There was a welcome number of baby bumps and wee ones in the audience for the WORD Christchurch session on Motherhood with Kiwi blogger and The Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes - who has recently launched her second book on parenting - Is It Bedtime Yet? - and British superstar poet Hollie McNish, known for her poetry and writings on the lesser talked about aspects of pregnancy, birth and parenting, collated in Nobody Told Me.
When Emily wasn't sure whether to sit or stand to start off the session with a reading from her book, moderator Catherine Robertson jokingly suggested she just pretend that the audience are all in bed and that Emily is reading to us at our bedside. By the size of the sold-out audience, it's evident even adults love being read to.
In the anthology Is It Bedtime Yet? Emily has edited together different perspectives of parenthood, be they single parenting, parenting from a Māori perspective, parenting a child with a disability or learning needs, older mothers, queer parents conceiving, stay-at-home dads and more. The variety of experiences shows that there are so many versions of normal parenting. Emily has said there is a danger in a single story or narrative of parenting so by sharing multiple variations of parenting it fosters empathy and the reassurance that actually, we're doing it okay. Here, mothers are both equally ordinary and extraordinary.
This is most certainly not an advice book - just personal situations, reflections or a snippet in time on a parenting continuum. You can dip into the book anywhere - there are 50 short vignettes with half of them written by Emily herself and interspersed throughout the book. The stories range from poignant to the comedic. In interviews for this book, Emily has said: "We are all so different in the way we parent but that can be a thing that unites us." She hopes these stories "make us change just a little bit in our day-to-day interaction with each other as parents - or to parents."
The personal stories shared in Is It Bedtime Yet? are from both never before published writers as well as established authors, some of whom also regularly write for the The Spinoff Parents website. Humorous highlights from the book include musings on "competi-parents" - even those unwittingly being competitive without meaning to; the myth of the magical creature known as 'the relaxed mother'; the anti-glitter brigade and the realisation that we're not just mothers, we're sudden experts in palaeontology to our dinosaur mad kids. The confessions chapter was especially funny! And after reading one dad's vasectomy story, I will never see The Wiggles the same again!
There are plenty of WTF? moments in parenting shared in the book. And there's no holding back on the use of the F word but unfortunately for the parents contributing, there's not a lot of the Zzzzz word (which may have something to do with the former?) Ironically it was Emily's lack of sleep after having babies that meant she had plenty of time (albiet in the wee hours) to write and we are benefiting from that with her books like Rants in the Dark: From one tired mama to another. "I've always been someone who writes to work out my feelings." She hopes her books are like "a friend in the dark" as they offer realistic views of parenting versus idealistic notions. Judging by the 15,000+ emails she says she got right after her initial sleep-deprived parenting post ("I am grateful, now f*** off!") went viral in 2015, there's a few friends out there in the dark indeed. One mother in the audience said perhaps if she had been given books like Emily's when she had her babies - instead of just Gina Ford parenting books - then she might have been a lot better off.
There's one chapter which is just a literal recording of what Emily says to her wee son one day, starting from 5:00am. We don't get to hear the child's replies but the one-sided conversation of "put your shoes on" is oh so familiar. I read this transcription to my young son and he thought it was hilarious and spot-on, just change a few words and it could be any parent repetitively saying the same basic instructions to their kid and then amplifying their pleas with hollow threats.
There's a few piss-takes in the book too and Emily read to the audience her humorous chapter on parenting styles. Move over 'helicopter parenting' and make way for the 'cucumber' style of parenting which consists of just giving your kid the only food they'll happily eat. In this case, cucumber! Someone needs to invent a word for laughter crying because there was a lot of it coming from both the audience and guest speakers. In fact, before doing her reading, poet Hollie McNish shared her bemusement at Emily’s cucumber parenting description since she herself has pictures of her own child sharing a pram with a whole cucumber. (My first child too was so obsessed with cucumber to the point that he can be seen wielding one in the birth photos of his sibling). But Emily has ultimately decided on the style of parenting she got from growing up with the Cub Scout motto of ‘We will do our best’ – not 'do THE best' she clarifies – just YOUR best! And as Emily inscribed in her book at the author signing afterwards, "Hang in there!" - perhaps that's a parenting style too?
HOLLIE McNISH
Right on the back of National Poetry Day last week, we were privileged to have British poet Hollie McNish appearing at the festival at several sessions, including this one. Hollie writes of the shared unspoken experiences of pregnancy and motherhood and read a poem from her book on these themes, Nobody Told Me. The poem, Megatron, was inspired by her first post-birth date-night where her then partner took her to see the movie Transformers and after they had argued about who was the best Transformer, she realised she had become the ultimate transformer herself after giving birth - rib cages moving, hips widening, breasts becoming milk machines. Hollie only read one poem in this session and I would have loved to have heard more. Hollie became well-known for her poem about the stigma of breastfeeding in public, entitled Embarrassed, which got quite a reaction when it was published – both positive thanks as well as hate mail. Hollie wondered where this hate came from in the world – literally - so she checked the analytics on her website and saw a lot of abuse came from the United States – especially places like Texas where in fact, she discovered, there is a secret breastfeeding club of mothers too embarrassed to breastfeed in public or face religious vilification.
Watch the well-directed video for Hollie's poem Embarrassed:
Hollie has noticed, while touring, that it is easier to be a parent in Europe in places like Sweden or France and that a lot of urban design isn’t made with parenting in mind (eg. don’t put sweets at the checkout counter!) Hollie was jealous that in France mothers get a year's worth of free physiotherapy to help them regain their pelvic floor strength after birth. Hollie joked that she was doing her pelvic Kegel exercises "right now" in her chair on stage. Hollie and Emily are very open about 'taboo' subjects and they touched on things we don't talk enough about like post-birth prolapse, sex after birth or even resorting to using our children's nappies for ourselves in dire moments. It was perhaps apt that I accidentally pulled out my ticket for the WORD 'Mortification' show instead of my 'Motherhood' ticket when I went to enter the session. Sometimes society makes us feels as if these two go hand in hand but Hollie's point is, they absolutely shouldn't! Hollie wondered if people found pregnant women or breastfeeding confronting, in part, because people - like her grandparents - "could finally see I had sex.” In her grandmother's day she said women weren't allowed to talk about their vaginas or bleeding and sometimes didn't even know where they had given birth from.
Regarding the disdain directed at mothers, likewise, Emily said that after giving birth she suddenly felt unwelcome in places she used to go, like cafes. Emily suggested we need to do away with the ‘half-human’ view of babies – and that we should view children as active members of society instead of waiting until they are fully-formed or until they become "tax-paying units" to consider them of equal worth in society. She also questioned the double-standard that happens when a guy goes out-and-about with a baby and onlookers are full of praise for what a wonderful dad he is whereas a mother with children is looked at in worry for when her kids might be an annoying disturbance. However, Is it Bedtime Yet? honours dads as well with their perspectives and author Brannavan Gnanalingam joined the session to read his chapter about dads not just being seen as 'the babysitter.'
Q & A
In answer to the moderator's question to the authors: "If you can change one thing … " Emily joked/not joked: “Smash the patriarchy and destroy capitalism” – there was plenty of applause at this rally cry (although my spellchecker changed 'applause' to 'applesauce,' appropriate for parents perhaps). Brannavan wished there was more information given to parents from the start and Hollie specified “more government money into care and support for parents.” Lucky for New Zealand, they concurred, that we have a current government sympathetic to parents. (In fact, at the book launch for Is it Bedtime Yet? in Auckland, Emily said it was heartening to see a certain Prime Minister had popped in with her new baby).
A question from the audience followed on from this theme: "How do we get the government to change?" or as rephrased: "How am I going to go back to work to afford avocados?" For some, becoming a mother immediately politicises them and they become an instant activist wanting to fight for change but as their children grow, their priorities for what they want to fight for the most also changes – eg. do you give stretched energies to supporting midwives or supporting teachers? How do we get traction when needs change as our children grow? Emily said that the only way we can make change is to make heaps of noise! "Protest, hikoi, engage in conscious-raising – talk to people around you about what’s important to you" – like publicly praising why teachers need a raise or the importance of midwives (who saved her life) and just generally "combat bullshit." Emily closed the session impassioned: “We need to be noisy and use our voice!” At this, there was enough applause from the audience to wake a baby!
Special thanks to the the Christchurch Art Gallery for offering free 'babysitting' (aka a kid's art workshop) - while parents were attending this Motherhood session at WORD. More of this kind of thoughtfulness for parents in society is needed! Check out the art gallery's monthly Parent & Baby tours (Prams welcome).
MORE:
- Read Emily Writes blog
- Rants in the Dark - the play - is being performed at the end of September, Circa Theatre, Wellington
- Read Moata's interview with Emily about her first book
- Hollie McNish's webpage
- Follow @holliepoetry on Twitter
- One of the contributors to the Is It Bedtime Yet? anthology, former Green MP Holly Walker, has written a book The Whole Intimate Mess Motherhood, Politics and Women's Writings and Walker has also interviewed Hollie McNish for the Spinoff - worth a read here!
- More like this: If you like Emily and Hollie's writings, one of the latest books of a similar genre to arrive into our library collection that I can recommend is: And Now We have Everything: On motherhood before I was ready by Meaghan O'Connell. Also check-out my recommended reads booklist of entertaining true stories on parenting and motherhood.
Find works in our collection by:
Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018
Add a comment to: Motherhood – Emily Writes & Hollie McNish: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018