. (6-7)
Edhborg et al, who studied "a sample of Swedish women reporting depressive symptoms at two months postpartum" (262) found that
The women described many moral beliefs regarding the definition of a ‘‘good mother’’. A ‘‘good mother’’ would be happy when she got a healthy child, have patience with all her children, always think about the children before herself, and she would breastfeed her children. As a consequence of this belief, women felt guilt and like a ‘‘bad mother’’ if they were not immediately happy about the new child but instead wanted personal space and time for themselves. All mothers had expectations of breastfeeding their children and if they were not able to do it they felt as though they had failed as mothers. (264)
Most people do not enjoy being made to feel guilt, or being made to feel that they are "selfish, abnormal, immature, unfortunate, unnatural, unhappily married, irresponsible, maladjusted, unfulfilled."
I was assuming that a childless reader or one who does not conform to particular standard of what constitutes a "good" mother might therefore feel upset/offended/irritated if she found that her leisure reading echoed those prevailing social attitudes by having adopted a standard for what constitutes an "admirable" woman which implies that the reader herself is neither admirable nor good.
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Edhborg, Maigun, Malin Friberg, Wendela Lundhi and Ann-Marie Widstrom. "‘Struggling with life’: Narratives from women with signs of postpartum depression." Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 33 (2005): 261–267.
Kelly, Maura. "Women's Voluntary Childlessness: A Radical Rejection of Motherhood?" WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 37.3 & 4 (2009): 157-172.
Maher, JaneMaree and Lise Saugeres. "To be or not to be a mother?: Women negotiating cultural representations of mothering." Journal of Sociology 43 (2007): 5-21.
This post made me think of Frankenstein, a horror novel of sorts written by a pregnant woman, which many people interpret as being in part about fear of having children (what if it's a monster?).
ReplyDeleteI do think there's a lot of idealization of mothers/parenting in romance--at least when it comes to the hero and heroine (their own parents are often dreadful--so I don't know where h/h learn to be so good at it). I know that Dick thinks romances are all about procreating, but as only a half-decent parent, I find the constant idealization and insistence on epilogue babies tiresome.
I've read a couple of historicals recently in which one partner had an illegitimate child that was immediately loved and accepted by the other (and vice versa). And some contemporaries where more or less the same thing happened. While I don't mind the creation of a new family unit as part of the HEA--better than a genre populated by evil step-parents and monstrous step-children--many of these endings have seemed overly simple, saccharine, and happy-clappy. It's odd that even in a novel where the hero and heroine's falling in love is depicted as gradual and conflict-ridden, the child is calling the new parent "daddy" in a week. I think it would be more truly respectful of the importance of the parent-child relationship to show the development of one more realistically.
Finally, there've been a number of news stories lately about social science studies showing that having children does NOT make people happier overall--often the reverse, despite the moments of joy being a parent brings. Laura, I'm amazed by your ability to find and synthesize so many sources in your posts and comments. Vague allusions are all I'm up for.
@L. Vivanco: That "admirable" includes being a "good" mother, doesn't limit it to that inclusion, I don't think. But even your citations suggest that most people do include that quality in womanhood. Those women who choose not be mothers surely knew the prevailing attitudes on the matter before the choice was made. And I also don't think romance fiction will change the idealization of the heroine as mother because some readers choose not to be mothers. By the HEA, most heroines of romance fiction either welcome the state or look forward eagerly to it.
ReplyDelete@Elizabeth:
ReplyDeleteIn real life, I would certainly agree that having children doesn't necessarily make people happier overall. One corner of my mind, though, holds to the idea that biological forces almost insist children result from a joining of male/female. And perhaps that insistence is part of the collective unconscious which many suppose affects us all.
An aside: I've been reading Jayne Castle's futuristics in the past few weeks, and I was struck by the "principle of synergy" which runs throughout the series. That principle is a very near reiteration of the necessity of the idea underlying the yin/yang--balance (read HEA) is achieved when opposites are joined. Isn't that, at base, the subject of romance fiction?
"Finally, there've been a number of news stories lately about social science studies showing that having children does NOT make people happier overall--often the reverse, despite the moments of joy being a parent brings."
ReplyDeleteI saw an article just recently in New York Magazine which mentioned some of those findings. It made for interesting reading. Here are a couple of quotes from it:
a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines. Perhaps the most oft-cited datum comes from a 2004 study by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize–winning behavioral economist, who surveyed 909 working Texas women and found that child care ranked sixteenth in pleasurability out of nineteen activities. (Among the endeavors they preferred: preparing food, watching TV, exercising, talking on the phone, napping, shopping, housework.) This result also shows up regularly in relationship research, with children invariably reducing marital satisfaction. The economist Andrew Oswald, who’s compared tens of thousands of Britons with children to those without, is at least inclined to view his data in a more positive light: “The broad message is not that children make you less happy; it’s just that children don’t make you more happy.” That is, he tells me, unless you have more than one. “Then the studies show a more negative impact.” As a rule, most studies show that mothers are less happy than fathers, that single parents are less happy still, that babies and toddlers are the hardest, and that each successive child produces diminishing returns. But some of the studies are grimmer than others. Robin Simon, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, says parents are more depressed than nonparents no matter what their circumstances—whether they’re single or married, whether they have one child or four.
and
psychologists W. Keith Campbell and Jean Twenge [...], in 2003, did a meta-analysis of 97 children-and-marital-satisfaction studies stretching back to the seventies. Not only did they find that couples’ overall marital satisfaction went down if they had kids; they found that every successive generation was more put out by having them than the last—our current one most of all. Even more surprisingly, they found that parents’ dissatisfaction only grew the more money they had, even though they had the purchasing power to buy more child care. “And my hypothesis about why this is, in both cases, is the same,” says Twenge. “They become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.” (from "All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting." by Jennifer Senior, published Jul 4, 2010)
"Laura, I'm amazed by your ability to find and synthesize so many sources in your posts and comments. Vague allusions are all I'm up for."
Thanks, Elizabeth. I do spend rather a lot of time online, which I can do because I'm a stay-at-home-parent. I suppose in order to qualify as a "good" mother I should really be baking cookies, painting a white picket fence etc. ;-)
"That "admirable" includes being a "good" mother, doesn't limit it to that inclusion, I don't think. But even your citations suggest that most people do include that quality in womanhood."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, many people do, and the quotations also show that prevalent cultural beliefs about motherhood, including unattainable ideals of "good" motherhood, cause problems for many women.
"Those women who choose not be mothers surely knew the prevailing attitudes on the matter before the choice was made."
Firstly, there are many women who have fertility problems or who do not become mothers due to other circumstances outwith their control, and who therefore do not make a "choice" not to have children. Secondly, when a woman has made a choice not to have children this does not in any way justify the sort of prejudice and discrimination many such women encounter:
Dr Caroline Gatrell, a director at Lancaster University Management School, who has spent six years interviewing about 1,500 women, said: "Women who explicitly choose career over kids are often vilified at work and face enormously unjust treatment."
In her new book, Embodying Women's Work, Gatrell reports that significant numbers of employers had admitted feeling that female employees who chose not to have children were lacking an "essential humanity". They viewed them "as cold, odd and somehow emotionally deficient in an almost dangerous way that leads to them being excluded from promotions that would place them in charge of others". ("If you're not a mother, you won't get on." Amelia Hill, The Observer, 17 May 2009)
"I also don't think romance fiction will change the idealization of the heroine as mother because some readers choose not to be mothers."
"Romance fiction" is not a sentient being, so there isn't a single entity which makes decisions about these issues. Of course there are general trends and expectations within the genre, but romances are written by individual authors, each with her or his own beliefs and experiences, and authors frequently push at the boundaries of genre conventions. Indeed, studies of the genre (I'm thinking in particular of jay Dixon's analysis of Mills & Boons) have found that there are often significant changes in the representation of heroines and heroes from one decade to the next.
"By the HEA, most heroines of romance fiction either welcome the state or look forward eagerly to it."
That may be so, but quite a few authors have already written romances in which the protagonists choose not to have children, or are unable to conceive children. A few of them are listed here.
"balance (read HEA) is achieved when opposites are joined. Isn't that, at base, the subject of romance fiction?"
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think so. I think the subject of romance novels is the establishment of romantic relationships which are expected to last.
While the individuals involved in those relationships are highly unlikely to be identical (although I suppose that would be possible, e.g. in a speculative fiction romance with protagonists who'd been cloned), there's no requirement that they be opposites. I rather enjoy romances in which the protagonists discover their underlying similarities. Jennifer Crusie's suggested that "the opposite character traits give the romance crackle, but they’re only skin deep. When you reach the bones of the characters, the stuff that keeps them upright and moving through the story, you find that the lovers are actually two of a kind" (The Five Things I’ve Learned About Writing Romance from TV").
I am wondering about something here based on this discussion about "parents" and their happiness in relation to children. Can anyone tell me about a"romance novel" that actually explores the father-child relation in terms of love--and how that kind of love then creates a stronger relationship between mother and father?
ReplyDelete"Can anyone tell me about a"romance novel" that actually explores the father-child relation in terms of love--and how that kind of love then creates a stronger relationship between mother and father?"
ReplyDeleteIf you mean children whose biological father and mother are the hero and heroine, there are the secret baby stories in which the hero doesn't know he's a father. He will often marry the heroine in order to get closer to the child, and that in turn brings him closer to the heroine.
There are also widowed/divorced/separated single-parent fathers whose children bring them into contact with the heroine, who will then become a step-mother to the child/children. In that situation it could be that seeing the strength/development of the father-child bond makes the heroine feel more love for the hero.
There are also single mothers whose children bring them into contact with a hero, who then becomes a step-father to the child/children. In these cases the relationship between the hero and the child could be something that makes the heroine feel well-disposed towards the hero.
There are lots of romances with those scenarios.
One aspect of the depiction of motherhood in the romance genre which I haven't mentioned so far, but which I think can be important in making explicit the importance placed on motherhood in defining "good" womanhood, is the figure of the hero's former wife or mistress, who refused to have children.
ReplyDeleteIf her choice to remain childless is associated with dishonesty, e.g. in the case of an ex-wife who tricks the hero by not mentioning her preference until after the marriage, or where her sole reason for remaining childfree is presented as a selfish one, then the result is to reinforce the idea that an admirable woman will want to become a mother.
I think this figure is far less common in more recent romances, which perhaps suggests that hostility and distrust towards the childless-by-choice is perhaps getting a little less marked in the genre.
"Can anyone tell me about a"romance novel" that actually explores the father-child relation in terms of love--and how that kind of love then creates a stronger relationship between mother and father?"
ReplyDeleteIf Laura doesn't mind, I'd like to make a wee suggestion here - for these stories, while I actually write for the Harlequin Presents/Modern/Sexy line, I'd really recommend the Harlequin Superromance, Harlequin American Romance and Silhouette Special Edition lines.
They're the ones referred to as the Heart and Home lines, and they are so fabulous at those core emotional story lines set around the family as you seek. I believe the Superromance and Special Edition stories are a little longer than the Hq American and so offer a little more in terms of being able to delve into the family dynamics, with more time to draw out those so important inter-character threads there just isn't the word count in for shorter books.
Then of course, there's the Harlequin Romance line which is just so rich in emotion, and again, offers so many great story lines like you are asking.
I wish I could summon up a title, but I can't help you right now. But I know you'll find the kind of books you're looking for there.
Hint if you're not upover: if you're Downunder, the Superromance and Special Edition lines are published by HM&B Australia as Special Moments. Hqn Romance is published as HM&B Sweet.
Good luck!
@L. Vivanco:
ReplyDeleteThat prevailing social attitudes can be prejudicial or discriminatory doesn't necessarily make those attitudes wrong, and if, as I somewhat tentatively posit, this particular attitude about motherhood is unconscious in origin, I'm doubtful it can be changed much. Nor can I see how idealization of motherhood in romance fictions equates to discrimination or prejudice. Rather it's one of those things which simply is, part and parcel of the savior heroine who brings redemptive domestication to the feral hero, qualitatively not much different from the dictum that love conquers all, which is surely one of the fundamentals of romance fiction. The influence of the cult of the Virgin, no doubt--the symbol of ultimate motherhood which brought redemption to the otherwise lost.
Well, I intended--something I thought the mention of yin/yang would accomplish--that balance meant the perfection of the joining of opposite genders (which accords I think, to your "relationship expected to last"). Balance and the circle created by the yin/yang are created by similar oppositions.
dick
Thanks for the suggestions, Trish. I'm in the UK so I rarely see romances from the Harlequin American line, unfortunately. Across here the Superromance and Special Edition lines recently got merged into "Special Moments." There seem to be a lot of changes going on at M&B UK, actually, because in addition to planned changes to the covers and logo, I've seen hints that various lines are going to be redistributed into two new lines called Riva and Cherish. You probably know far more about that than I do, since you write for them. I wonder if the Riva line's going to have a somewhat more chick lit sort of feel, and if that will affect the depiction of heroines vis-a-vis motherhood.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, your mention of the Romance/Sweet line reminded me of just a few of the novels in that line about single fathers. Three in which the heroines help strengthen the relationship between the children and their fathers, which in turn creates a stronger bond between the heroes and heroines are:
Ally Blake's Meant-To-Be Mother, in which the father works from home in order to spend more time with his little boy.
Natasha Oakley's Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed, in which the father has only just got custody of his young daughter and needs help communicating with her because he doesn't know sign language.
Lucy Gordon's One Summer in Italy.
I can think of a few single fathers in the Modern/Presents/Sexy line too. In Kathryn Ross's The Unmarried Father, the father is very competent. In Susan Napier's A Passionate Proposition the child's a teenager who's appeared rather unexpectedly but has previously had little or no contact with her father.
"That prevailing social attitudes can be prejudicial or discriminatory doesn't necessarily make those attitudes wrong"
Dick, I'm baffled. How can attitudes which are prejudiced and discriminatory not be wrong?
"if, as I somewhat tentatively posit, this particular attitude about motherhood is unconscious in origin, I'm doubtful it can be changed much"
I'm more hopeful about society's ability to change, given how many changes there have already been in recent decades. For example, it wasn't really that long ago that there was a huge stigma attached to illegitimacy and unmarried mothers, but nowadays the situation is very different.
SuperRomance has a "miniseries" called "Single Father" (I think you could search that term at the eHarlequin site to see a list). The one I've read is His Secret Past by Ellen Hartman--I wouldn't say the (teenage) son brought the couple together, exactly, but the father/son relationship is important. I can think of some historical examples, but the existence of the child is, in some cases, a spoiler.
ReplyDeleteDick, I think I agree, at least partly, that the epilogue baby is part of the taming/domestication of the hero--all those rakes who become doting fathers (this is often really evident when previous couples are shown in later books of a historical series). And I think that reflects a fantasy or ideal that many women have, of a father more directly involved in raising children: something that IS happening--so I think this reflects a social change, not a long-standing social ideal. These fathers are often shown as primarily indulgent playmates, not disciplinarians and providers--they seem to me like 2000s dads, not 1950s dads, to put it superficially.
It's not that I NEVER want to see this ending--I am, after all, happily married with children. It's just that I would like to see romances reflect the broader array of choices people make today about marriage, childbearing, and childrearing, and sometimes it feels like they are enforcing a PARTICULAR ideal of marriage and mother/parenthood, because that idea is represented so prevalently. I do NOT think romantic love must include these things (though I agree it's not surprising that cultural images of it often do).
@L.Vivanco: Well, for example, I'm "prejudiced" against those who break vows, and would most likely discriminate against those who break them. I am also prejudiced about advertisements that are actually "cons," and I am definitely discriminatory in that regard. Are these prejudices wrong? Somehow, the word "prejudice" has taken on a pejorative sense that has little validity. Holding to moral and ethical beliefs and prejudice often go hand and in hand, in my thinking.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the prevailing idea that womanhood presupposes motherhood does create prejudice, but if indeed family is the foundation of society--as many of the sociologists who decry the prejudice against women who choose not to become mothers would probably agree--the prejudice is not necessarily wrong, any more than being prejudicial and discriminatory about dishonesty is surely not wrong.
At times of course, prejudice, even about dishonesty, can lead one into erroneous discrimination, as may also happen, for example, when women who cannot conceive are lumped in with those who choose not to.
dick
@Elizabeth: Or perhaps it's the mythic power of fertility in any form that romance, because it must include a relationship, usually between a male and a female, draws on as unconsciously as society seems to hold that women should be mothers if they can be.
ReplyDeleteFertility, like motherhood, is a guarantee of the future, and ideas about it echo throughout our culture, from religion to economics. In the vast majority of cases, fertility requires contributions from two different sources. The embodiment of fertility is the child born from the union of the those two forces.
If, as Krentz and her associates contend in "Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women," romance fiction has mythic overtones, this may be one of the most powerful.