Dr Sophie Brock on Intensive Mothering Ideology and the Perfect Mother Myth
Today I chat with my friend Dr Sophie Brock whose work I admire endlessly. We chat about: The undermining of motherhood as an integral part of our economy - The superficial narrative around 'self-care' and how societal factors impact this - The perfect mother myth - how we can make sense of it, and push back - Idealised mothering, Intensive mothering and the expectations on us to perform How intensive mothering & the perfect mother myth feeds into guilt and shame - 'Mum guilt' and why there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for fathers and secondary caregivers During this episode Dr. Sophie speaks about some reflective exercises we can do to help us to make sense of our Idealised Mother. You can download a worksheet here.
About our guest: Dr Sophie Brock is a Motherhood Studies Sociologist and Mother living in Sydney, Australia. She provides analysis of Motherhood in our culture, exploring the ways individual experiences of Mothers are shaped by broader social constructs. Sophie supports professionals, business owners and creatives in revolutionising what Motherhood means in our society, and how individual Mothers are supported and understood. Sophie’s offerings include self-study courses for Mothers and practitioners, her podcast
The Good Enough Mother, and her Motherhood Studies Practitioner Certification program. To connect further - https://drsophiebrock.com/ @drsophiebrock on Instagram and Facebook info@drsophiebrock.com. Follow me on Instagram: @mamamatters.au For more about me and what I do, check out my website: www.mamamatters.com.au Make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any other Mama Chatters goodness coming up - PLUS for the month of June, anyone who leaves a rating and review on my podcast will receive a little thank you pack in the mail.. because I appreciate you a lot!
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xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:09
Hello love and welcome to the Manage chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shoulds and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place, through honest conversations with experts and each other, we will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. I'm Fiona, a social worker by trade. Now supporting families with sleep and parenting through my business mama matters. I'm passionate about parenting psychology, biologically normal infants sleep and infant mental health and attachment. I'm also a parent and I am on a mission to normalise the shitshow that can be parenthood. I know that right now you might be trapped under a sleeping baby. Or maybe you've got your headphones in to soften the blue of the afternoon witching hour, wherever and whoever you are. I want you to know that you belong here. Now let's have a chat Hello, my love's I am back with another app another interview with an another amazing lady, Dr. Sophy Brock is coming on today to chat with us. And I know that most of you might know Dr. Sophie and her work around the perfect mother myth and intensive mothering ideology. I for one adore Dr. Sophy and her work. And I felt really honoured to have her on the podcast. Because I've admired her for such a long time. I have done some studies with her, I follow everything she does. I love her podcast, the good enough mother podcast. And yeah, this was just such a great chat. And I hope that you guys get a lot out of it. During the chat with Sophie, today, she talks about some reflective exercises that she often does with people who she works with. So I have created a little handout for you guys, if you do want to have a go at doing some of these exercises, to break down the perfect mother math to be able to start pushing back against it, you can just go over to the show notes, click on the link in my show notes. And that will take you to a little download so that you can start doing the work. So enjoy, please leave a rating review. If you feel fancy, it has been incredible to see what the ratings and reviews have done for my visibility on podcasts. And I'm so excited that it's reaching so many people. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you and enjoy the show. Hello, Sophie and welcome to my very, very first interview for my new podcast. I'm very honoured to have you here. So think
Dr Sophie Brock 02:43
thank you, thank you for having me. I'm honoured to be here and to be the first guest on what I know will be an incredible podcast. So thank you so much for the invitation. Oh, stop
Fiona Weaver 02:52
it. We were just talking about when we first connected and it would have been back around three years ago, we worked out when both of us were starting on our businesses. These
Dr Sophie Brock 03:05
days, yes. And reflecting on where our children were at that time, too, right, and the growth of us in our businesses and also the growth of our families and what that can look like and how they coincide and diverge. And yeah, it's a journey.
Fiona Weaver 03:20
We had a chat for my mama matters Academy a few years ago, and we were talking about our three year olds. And I don't know where I got that wrong, because your daughter's only four now. But I must have assumed I'm not sure. But we were Yeah, reflecting on our stories that we have about our children that we share along the way and what that might, how that might present if we were to put it all together.
Dr Sophie Brock 03:44
Yeah, that's right. It's process. I mean, this is also part of doing podcasts and and even this platform of interviewing guests and tell me about yourself, tell me about your family, tell me about your life. And we necessarily have to construct narratives in some way about this is who I am. This is how I'm presenting myself, myself and myself maybe to the world, and the different parts of us that exist. So yeah, it's really interesting to reflect on and that's part of what we're talking about, isn't it around how we're presenting ourselves to the world? And, and who's watching and who's listening and how that could shape the way we show up to?
Fiona Weaver 04:18
Yes, and how that narrative changes and evolves along the way as it should. But I think sometimes we can fall into the trap of getting stuck in one narrative that we feel is aligned with our values. And then we can and we will speak to this but then that can become a little bit rigid. Like we can't change our mind. We can't grow from that because that's our narrative.
Dr Sophie Brock 04:42
Yeah, the story becomes stifling rather than frame. It's like actually, this is starting to feel like a constraint rather than something that I'm using to expand my experience. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that the question even of what's your parenting style, that almost traps that because you're basically been asked which box are you going to pop yourself with him? And then look, it can be useful in that. And this is part of I guess what we'll unpack a little bit. But it can be useful in that we can find other people who share similar values by asking those types of questions or by speaking back to those sorts of questions. Find people who are who feel aligned with some values that we share around parenting as a practice. But how relationships don't fit neatly within boxes, you know, human beings don't fit neatly within boxes. And so whenever we've been asked to do that, there's going to also be some sense of stickiness or discomfort. And we will inevitably, in some way, fall outside of that box at some point of what the gentle parent is supposed to be. And then what does that mean, for how we see ourselves and our sense of identity?
Fiona Weaver 05:52
So we'll get straight into it. I want to hear from you, who you are and what you do, because I'm just assuming that everybody knows you as well as I do, and they might not. So would you like to introduce yourself and how you came to do this work?
Dr Sophie Brock 06:05
Yeah, sure. So this, as listeners will hear, right, this is a practice that I'm engaging in of deciding which parts of myself to share with you, and what parts of my journey to share and how I'm going to piece together a narrative that will be connected and resonate with those who are listening. So a bit of an exercise in that other whole process, we've just kind of named there. But I'm Sophie, I have a daughter who is for almost five, I'm a single mum, and my journey into the space of doing research and theorise and thinking and teaching on motherhood came about before I became a mother. So I studied at the University of Sydney, I did my bachelor's degree than an honours. And then I did my PhD in sociology. And I focused on examining the experiences of mothers, specifically mothers of children with additional needs or disabilities. And so I entered into the realm of research and studying motherhood studies, before I became a mother. And that meant that I had a really useful and interesting and somewhat unique perspective, because a lot of the scholars and people that I was connected with were already mothers themselves, and then came to this work. And so that's kind of my entryway is actually from a kind of theoretical standpoint. And then I became a mother, right when my PhD was awarded, actually, I was six months pregnant when I submitted my dissertation. And then I received notice of its award a few days before my daughter was born. So that happened at the same time as the breakdown of my marriage. And so I became a single mother really unexpectedly, shortly after my daughter was born. And then I moved through this journey of as we do, in our own experiences of my true essence of who am I in the world? Now? What parts of me? Am I amplifying? Or drawing on from my pre mother self? And what parts of myself am I going to grow into? Am I dreaming up for the future of me and my daughter? And what am I? What lights me up in the world? You know, what am I passionate about? What exists beyond this current experience of this intense relationship between my daughter and I, and what would I like to contribute to the world in a way that's fulfilling for me too. And that was going back to my studies and saying, actually, there's a whole realm of research and work here in motherhood studies, which is really much analysed, both within the academy within research, but he's basically not even known about publicly and more broadly. And so I created my my business based off permission to take some of this research and information from the academy, from discussions within conferences and say, Actually, this is more widely applicable when I think this can make a big difference to the experiences of mothers more broadly, to find a way to do that. And part of that journey has been in focusing specifically on training people who work with mothers, practitioners who work with mothers. So that's kind of a bit of a narrative of where I have been in order to get to this place of talking about this topic here with you today, Fiona.
Fiona Weaver 09:20
Yeah. And I would really like to know why you think that wasn't more widely known that you know, all of that research that you had in motherhood. Why was that not spoken about or known about in mothers or with mothers?
Dr Sophie Brock 09:36
Yeah, because a lot of different reasons and saying qualifying this weird. There isn't a right answer to this. So this is my perspective, based off my experience, other people may answer it differently. But my understanding has been is that mothers and motherhood and mothering is a devalued part of our social Old World. So on the one hand, we have this idea that in order to be a fulfilled and complete woman, you become a mother, you have children, and then you become a mother and you're asked to be selfless, less of the self to sacrifice to put everyone else before you. And we, if we want to talk about it or or bring out the nature of our experiences is not fitting within a mould of what the perfect mother is, which I know we'll get into, then we individualise that if there's something there must be something wrong with me, or maybe I'm just not coping well enough for, maybe I just didn't have the right expectations before motherhood, maybe it's my fault. And so I think the broader cultural devaluing of what mothers do, and what caring work means. And the ways that mothers are often kind of pushed to the margins in conversations around what it means to be a valuable contributor to our social world, that that is married, in some ways within institutional spaces. And so a lot of the time of focus and research on Mothers has been, because of how we're interested in how they impact other people. So I'll go in and I'll study this cohort of mothers who have children with disabilities. This is part of what motivated my research, I'll study these women's experiences, because they shape their children's experiences, or because that impacts how women show up in the workplace. And so instead of looking at mothers experiences, because of their utility, and how they impact others, let's turn the lens of focus back on the mother and centre her in her experience and say, Well, we're also interested in how the mother experiences her transition to motherhood, because she is valuable in and of herself. Not just because she saw serves a bigger purpose in her role as a mother. And so the marginalising of motherhood studies, within institutional spaces is one conversation. But I think that there's a barrier between where all of those conversations are happening and the broader kind of world and social world and environment. And so that's part of the barrier that I've been trying to break down. And it remains for lots of different reasons that we could probably spend the podcast talking about, but that ultimately, ultimately come back to I believe, a devaluation and a lack of recognition around the importance of mothers experiences.
Fiona Weaver 12:27
And I think when you speak to that, doing it for your children, that is such a big narrative and mainstream as well, isn't it, look after yourself, for your children, go go and do some self care for your children. So you can be the best mother to your children. Why not just for you,
Dr Sophie Brock 12:45
that's part of the narrative, which is actually sometimes useful for us to be able to pick up as mothers that we need to look after ourselves in order to look after our children as an entryway into this conversation, because we've been socialised into the perfect mother myth, which I will talk more about. And that sets us up to know that our job is to care for our children. And doing so means always putting ourselves last. So the first way to sort of break that is to say, actually, no, caring for your children means having care for you as well. You know, we want to hold the baby, we need to hold the mother this idea. And then we can go the next level of that, once we've moved through the discomfort and the guilt, right, that arises when we give to the self in some way. The next level of that can be recognition that actually you know what I'm important. In and of myself, Yes, I'm important because I, I look after my children, and I'm their primary carer, and I'm the one who is needing to hold this family together. But also, I'm valuable in and of myself. And giving to me is not something that I need to feel guilty for. Because it not only gives to my children, but I deserve this true and what am I modelling for my children in being able to claim that space and that care for myself? That it's a complex conversation because it's often as we all are probably well aware and listen to this, it is not as easy as saying, Okay, I'll just put myself first no problems at all. Don't book that massage for myself and my kids will just wait in the waiting room very happily while I go in there and self care. I think we really need a total revolutionising in, in this whole conversation around what it means to look after the self as a mother in the first place to start is to understand the context that were mothering within.
Fiona Weaver 14:32
Yes, it's a little bit superficial, isn't it to just say just do some self care, you know, you got to put yourself first because if the if the social constructs aren't in place, or the protective factors aren't in place for them to be able to do that, then it doesn't really mean anything. It's very
Dr Sophie Brock 14:46
it adds more pressure. Yeah. Yeah, something that I mean, someone needs to care for children. Someone needs to ensure that their house is able to function that we have clean clothes to wear, I mean all all the time. The problem is is that care labour is essential labour, but it's invisible labour. You know, it is work that is done because it has to get done, someone has to do it. And it's only when it's not done that things start to fall apart. And because of our role within our families and our love of our children and a bunch of other factors as well, were the ones that continue to do it. Interestingly, though, there is research to look at actually striking of sorts of saying, but once our children reach a certain age, physically leaving for periods of time on pet, Dr. Petra Baskins has done this research. And she turns this, this concept of the revolving mother in saying that, if you periodically plan for time away from your family, you know, at least a day in a night, that can be a way to actually have some of the recognition of the work that you do within the household be seen, because it becomes visible when you leave the space physically. But that's that's probably a different conversation. But it's interesting to ponder on, isn't it?
Fiona Weaver 16:00
No, I love it. Because I learned that from Petra in your certification, and it was I talk about it with my clients all the time, it's actually, you know, you can go out for a couple of hours, but that doesn't actually really show much apart from the physical labour of, you know, keeping the child safe, or, you know, taking the child out, whatever. But to actually leave for a day and a night, even better, couple of days, couple of nights, then things start to catch up. And only then you can see what has to be done, you know, in advance to make things tick through.
Dr Sophie Brock 16:33
Yeah, and being mindful of you know, if any listeners would have experimented with this also reflecting on how much preparation or not you do prior to leaving. But again, recognising this is complex, right? You know, I mean, my personal circumstances have been a situation where I haven't had capacity to do that to leave my daughter, I've not been away from her, because of a whole bunch of reasons care related. Also, if you're exclusively breastfeeding, it makes it quite difficult and challenging to do. And so recognising that we need to employ and draw on different strategies in our mothering, that allow us to have some sense of self giving of like giving to the self in order to attend to the self and to continue serving others. We need to find ways to be able to cultivate strategies that are going to work for us in our season of mothering and in the stage of development of our children and where our family currently is that so again, it's kind of personalising this self care rhetoric, whilst placing it within a broader context to of what's what's going on socially.
Fiona Weaver 17:38
Yeah, and I mean, self care for a mother of a newborn, or for a mother of a young toddler who is breastfeeding or whatever that might look like, will always look very different to the mother of a five year old, or six or seven year old and, you know, continues to evolve. But also recognising that mothers might not want to leave their children. And that's okay, too. You don't have to have you know, that time away from your children in order to be able to care for yourself. You can think about ways the way you can meet your, you know, desire for creativity, for mental space, whatever that might look like, alongside parenting your children, maybe it's putting the air pods in, or, you know, having a little nice corner of the house that feels nice to visit, you know, getting creative about how you can meet those needs, alongside parenting.
Dr Sophie Brock 18:26
Yeah, and I think this is part of what I'm trying to do is to break the dichotomy, dichotomies, right, of saying that, we feel we need to fill up our own cups in order to fill up the cups of our children and others, like yes, but also, we're not just cup fillers, you know, we're not just here to be serving and filling up everyone else's cups. And at the same time, saying, it's okay to be taking that space out from our children if we need or desire it. And also, timeout for us doesn't necessarily mean time separate from our children. And I know there can be a level of frustration, particularly when we have babies and people offering to help and wanting to come and take the baby and hold the baby and mind the child. And it's like, well, actually, you know what, I would find it really helpful for you to be able to do anything other than that need to be able to come in and pick my other child up from school or make a meal to help with the housework or help come to an appointment with me or whatever it may look like so, but it's really hard. It's really hard for us to navigate what this can look like for us without exploring for ourselves what it is that we're needing, and not receiving right now. Um, so bringing bringing back that self connection and going, where am I currently feeling and where am I currently at? What am I currently being called into exploring for myself? And then what could that look like during this season or stage of my child's life?
Fiona Weaver 19:47
So I think we can't go any further without breaking down the perfect mother myth, which is kind of what you have become known for. What is the perfect mother myth and how is that impacting mothers today?
Dr Sophie Brock 19:57
Yeah, sure. So the perfect man myth is really a way of pointing to the thing that exists in our culture around what it means to be the perfect mum, the idealised mum. So, as human beings as been existing within part of a culture, this is applicable beyond motherhood, right? We all exist in social roles in particular ways. So, what does it mean to be a good daughter? What does it mean to be a good wife? What does it mean to be a good friend? What does it mean to be a good employee? What does it mean to be a good entrepreneur, I mean, there are all sorts of social roles that are ascribed to different social roles that we fulfil. And there's nothing wrong with that. This is part of how we come to relate and know ourselves within the social world and build connection with others. So it's not saying that it's anything necessarily wrong with that, but where it can become problematic, which it does in motherhood is when the scripts of what is attached to that role. So the shoulds of what's a good mother are a impossible for any one mother to meet. And be can have really toxic consequences when we do try and meet them. And so how this plays out for us as mothers is that as listeners to reflect on this question, of if you had to write out a sentence of a perfect mother is, or a perfect mother should feel, or a perfect mother never feels, or a perfect mother looks like. There's all different kinds of prompts that we can use to begin these types of reflections. And when we actually do this as a journaling exercise and start writing out our responses to this, it can be quite surprising how much falls out of it. So a perfect mother, the idealised mother, she wanted children. Right. So children, they were intentional choice for her. She had children at the right stage. So she wasn't a that brilliant term of the geriatric mother, right? So she wasn't, she wasn't too old. Right? But she wasn't the teenager responsible mother. She wasn't too young. Right. So she became a mother in a really specific and particular time period. She became a mother when partnered, so she's not a solo mom, by circumstance or by choice. She is likely married, right? But idealised mother on that pedestal in our society is also heterosexual. Right? So she has sexual orientations, a particular way. She's generally white and middle class, she doesn't struggle socioeconomically. Or, as a family struggled to cover their financial costs and needs, right. So there's a sense of affluence that's connected with what the idealised mother is. She had an easeful journey to motherhood, right? So she became pregnant quickly and easily. In other words, she doesn't struggle with infertility, or going through journeys of IVF or whatever that could look like for her, what's her path to motherhood, that's an idealised way and then enter motherhood. We I mean, we could talk about pregnancy to the idealised pregnancy and the glowing pregnant mother and the bump where you haven't, you haven't put on weight anywhere else. You've just got this big bump in front of I mean, and then you have this baby and you have the perfect birth. And then you fall in love with this baby. It was love at first sight and your maternal instincts kick in, and it comes naturally to you and breastfeeding comes easily. And you are the most blissed out that you've ever been and you have a perfect postpartum. Your partner is incredibly supportive and a wonderful father, you have a brilliant support network and community around you. And then as you go through the stages of motherhood, you never feel angry, you never feel frustrated. You never feel resentful, regretful angry, agitated, apathetic, bored, could go on and on, right, you never feel any of that stuff. Because the perfect mother, it comes easily to her. It comes naturally to her. She enjoys every minute. She appreciates every minute. She is composed, contented, fulfilled. She not only devotes her everything to her motherhood, but she's also a amuseum air quotes for those who are listening. She's a contributor financially to her family. So she doesn't rely on anybody else for an income. So in other words, she's not only the perfect mother. She's also the perfect career woman. She's the perfect worker. She also contributes to her community, right she volunteers she she goes into the school as involved in the school community. She she's there for others she holds the mental list of everybody else's needs. She also soft cares excellently because she knows that caring for yourself, is how we care for others. She is fit. She works out. She probably goes to the gym or does Pilates. She looks a particular way right? She cooks from scratch. She look we could spend the whole hour talking about this Fiona Hopefully we'll get a picture here. But within our society and culture there is on a pedestal, a particular idealised version of what a mother means. And this idealised version can morph and change. So I think about it a little bit like a, like a coat or a suit that we put on. And it can morph to constrain you, regardless of where you are. So in other words, who is the good idealised, single mother. So if you fall outside of that perfect mother myth, and you're a single mother, you don't fit within it? Okay? Well, he's the single mother that we put on a pedestal has been the idealised and celebrated one. And so it can morph. So in other words, it captures all of us in some way, there will be a way that all of us will fall outside of this because she is a myth. At the perfect mother myth is human proof. There's no human who can actually feel just happy and contented and patient and loving every minute all of the time. But it can be very insidious, because a process of socialisation and this speaks to kind of the broader relationship between us as individuals in our social world that I initially spoke to you, from when we're little children ourselves. We go through socialisation. It's an important part of our development, right? But part of the socialisation is into the social rules of that society of what's polite, what's kind, what isn't what's acceptable, what's normal, what's not. And the perfect mother myth weaves its way throughout that process of socialisation. And it starts at the good girl concepts of what it means to be a good little girl. And it morphs and moves its way throughout our lives as teenagers and men as young adults, and then it really intensifies. Like I think about the intensity dolls right up when we become mothers. So all of these these pressures in the perfect mother myth that that can play out for us. The scene has been set for it, likely decades ago. It's not something we just pick up when we become mothers. And so the most damaging potentially part of this is that we don't see it. It's not named, it's not spoken about. I mean, this conversation, hopefully is, is trying to speak to that and name it and talk about it. And that's a big motivation I have in doing this work, is to just talk about it as being in existence. And there's a body of really strong literature on this and research supporting this and the existence of these ideals and the way that they're perpetuated in advertising and media, within institutions. So you know, the healthcare system schooling system, looking at all of the different systems we interact with, this idealised version of motherhood is embedded within them. And so what it sets us up to do is whenever we feel like we don't meet the markers of idealised motherhood in some way, what comes in is guilt, shame, and I'm not good enough. And that's where a lot of mom guilt comes from. So I am not enough in some way, because I can't live up to her I'm failing in some way to live up to these ideals that have been set and that I've internalised and and then we grappled with that as individual mothers and think it's our fault.
Fiona Weaver 28:23
Yeah, we feel individual responsibility for a collective pressure, don't we? So can you speak to why why isn't the dad guilt or the perfect dad myth? And perhaps there is, but it's not. It's not the same? Well, yeah.
Dr Sophie Brock 28:41
So. So if we see guilt, maternal guilt, mum guilt as a function of the social system of motherhood. I know that's a mouthful. So let me break it down the perfect mother myth in the way that I've just described, the only way that that is upheld, and continues to exist, is because one exists within institutions. So some of them I mentioned in terms of, you know, the places we interact with daily. And institutions, I'd also count as the family, so family systems and structures. So one because it exists in institutions, true because we self police ourselves, usually through mom killed, so we shoot ourselves and we beat ourselves with the stick of these ideals. And so, if we see Mum guilt as a function of this broader social system of motherhood, this is how it operates. It means that it's not experienced by dads because then they're not experiencing the social system in the same way that in a simple way to break it down right out what is what is good mothering mean, and what does good fathering mean? When we think about mothering, we think of it as a practice and actus. An act a performance of care, fathering often refers to biology like I fathered the child that I've provided my DNA for the child. And so there are ideal idealizations. And there are pedestals that are set up around what it means to be a good father. There are and they are constraining to men and detrimental and have lots of implications. But they look really different to the ones that are set up for mothers. And in terms of the standard, or the bar, if you like, of which we're asked to meet in order to be labelled as a good mum, or a good dad, the bar for the good dad is much lower than what the bar is for mothers. So certainly, and, and also, I know, we're talking about this in a really, you know, gendered way, I think this can play out for primary caregivers, on a on a broader level, right. And it's applicable to unpaid care work more broadly in the way that that is devalued. But oftentimes, you know, speaking in a broad way, fathers and dads will not experience dad guilt in the same way that mothers do, because they're not subject to the same rules that mothers are subjected to.
