As well as being the author of What Mothers Do, Naomi is a qualified existential counsellor and psychotherapist. She specialises in seeing parents of young children. She has been a breastfeeding counsellor for more than twenty years, and for over twelve years she has run a weekly discussion group, Mothers Talking, which meets at the Active Birth Centre in London. Born in London in 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, she has three children now aged thirty-one, twenty-five and twenty-one, and lives in North London.
What did you do before having children? After leaving university, I first went into publishing for four years. Next I worked in two psychiatric hospitals, where I started weekly discussion groups for patients. I was asked to close the first group after a few weeks, because, said my boss, discussion was having ‘a subversive effect’ on the patients. I was startled at the power of a simple discussion. I started another discussion group in a locked ward of geriatric women at another hospital. Here I was supported by my boss, but had to stop after a few months because I was expecting our first child.
Tell us about Mothers Talking: Some years later, I met Janet Balaskas, and became the breastfeeding counsellor for her Birth Centre, as it then was. In 1990, Janet asked if I would hold open mornings at the Active Birth Centre where mothers could come to talk. I said I’d love to. That was how Mothers Talking started.
Mothers Talking is a weekly discussion group for mothers to sit down and take stock.
There is pressure on mothers today to minimise mothering and quickly return to work. Also, mothering itself can seem competitive and exhausting. On one level, it can look like a race to hurry the child over a long succession of hurdles. However, in a calm setting, each mother can tell her story and explore, not just how many hours her baby sleeps at night, but what her deepest values are. Then the competitive race transforms into her unique personal path. I also think it important for mothers not to deluge one another with advice – unless they specifically ask for it. I usually invite each mother to say how her week has been, and mothers pick up points from one another’s stories as they reply.
As I listen, I forget that I am a grandmother now, and grow excited by the momentous questions that mothers have to confront. Asking the questions, in itself, affirms the value of being a mother.
Why did you decide to write What Mothers Do? The idea of writing ‘something about mothering’ had been with me for a long while. Nothing in print seemed to reflect my own experience.
I would notice how mothers were often denigrated as mothers, but admired for what they could do in addition to mothering. For example, a few years ago, the Government set up an initiative called ‘Listening to Women’, and published the results in Voices (1999). There are two photos of mothers at home with their babies. Both photos show the mother at her computer.
I used to notice mothers in the street, pushing their children in their pushchairs, not talking to them and looking disheartened. Today mothers are more likely to be laughing and chatting loudly on their mobiles, communicating to other adults over the heads of their children. Surely they don’t realise their own importance as mothers. Yet, as a counsellor, I see people who have difficulty as adults in creating and sustaining intimate relationships. I believe the difficulty is related to the extent to which genuine mothering is belittled. Mothering means creating a relationship with each child. There isn’t a better way for us to learn how to relate.
I wanted to write about all this – but where did one begin? I used to take one of my children to weekly gym classes, where he got certificates as he progressed. One day, he presented me with a brightly coloured ‘Certicate’ for being a mother. In the same way that his certificates listed what he had attained in gym, he listed ‘patience,’ ‘forgiving’, and other qualities, putting into words what he thought my mothering was. His ‘Certicate’ is one of my most precious possessions. It absolutely inspired me to go on writing.
Why did it take you ten years to write the book? I wrote, in my Introduction to What Mothers Do, that it took me a while to realise that the right words do not exist for the experiences I wanted to describe. But there was also a problem with finding a publisher. I’d draft an introduction and then send it to a carefully selected shortlist of publishers. Back would come rejection letters. I’d telephone to ask why they’d rejected my work.
“We don’t enter into discussions with authors, I’m afraid.”
“But if you don’t tell me, I’ll never learn. I wonder if it’s anything to do with the sensitivity of working mothers to a book promoting mothering.”
“You could say it was something like that.” Then I’d put down the phone and start to rethink and rewrite. I’m glad now, because I’ve ended up with a book which seems much stronger than the book I originally thought of. But at the time I felt disheartened. That’s an understatement.
However, I kept writing, and could see that I was producing original work. I’d print out a chapter and take it to the Italian cafe on Parliament Hill, which is always crowded with mothers and children. I’d sit over a coffee and read my chapter, with their voices in the background. Was my chapter relevant to these real mothers around me? No, I needed to rewrite. I showed chapters to a few friends, who were supportive but critical. More rewriting.
It took nine years. In 2002, I tried another selection of six British publishers. If they all turned me down, I thought I’d try some American ones. My husband and I went off on a holiday, and I rang home to ask one of my children if any rejection letters had arrived. “I’m afraid so,” was his sympathetic reply. There were three.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said to my husband. “I can’t rewrite any more. I’ve written as well as I can.”
I loved his reply: “I can’t think of anything you could improve either.”
Next evening, I rang home again. “You’ve got an email from a publisher,” said my son. “She wants you to send her some more.”
That was a wonderful moment. The email was from one of the editors at Piatkus.
The whole process of writing the book has changed me. I only seem to discover what I want to say through writing it down – which is what I am doing now, in response to your interview.
Last summer, my daughter came to stay with us with her baby, our grandson. She asked me how my book ended, so I showed her. The ending was a comment on some lines from Wordsworth’s Prelude. She was adamant that this was wrong. “It should end with you,” she said. “It’s your book”. She was right, my lovely daughter, but what kind of ending should it be? Her baby cried, and I sat with her while she held him and sang and rocked and comforted him to sleep. Next morning, I told her I was going to rewrite the ending. I remember I seemed to hear a rhythm of words, but no content. I sat down at my computer, ‘listened’, and the last three paragraphs almost wrote themselves. I was awed. I went downstairs and said to my youngest child, “I’ve just finished my book.” He stood up, beamed, and shook hands with me. My husband opened a bottle of iced elderflower wine (it was the middle of the 2003 heat wave), my daughter came in with her baby, and this was one of the best moments of my life.
How do you think things have changed for mothers over the past few decades and is there a growing awareness of the true value of mothering? I think there has been a strong reaction against mothering in the second half of the twentieth century, predicted by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), in which he shows a student blushing with embarrassment at the very word ‘mother’. The student was embarrassed for precisely the reasons that trouble people today. There are small signs that this may change – but it hasn’t yet. It was very difficult to find a publisher for What Mothers Do. There seems to be an ongoing trend to publish books which disparage mothering by ridiculing babies, and reducing mothering to a series of impersonal chores.
What are your future plans and projects? I don’t have plans and projects. It’s more a process of ‘listening’ for the next step forward. At the moment, mothers who have read What Mothers Do tell me they have been moved by it and many have bought copies to give to family members and friends. So I am wondering how best to build on this.
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Published in issue 3. Accurate at the time this issue went to print.
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Photo by Chris Chapman
