AGENCY AND SOCIAL IDENTITY: RESISTANCE AMONG PAKEHA

NEW ZEALAND MOTHERS

Carol Harrington

Department of Political Science, Central European University, Nador u. 9, H-1051, Budapest, Hungary

Synopsis — This paper is based in analysis of texts of interviews with 21 urban Pakeha mothers of youngchildren. It argues that the Pakeha mother identity, understood as the point of suture between subjectivityand social processes of representation [Hall, Stuart (1996a). Who needs identity? In: Stuart Hall & Paul duGay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 1–17). London: Sage], is formed in processes of mastery,discourses of difference and self-surveillance. The author argues that the interplay of identity and reg-ulation is internally contradictory because identification and reflexive guilt are simultaneous processes andreflexivity introduces the possibility of resistance. She analyses the resistant talk of the respondents andshows that in the texts of their interviews, they both redefine and resist the category of Pakeha mother.Guilt is a persistent theme in resistant talk, and while guilt is a mechanism of self-surveillance, its verynature is reflexive, thus creating a certain distance from the identity category and creating space forsubjective resistance. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The aim of this paper is to explore processes of iden-

tification and resistance based in my analysis of texts

of interviews with 21 urban Pakeha (New Zealand

white) mothers. I will argue that these texts show the

construction of amother identity occurring in: mastery,

discourses of difference and self-surveillance. How-

ever, the interplay between identity and regulation was

internally contradictory since reflexive processes of

resistancemade it possible for these women to redefine

some of the content of the category mother. Before

turning to this analysis, I introduce the concept of

reflexivity as simultaneous with identification and as

allowing us to avoid an individual/social binary that

may lead to a conception of motherhood as an ‘im-

posed identity’ that women must liberate their ‘true

selves’ from. But firstly, I will clarify my use of the

term ‘identity’ in relation to the ‘category of mother’.

Identity is a concept that is used in various ways in

academic discourse and everyday speech. For the

purposes of this paper I will draw a distinction between

two closely related relevant meanings and explain my

concern with one of these meanings in particular. The

first meaning I want to draw attention to is the way

identity can be looked at as the abstract form of a

symbolically constructed group; for example, ‘les-

bians’, ‘mothers’, ‘men’, ‘the Irish’, ‘the Jews’ and

so forth. Such categories are symbolically defined as

including people who share certain properties and

excluding people who lack certain properties. For

example, one cannot be a man and a mother, but one

can be Irish and amother or Jewish and amother, while

to be lesbian and a mother would be disputed by some

and argued for by others. According to this meaning of

identity, we are not concerned with actual people

identifying with these categories or not, but with the

categories some of us might identify with if we agree

that we share those properties.

But my concern in this paper is not to describe the

processes by which the category of mother is symboli-

cally constructed in the New Zealand context. Rather,

my concern is to analyse some of the ways in which

women identify with this category. This brings us to a

second meaning of identity, which is employed by

Hall (1996a). Identity, for Hall is not the abstract

category but a property of people, which is formed

by their identification with social categories. He

describes identity as the point of ‘suture’ between

the subjective and social processes of representation.

the meeting point, the point of suture, between on

the one hand the discourses and practices which

attempt to ‘interpellate’, speak to us or hail us into

place as social subjects of particular discourses, and

on the other hand, the processes which produce

subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which

can be ‘spoken’. Identities are thus points of tem-

porary attachment to the subject positions which

discursive practices construct for us . . .. They are

PII S0277-5395(02)00221-2

Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 109 –126, 2002Copyright D 2002 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in the USA. All rights reserved

0277-5395/02/$ – see front matter

109

the result of a successful articulation or ‘chaining’

of the subject into the flow of discourse. (Hall,

1996a, pp. 5–6)

In this conceptualisation identity is a process

rather than singular (people may identify with several

categories) or fixed (identifications can change).

The strength of this use of the concept is that it

allows us to talk about the interface of subjective

experience and symbolic construction, which is my

interest in analysing the texts of the interviews

discussed in this paper. This interface is important

for women’s/gender/feminist scholarship because it

brings into focus the ways in which feminine sub-

jectivity is formed within social processes of gender

identity construction which socially advantage males

and oppress females. The problem with it is that the

emphasis upon the social construction of identity, in

this sense, begs the question of where to locate the

resistant parts of subjectivity—the self that resists

the social. This is a particularly fraught question for

scholars working within the field of gender analysis

given the inspiration it has taken from women’s

political activism as and for women. Much of the

recent heated theoretical debate within feminist

scholarship has been because of this concern that

the subject as active agent is entirely dissolved by a

radically constructionist stance, and with it the log-

ical basis for any feminist, or ‘identity’, politics (see

Benhabib, Butler, Cornell, & Fraser, 1995) for an ex-

cellent representation of the various positions within

this debate).

It is important to be clear that identity, as I use the

concept here, does not completely determine subjec-

tivity, as it is understood in this paper. Remembering

that identities are neither singular nor static such an

understanding would make no sense. I use the term

subjectivity to refer to the internal world of each person

including various identifications, and emotional and

intellectual processes. But what are the nonidentified

parts of subjectivity? If identities bind people to sym-

bolically created forms,which represent existingpower

relations, then are the nonidentified aspects of subject-

ivity the fountain of resistance? My argument is that

such an identified/nonidentified conceptual split is

unable to capture the subtleties of resistance.

We must tread carefully around the question of

resistant agency to avoid invoking the individual/

social binary, well deconstructed by Hall (1996b).

Concepts such as socialisation, internalised norms or

ideology depend upon this binary since they invoke

a pre-existing subject upon which ‘society’ acts

(Hall, 1996b, p. 597). Because this core self or ‘real

me’ is seen as apart from society, it has been the

imagined agent of resistance to the invasion of the

subjective by the social. Identity, as understood in this

paper, is not conceptualised as overlaying a ‘core self’

but nor is it understood as completely determining

of subjectivity.

The concept of reflexivity, as developed by Butler

(1997), can help us to transcend the either/or of these

two options. Reflexivity introduces the possibility of

resistance to, and possible redefinitions of, identity

positions while not falling back on such an imagined

‘core self’. Two of Butler’s insights with regard to the

process of identification and reflexivity are important

to understand. Firstly, that subjects desire recognition

to escape the terror of not-being, and secondly, that

recognition and reflexivity are simultaneous.

To elaborate on the first insight, I will summarise

Butler’s (1997) interpretation of Althusser’s (1971)

story of the subject being hailed by the police in the

street as an identity. In this story, the subject is hailed

‘hey you there’ and turns toward that call and thus is

‘interpellated’ as a worker, a boss or a soldier as if

they were hailed: ‘it really is me, I am here, a worker,

a boss, a soldier!’ (Althusser, 1971, p. 171). In that

moment, self-recognition and social recognition be-

come one; in other words, the subject identifies with

the social category. Butler emphasises that it is the

policeman who does the hailing in this story; she

makes the point that it as social authority calls us that

we come to understand ourselves.

She goes on to ask, why does the subject turn

toward the call rather than keep walking? Her answer

is that recognition by authority is essential to social

existence. This means that the subject has a vulner-

ability to the law—that there is a prior desire for

recognition by the law, since to not be recognised is

not have an existence, to face the terror of not-being

(Butler, 1997, p. 112). Butler discusses this as ‘the

psychic life of power’ (the name of the book). I un-

derstand it as an analysis of the process of identifi-

cation and thus identity formation as understood by

Hall (1996a). It explains how it is that the external

socially defined categories become internally ‘really

me’. Butler’s discussion of the importance of recog-

nition explains why there is pleasure in living out an

authoritatively recognised identity. It is the pleasure

of being somebody and of escaping not-being. When

a woman experiences a well-ordered domestic envi-

ronment and caring for her children as expressing

her womanliness, this expression of womanliness is

a source of pleasure because it confers her with an

identity. In acting in ways that are recognised in

authoritative discourses as appropriate for her gender,

she is expressing and affirming who she is in socially

recognisable terms.

Carol Harrington110

But recognition by authority triggers guilt and it is

this that Butler argues is the origin of reflexivity, the

second important point. Guilt is reflexive since it is a

reflection by the self upon the self as a separate object

to be brought into line (or, potentially, not). In turning

to the call of authority, according to Butler, we regard

ourselves in fear that we do not, but should, meet the

required standards of authority. As the law regards

us, so we regard ourselves—and so in gaining rec-

ognition, reflexivity is born. But guilt, this sense of

conscience, does not imply the ready-made subject

restricting the self:

Conscience cannot be conceptualised as a self-

restriction, if that relation is construed as a pre-

given reflexivity, a turning back upon itself

performed by a ready-made subject. Instead, it

designates a kind of turning back—a reflexivity

which constitutes the condition of possibility for the

subject to form. Reflexivity is constituted through

this moment of conscience, this turning back upon

oneself, which is simultaneous with a turning

toward the law. (Butler, 1997, pp. 114– 115)

Thus Butler gets over the individual/social binary by

analysing the production of the subjective experience

of recognition as being a reflexive moment. I under-

stand this subjective experience of being authorita-

tively recognised as a category as formative of identity

and that this is simultaneous with the production

of reflexivity.

Thus in reading the texts of the interviews, I

reject the concept of a core self distorted by ‘ideo-

logical’ statements or ‘socialisation’ processes in

preference for this framework of identification and

reflexivity as inseparable processes. In my analysis,

I was interested in how the abstract category of

mother and the meanings this carries with it be-

comes an identity for women when they have young

children. The authoritative discourses of motherhood

in New Zealand are that mothers should make caring

for their children and doing domestic work their

primary responsibility, and not do paid work while

their children are small. Changes within discourses

of motherhood, and the continuity of this core

theme, have been well analysed in McKinlay

(1983), while Fleming (1997) notes that in spite of

changes in household forms, the male-breadwinner,

female home-maker model still has a hold on

Pakeha family norms. Such norms have an impact

on but are not identified with by Pacific Island and

Maori families, as documented in Fleming’s book.

Thus I will refer to the ‘Pakeha mother identity’ in

this paper since it seems clear that some significant

cultural groups in New Zealand involve family

patterns based in alternative identities. ‘Pakeha’

was the name used of the white colonists by Maori.

White New Zealanders who feel no strong connec-

tion to any other land or ethnic identity now usually

accept the label. It may seem easier to non-New

Zealand readers to use the term ‘white’ but there are

white people living in New Zealand it would not fit,

for example, Serbians or Hungarians.

I will discuss other aspects of the content of the

Pakeha motherhood category, which construct full-

time devotion to children as a womanly quality,

during the analysis. I took identification with the

category of Pakeha mother as speaking of caring

for children and doing housework as specifically

womanly gifts and responsibilities and invoking the

gender binary to describe their experience of full-time

motherhood as a fulfilment or expression of their

womanliness. Mothering in this way undeniably

places limitations on women in terms of their auto-

nomy, perhaps the most crucial component of this

being the lack of an independent income. Therefore

feminists have regarded constructions of woman-

liness as necessitating economic dependence and

domestic fulfilment with suspicion.

What I found was that many of these respondents

regarded themselves with suspicion when saying such

things. While these women embraced the Pakeha

mother identity, they also resisted it in places and in

aspects, so their accounts were reflexive and, often,

contradictory. Responses to my research findings fre-

quently include the comment that these women must

be unusual in some way and surely my sample some-

how included too many intellectual feminists who are

very different from ‘ordinary’ Pakeha women. My

respondents were not selected on the basis of identi-

fication with feminism, and only one mentioned fem-

inist sympathies. I would be cautious about attributing

too much of the reflexivity I discuss here to feminism,

although since feminist discourses have seeped into the

mainstreammedia, this would be an almost impossible

question to assess. How would one isolate feminism

and measure its impact? Are any discourses critical of

gender categories by definition ‘feminist’?

Rather, I would suggest that intellectual feminists

do not generate all resistance in relation to gender

categories, and that the dichotomy of ‘intellectual

feminists’ and ‘ordinary women’ is part of a discourse

that views most women as passive in relation to ‘patri-

archal ideology’. Wearing, in reconsidering her anal-

ysis in the Ideology ofMotherhood (1984), commented

that resistance was present in those interviews in ways

she had not seen because she had focused upon the

oppressive effects of ideology (Wearing, 1990, p. 37).

Agency and Identity 111

This suggests that finding resistance in some forms

should not be so surprising when we shift our focus

from the ability of a system of power relations to

integrate people into acquiescence.

The women I interviewed were well educated, in

relation to the population as a whole, but not to such a

great degree in relation to the Pakeha population. In

1990, 45% of the New Zealand population had some

form of postsecondary qualification, 15 of my 21

respondents had such a qualification (Ministry of

Education, 1999, p. 2). However, since Maori and

Pacific Island people make up approximately 20% of

the population, but are much less likely to attain a

postsecondary qualification (Ministry of Education,

1999, p. 2), it seems that the education level of these

womenwas not unusual for Pakeha women as a whole.

Only one had left high school after her fifth form year

with school certificate, this is the most basic high

school qualification in New Zealand and would have

meant leaving school at the age of 15. The remaining

20 had stayed in high school and gained a higher

leaving qualification. Eight had then gone on and

gained a university degree, seven had done postsecon-

dary training for nursing, journalism, or teaching.

The primary occupation of all respondents at the

time of the interview was caring for their child or

children. One, the only single mother, received a state

benefit, supplemented by doing paid childcare in her

own home (she was in a committed relationship with

her child’s father, but he spent only two nights a week

with her). The remainder were financially supported

by male partners, who were all, except in one case,

biological fathers of the women’s children. These men

were mainly in professional, technical or managerial/

administrative occupations, two were in production

occupations. Five women were engaged in, or about to

begin, paid work outside of their homes for less than

15 h a week. A sixth attended university part-time.

The majority lived in households with an annual

income of between NZ$25,000 and NZ$40,000. The

lowest annual household income was NZ$20,000,

which meant this household (a couple and one child)

struggled tomeet basic needs for food and utilities, and

could afford few luxuries. The highest was NZ$55,000

(earned by three households), which meant they could

afford a better than average but not luxurious lifestyle.

Surviving primarily on one income meant that all but

two households (one of the highest income households

supported four children and helped out the partner’s

mother financially) expressed feeling under financial

strain at the time of the interview. The median income

for all two parent families in 1991 was NZ$45,000.

Taking into account that Maori and Pacific Island two

parent families have average household incomes

NZ$10,000 and NZ$15,000 less than the median for

all, then the expected median income for Pakeha

families must be higher (Fleming, 1997). Thus these

households were poorer than most Pakeha two parent

families, but this is probably a life-cycle effect; they

were young and dependent on one income.

Fifteen of the women were aged between 30 and

35, two were in their early 20s, one was 28 and three

were in their mid- to late 30s. Six had one child, nine

had two children, four had three children and two had

four children. Four were pregnant when I interviewed

them, three of these had one child and one had three

children. Before having children, eight had been in the

lower paid female-dominated professions (e.g., teach-

ing, nursing), two had been in higher status, higher

paid male-dominated professions (e.g., medicine).

One had been a photographer, one a musician. The

other nine had had a variety of jobs in female-domi-

nated sectors, doing clerical work, shop work, working

as a waitress or as a cleaner. Two lived in rental

accommodation, the rest lived in houses under mort-

gage, as has been most common for the majority of

New Zealand families. All lived in an urban area, one

of the main cities of New Zealand with a population of

about 500,000.

My analysis followed the distinction which the

majority of my respondents made between house-

work and child rearing. Although these activities are

intertwined in daily domestic practice, and in the

constitution of the Pakeha mother identity, there were

differences in the degree to which respondents accep-

ted or resisted responsibility for housework and

responsibility for child rearing. Many resisted the Pa-

keha mother identity as meaning responsibility for

housework in favour of a reconstructed mother iden-

tity. Thus in what follows, I discuss housework and

mothering separately, I analyse identification with

motherhood as happening in three processes: mastery,

discourses of gender difference, and surveillance. I

consider how these processes work in the case of both

housework activity and childcare activity, and how

these processes were resisted in both cases, high-

lighting the importance of reflexivity in the process

of resistance.

THE PAKEHA MOTHER IDENTITY:MASTERY AND BODILY DESIRE

Housework

Mastery and embodiment of the rules

Both the concepts of mastery and embodiment are

relevant in understanding the construction of identity

here. According to Butler’s (1997) interpretation of

Carol Harrington112

Althusser, the more a practice is mastered, the more

fully subjection is achieved because the person

embodies certain skills necessary to reproduce the

conditions of their subjection. My interpretation of

this is that subjection works through instilling skills

that become part of a person’s identity. Mastery of

such skills entails embodiment in so far as they be-

come automatic sequences of movement and action,

‘programmed responses’.

To master a set of skills is not simply to accept a

set of skills, but to reproduce them in and as one’s

own activity. This is not simply to act according to

a set of rules, but to embody rules in the course of

action and to reproduce those rules in embodied

rituals of action. (Butler, 1997, p. 119)

Submission does not mean yielding to a stronger

power but rather involves embodiment of the skills

and practices associated with a subordinate identity.

The discipline of housework standards and rou-

tines instilled such subordination through mastery for

my respondents. Mastery over housework could only

be achieved with a sense of success; however, the

very nature of housework makes this difficult since

there is no completion, it is simply an on-going pro-

cess. I analysed self-imposed standards and routines

as providing a sense of completion and thus mastery.

All the respondents had self-policing domestic rou-

tines to do with meeting their standards at particu-

lar points in time. These standards that defined an

acceptable state of the house varied from woman

to woman:

Washing the dishes, washing the clothes, and

getting the beds made, and then after that probably

the bathroom. (Kath)

I prefer having clean surfaces, and it doesn’t really

matter whether it’s—well when I think clean I

think uncluttered. Like there’s probably things that

are absolutely filthy but as long as I don’t have to

look at them it doesn’t really matter. (Helen)

Meeting standards by self-imposed deadlines, for

example, having the washing folded and put away

and the floors clear before the evening meal, signified

that ‘the housework is done’ and a sense of mastery

could be achieved.

Thus routines were integral to standards as the

organisation of daily activity to ensure the standards

are met (e.g., the kitchen surfaces must be clear before

the children are in bed). Within the structurelessness

of housework, standards and routines allowed sym-

bolic moments of completion, which provided the

satisfaction of success: the kitchen surfaces cannot

always be clear but must be at particular points in

time. Both standards and routines provide the struc-

ture and rhythm, which is vital to a sense of mastery

and in this is revealed the intimate relation between

discipline, mastery and identity.

Thus mastery was embodied through routinised

actions that made housework into programmed

unthinking activity. For some, the routine was flexible

and centred on the mornings and evenings: the daily

necessity to get children up, dressed, fed, bathed, into

pyjamas and bed again. But others had more elaborate

routines. Some respondents assigned particular tasks

to particular days of the week.

I even have lists of what I do. Like on Mondays I,

you know, do the bath, the toilet, Tuesdays I dust

and polish, Wednesday it’s cleaning the micro-

wave and stove, Thursdays is vacuuming and

washing and Fridays is ironing and cleaning the

kitchen floor. I make lists . . . Get up, fill the sinkwith hot water, throw the dishes in, make the beds,

take the dishes out, put the washing on, hang it

out, go and get Liam off to kindy—yeah, I—it’s

sort of like being in the army really, isn’t it?

(laughter) (Joanna)

Joanna’s description illustrates how the routinisation

of standards become automatic sequences of bodily

movements and thus how housework skills become

embodied through the discipline of routine as

automatic functioning. Domestic routines (fill the

sink, dishes in, make beds, dishes out, . . .) become

programmed into bodily rhythms.

The discipline of standards and routines is essen-

tial to the identity-giving pleasurable reward of mas-

tery over domestic management. In line with this

analysis, Ann Oakley (who wrote about British

women) observed that it was the women she inter-

viewed with the strictest routines who most strongly

identified with the ‘housewife role’ (Oakley, 1974,

p. 104). In Oakley’s research and in mine, the specif-

ics of these standards and the routines were created

by the women themselves, and so in this sense were

subjective. However, they tended to take on an objec-

tive quality in the women’s lives—to become extern-

alised forms of which they felt compelled to meet

the demands.

Discourses of difference

Mastery of domestic skills signified femaleness

in a positive and pleasurable sense. Doing house-

work was said to involve a constant awareness of

Agency and Identity 113

the household’s rhythms and needs and this was

talked about as a special feminine way of thinking.

In this talk, the gender binary was mobilised in the

sense that being competent domestically was femi-

nised through a lot of—sometimes affectionate,

sometimes frustrated—patronising talk about men’s

domestic incompetence.

Respondents’ sense of their domestic abilities as a

feminine strength seemed to be based in a perception

that ‘men in general’ (although some saw their own

partners as exceptions) lacked awareness of the need

for housework tasks to be done. Boulton mentioned

similar discourses in her research about British moth-

ers (Boulton, 1983, pp. 154– 162). I analysed this

talk about men’s domestic incompetence as contribu-

ting to the construction of a positive sense of femi-

nine identity as involving the mastery of complex and

difficult household management. A number of res-

pondents stressed that there was an important dis-

tinction to be made between doing housework tasks,

which men could learn, and the mental work of

overall household management, which they felt

responsible for as women. For example, Jackie com-

mented that her husband could do particular tasks but

could never manage the whole because:

every day some things have to be done—and if you

don’t do some things within a week, or a month—

the place will start to deteriorate. . . . That—you’ve

got to think of keeping the house going not just for

one day, not just the things you have to do in one

day—you’ve got to think of the whole month, or

even the whole year in some ways. (Jackie)

One woman said with laughter that if her husband

were to stay home with the children, she would have

to leave him a list of housework tasks to do. There

was much laughter coming from a clear sense of

superiority when these women engaged in this

discourse of male domestic incompetence.

The standards and routines that established and

expressed mastery were closely related to the issue of

overall control of housework and discourses of her

way being superior. A number of women said that

they did not want their partner, or anybody else, in-

terfering with their routines or doing household tasks

because they might do it the ‘wrong way’. In general,

husbands and partners were not regarded as the

authority on domestic matters, although some recog-

nition and appreciation of her work might be looked

for from him. This was not a question of some

absolute standard of doing a good job, but of doing

things according to the woman’s overall conception

of adequacy. The following contrasting statements

about husbands doing vacuuming ‘the wrong way’

illustrate the idiosyncratic way women defined doing

a housework task appropriately:

my priority for instance when vacuuming is to get

the most amount done in the shortest amount of

time—because that’s how it works. And—so, I

don’t make a show of—like I wouldn’t pick

everything up off the floor and do underneath

everything, unless I was—really, as it were—

indulging myself—I wouldn’t do that as often. So

I try to get ’round as fast as I can, and the same

thing—if my husband does it—he wants to do it

perfectly, which means getting everything off the

floor, and doing under everything—but—which

takes far to long, so in the grand scheme of things

that is irritating too, because it employs one per-

son for far too great a length of time. (Ruth)

Whenever he does the vacuuming he’ll say ‘oh I’ll

just give the floor a quick lick’ you know as if that

would be all he’d ever do . . . and just sort of do thebare essentials. And that would always be the way

I think. And I think it’s just he’s not as ‘thorough’ I

s’pose is the word I’m trying to find. (Jackie)

My analysis of these statements is that they are less

concerned with the best way to vacuum and more

concerned with constructing gendered difference

around housework mastery: ‘he does not have my

skill and knowledge and so he vacuums in the wrong

way’. Most wanted some participation in housework

from their partners, but this was a complex matter

because it came into conflict with investment in do-

mestic work and the need to control how it was done.

Often when a respondent’s partner did housework

tasks, it was under her direction, or he had specific

jobs assigned to him while she had overall control.

I complain that he doesn’t do stuff, but I like him to

do it my way, and if he does stuff—I go on about

how he should do it. But yeah I tell him what he

has to do, if he does something spontaneously he

probably won’t do it right, so now we have jobs

that he does and I do the rest. (Miriam)

Desire to control how the housework was done was

based in the belief that their systems were more

efficient. Ruth talked in detail about her system for

putting out the washing:

Well—for instance I—I figure out where the

sun’s coming from, and then I try and hang

clothes so that the maximum amount of sun gets

Carol Harrington114

to the maximum amount of clothing (laughs)—so

for instance all the small things would go in front

and the bigger things would go behind, and—if

it’s very very windy then I would, instead of—for

instance long ways, I’d hang them cross ways—

so I would go cross ways in a particular kind’ve a

wind, so they don’t all blow off the line and

disappear. And depending on the item of clothing,

for instance—rather than another peg—for

instance I use those wooden clip pegs with

woollen things, and with things that are quite

bulky, but those other thin things I use with—just

cotton type things . . . So I even get to the point

where—sometimes my husband will help me by

putting the washing out, but he completely screws

up my system. You know, he just hangs them up

any old how—and that really irritates me. (Ruth)

Because her husband does not have the daily

responsibility of providing the household with clean

clothes, he had not developed such intimate knowl-

edge of how the weather and positioning on the line

affected drying time. Nor could he appreciate the

importance of getting the maximum possible drying

time out of the weather.

Some respondents accepted what they regarded as

an unfair amount of responsibility for housework

rather than putting stress on their relationship and

on themselves by fighting for what they really wan-

ted. An unfair situation was taken to be something

women had to put up with as a normal part of life

because of male domestic incompetence. Discussing

her husband’s domestic incompetence, Lynne told

this story:

like he always leaves the bathroom, even after the

kids have had a bath—and the towels. I mean if I

bath the kids then . . . I normally would swish

’round the bath quickly, pick up the wet towels

and hang them up, and pick up the bath mat and

hang it over the bath, just—you know, leave it

looking reasonable and pick up their dirty clothes

and bring them down and put them in the laundry.

But no—they’re all just left there for the cleaning

fairy to come along and do it, you know. And

that’s annoying. And that’s another nail in the

coffin—you know, there’s so many things that

you have to do. But I think there’s a limit to what

you can sort of hassle your partner about. (Lynne)

Here the intersection of mastery, embodiment, self-

surveillance (see below) and discipline is evident.

Lynne simply cannot ignore the wet towels, dirty

clothes, and bath mat on the floor or the grime on the

bath. To deal with these things is an automatic

response for her after the children bathe, part of the

sequence of activity to be gone through without

thought. In observing with frustration that her

husband does not have this programmed response,

she attributes it to his maleness and her own actions

to her femaleness, and this helps her to be (not

entirely happily) resigned to it.

Self-surveillance

In the case of domestic work mastery expressed

through standards and routines was closely inter-

twined with self-surveillance. Many reported an

unhappy feeling of compulsion in relation to house-

work tasks. They said that they could not do things

they valued, for example, doing study or reading a

book, unless their house met their standards.

if the house is not tidy I feel as if I’m going under

. . . Like I’ll rush ’round tidying up even if I’m

tired, it’ll make me feel better. . . . I mean I do do a

bit of photographic work, I do photos for other

people’s friends and things, and I might have

something like that to do, you know, that I’ll have

in my mind either a work thing, or a thing for me,

and I wouldn’t do any of those things until—

basically the housework is done, and I feel that

my brain’s clear. (Miriam)

Almost all these women talked about feeling upset,

depressed or anxious if their housework standards

were not met, or their routines were interrupted. Many

spoke of having a sense of the housework piling up as

creating a constant and mounting sense of pressure

that affected their mood. Jackie says:

I like to be organised. Sometimes I get depressed if

I feel it all gets on top of me. I’d rather do a little

bit everyday, than amassive spring clean. (Barbara)

Given the identity investment in domestic mastery, it is

hardly surprising that evidence of a failure to display

such mastery was accompanied by emotional distress.

Self-surveillance was mingled with the perception

of surveillance by others. In New Zealand, surveil-

lance of domestic standards is maintained in some

official ways, through public health and social wel-

fare programs. There are laws setting definitions

of ‘child neglect’ as not providing adequate food,

sanitation and so forth, welfare authorities can le-

gally intervene if some minimal standards are not

met. There is also the ‘Plunket Society’, which

monitors individual child development, provides

mothers with information about caring for babies

Agency and Identity 115

and children and sends ‘Plunket’ nurses (who have

special training) to visit homes in the period follow-

ing a birth.

State surveillance was not a concern of these

women with regard to their housework and childcare

standards. Partners, as the other adult most fre-

quently in the house, had only minimal surveillance

significance in that their regular arrival acted as a

marker in the day, a deadline to meet certain stand-

ards by. Many of these women want to establish

some order at the time of their partners’ arrival home

from work. This begs the question of how much the

housework is being done ‘for’ the husband. There

was only one case where it was clear that something

bad would happen if the husband walked into an

untidy house:

if he comes home and there’s a mess, he starts

throwing things around, and getting really—

(laughs) no—he just—he can’t stand it. I mean

I’m like that when I come home during the day—I

can sort’ve understand it, he doesn’t want to come

home to a messy house, but I can’t relax because

of that. If he wasn’t there I probably wouldn’t care

so much. I wouldn’t worry about it—but I have to

get it done, you know, it’s gotta be done. (Sue)

The laugh which comes here after talking about

him ‘throwing things around and getting really . . .’marks an absence to be imagined, something which

cannot be spoken. Because of this, my imagination

filled the gap with verbal abuse and possible physical

violence. It seemed to me that Sue was afraid of

her husband.

However, none of the other women spoke of their

husbands as acting as ‘police’ of their housework

standards in this way. Some talked about having the

house tidy before husbands got home as something

they wanted to do to have a sense of order before the

evening meal so they could relax after it. For most,

their husbands were not a big source of anxiety so far

as surveillance of housework went, and many were

completely relaxed about their arrival so far as how

chaotic the house could be at that point.

Many of these women simultaneously believed

men lacked the ability to do or notice domestic work

and that they should share equal responsibility for it.

Both of these beliefs could mean that they were not

especially bothered if he ‘walked into a mess’, since

on the one hand he might not even notice it, on the

other, if he did then, he should clean it up. In those

cases where his arrival was used as a deadline for

meeting a specific standard, apart from the case of

Sue, it seemed that the husband’s arrival was expe-

rienced as similar to that of other adults who came

into the house.

The possible or expected arrival of other people

was given as an important reason for maintaining

housework standards. Not only did these women

judge themselves according to their housework stand-

ards, most believed that other people would judge

them as well. This meant that they were very sensi-

tive about how their house appeared to others. Many

used as an example that they had tidied up before I

came, and apologised to me about the messiness of

their house. It was true that in almost every case, a

few words of apology were given for the disorder of

the house when I arrived.

For most of the women in this study, the sense of

surveillance came from other women in their social

network. Other mothers, particularly their own

mother and their partner’s mother, were the people

perceived as most likely to make critical negative

judgements about domestic standards. This is not

surprising since these women talked about domestic

expertise as a feminine quality. It was the arrival of

older, more experienced women that caused the most

anxiety about the state of their house. For example,

Michelle spoke of always being conscious that her

mother might ‘pop in’ unannounced, because she was

in the habit of doing so, and that this meant she had a

lurking sense that she needed the house to be fit for

her mother to walk into.

‘Peace’ was the word most frequently used when

these women described how it felt when the house

met her standards, that is, when she had demon-

strated mastery over her domestic environment. One

reason for this was that it meant that she felt safe

from the judgements of others. Michelle, after talk-

ing about her mother, made the following general-

ised comment:

I also like to have the beds made before we go

out in the morning—but that’s more for my

sense of—peace, and if somebody was to drop

around unexpectedly. (Michelle)

But the peace was not only in the freedom from

anxiety about being judged by others. It was an

internal peace, expressed with some humour by Ruth

as having a cosmic quality to it:

Basically that everything’s in it’s place, every-

thing, you know—the universe is at rest now

(laughs) That—that things are as they should be,

and that makes me feel as though I’ve achieved

something, and that—I feel at rest with my

environment, is the best way of putting it. (Ruth)

Carol Harrington116

When the housework is ‘done’—meaning it meets

her personal definition of being done—all is well

with the world. It seems that cleanliness and order in

the house are experienced as personal to her, within

her personal boundaries, while disorder in the house

is a disorder of the self. This is the special kind of

thinking which these women identified as necessary

to run a household, a specifically feminine capacity,

which was experienced as involuntary. This sub-

jective experience of anxiety or peace in relation to

the state of the house seemed to be a mechanism of

self-surveillance in that it provided subjective rewards

and punishments.

Motherhood

Mastery

There cannot be mastery without a standard to

master. The standard for mothering was less idiosyn-

cratic than for housework, and less focused upon

things to be done than on emotional capacities. These

women all had a similar ideal of the good mother. She

was described as someone who was capable of

complete emotional control, she did not lose her

temper but could respond to her children consistently

in an appropriate way. Lynne summed it up concisely

saying her image was of:

The caring mother who talks to her children

always, and interacts well, and explains things.

(Lynne)

The good mother was described as always patient,

tolerant and calm and provided her children with a

sense of stability and with constant and unfailing love.

She was always available for her children and had

time and energy for them.

The discourse of the good mother put priority on

spending time with children above taking time to do

housework, ‘the good mother’ was said to provide her

children with stimulating activities and to allow them

to play creatively, in spite of the mess and disorder that

may result. This contradiction between keeping a tidy

house and allowing freedom and creative play, in line

with modern expert child-rearing advice, has been

discussed in other literature (Richardson, 1993; Boul-

ton, 1983; McKinlay, 1983; Oakley, 1974). While

responsibility for housework and children are col-

lapsed into the Pakeha mother identity in the male-

breadwinner/female-homemaker model of family

household, that identity has developed in such a way

that these two areas are in conflict with one another.

Staying at home full-time was associated with this

feeling that mothers should be constantly available to

their children. This belief was identified by Wearing

(1984) as a crucial aspect of the ideology of mother-

hood. Ruth says:

For instance when Emily was born I knew that I

would have to be with her a lot ’cause that’s what

babies were like. But I actually realise that I felt

quite guilty and sad as well that I couldn’t spend

as much time with Jacob [three year old boy] as I

had been up until that point. (Ruth)

Ruth’s comments reveal the impossibility of a mother

being constantly available to one child, much more so

a number of children. However, most of the respond-

ents put themselves under a great deal of pressure to

live up to such ideal standards but, as I will discuss

further under the heading of resistance, failure to

meet these standards did not seem to cause such

unhappiness as in the case of housework.

The respondents agreed that mastery of the moth-

ering standard was out of the question for mere

mortals. This raises the question of how can there be

any sense of mastery if there is no possibility of

success? My analysis was that the sense of mastery

was constructed through a discourse of how impos-

sible the demands of mothering are, on the one hand,

and what special people mothers are to endure these

demands, on the other. Intense and at times impossible

demands were spoken about as part of the territory for

mothers. In this context, women were talked about as

generally being extremely capable and strong because

of their maternal responsibilities. Some said these

special qualities developed from caring for children,

others that women cared for children because they

innately possessed the required qualities. In either

case, there was agreement that domestic responsibility

entailed unique strengths. Helen says:

I think you learn things about yourself that you just

would never—you’d never come across if you

were just in a—in an ordinary job and doing a paid

job . . . I think I’ve learned to— to— I don’t know

just really give of myself I think . . . I think I’ve

learned to communicate better with—with wom-

en—and men too I guess, but I come into contact

more with women. . . . you learn to deal with your

own emotions a lot better and to be able to

communicate that to women—other women

friends who become really good friends because

you talk on the level that’s real and not just a whole

lot of crap, you know. (Helen)

Since the standards for motherhood involved a high

level of emotional discipline and capacity for res-

ponsiveness, these women interpreted their own

Agency and Identity 117

interaction with these standards as a positive contri-

bution to their self-understanding and emotional

development. In this respect, they considered them-

selves, and women in general, different from and

superior to men.

Difference and bodily desire

These women experienced their feelings for their

children as expressive of their womanliness, and as

grounded in their female body. Most commented on

the unique relationship mothers have with babies and

small children. Some said this might arise from being

the parent at home full-time, whereas others said that it

was part of their physical connection to their children.

the fact that you bear them too, the fact that you

carry them for nine months inside you, and you

give birth to that child too—I think affects the

way you feel towards them, and function. (Robyn)

Around a third stated outright that they saw it as

exceptional for a man to be suitable as the main

caregiver for a small child. Most others, although not

so categorical, were sceptical about this possibility,

saying that it would have to be an exceptional man.

One of the main concerns was whether men would be

adequately conscious of children’s safety:

one of the things I find funny about men, I don’t

know whether it’s a genetic thing, or something

they’ve learned to do, but all the men I know do it.

It’s this ability they have to absolutely cut off the

world, they’re watching something on TV, or—

the children could be dying in front of them and

they don’t even see them. Absolute ability to

block things out, which I don’t believe women

have, maybe some women do—I’ve not yet met a

mother who can do that. And it was one of the

things that did worry me when I went away [a trip

for a few days] and left him with the kids. (Lynne)

Many shared this perception that men were unable

to notice what was happening around them, in terms

of both the activities of children and the state of

the house.

The ‘staying at home’ aspect of the standard for

motherhood was described in terms of bodily desire.

All these women described having a strong desire to

stay at home with their children after they were born.

Phillipa described this experience as feeling like a

physical urge:

I’d say that it’s largely hormonal actually. Just this

strong feeling that you have for the child, for a

baby. And I s’pose also that you’re doing things for

it. And just the feeding thing is such a strong bond.

No when I had both of them I would not have liked

to have been anywhere else but with them at home.

It was very strong. (Phillipa)

Phillipa describes similar intense physical feelings as

being behind her decision to have children:

Oh when I met Mark I just got a strong maternal

urge (laughs). I used to follow women with

children. I just got absolutely crazy over it. It was

just amazingly strong. It absolutely cracked me.

. . . I’d be thinking of children’s names—I’d get

weepy, I’d sort of—just want children. (Phillipa)

Others spoke similarly of being overcomewith ‘‘cluck-

iness’’ (a word meaning the desire to get pregnant

and have a baby) before they became pregnant.

Self-surveillance

There were few clear statements about perception

of surveillance of mothering practices. Mothers of

their own generation were looked to as authorities on

up-to-date methods of childcare and it did seem to me

that there was some sense of surveillance from peers.

This would be in contrast to housework where older

women were seen as more authoritative; however,

many women commented that some aspects of stand-

ards for mothering had advanced since their mothers’

time. Karen discussed the criteria for judgment in her

network of peers openly:

We judge each other by how well we get on with

our children. How well adjusted the children are,

that sort of thing. How much you do with your

kids, that’s really important, extra-curricula activ-

ities get to be a real treadmill, that. Some people I

know—the kids have got something on everyday

after school sort of thing, and you know having

the most well-rounded child possible seems to be

the goal. (laughter) I don’t really measure up in

that regard. Those sorts of things I think are what

people are judged by. (Karen)

But, for the most part, there was little talk about

judging others or anxiety about being judged so far as

mothering was concerned.

My analysis was that this could not be read as

indicating an absence of perceived surveillance. Karen

did not seem overly anxious, paranoid or judgmental

herself and her text rang true to me and to other

mothers in my own ‘mothering networks’. My inter-

pretation of the absence of talk about judging and

being judged by other mothers was that such speech

was taboo given the much stronger discourse of the

Carol Harrington118

impossibility of the mothering standard. My observa-

tion of talk among mothers is that statements such as

‘Linda is such a good mother, she is so patient with

her children’, or ‘Isn’t Mel amazing, she takes all her

kids to sports practice four afternoons a week!’

operate to set standards and create an awareness that

one’s mothering practice is being observed. This

analysis would be consistent with Australian research

about mothers’ social networks. For example, Wear-

ing (1984) argued that her respondent’s networks of

other mothers acted to transmit ‘the ideology of

motherhood’. Everingham (1994) reported that infor-

mal networks of mothers transmitted ‘norms of nur-

turing practice’ (which varied in detail within her

three groups) within a shared framework of the ideal

of a mother’s primary responsibility for her children.

Measuring themselves against the unreachable

standard of ‘the good mother’ was a significant mech-

anism of self-surveillance in relation to their mothering

practice. Because the standard was unreachable, there

was talk of a constant nagging guilt that she was doing

things wrong,

I think it [guilt] comes with the birth, it comes out

with the placenta, but unfortunately the placenta

gets thrown away or dug into the garden, but the

guilt hangs in there constantly, yeah, you spend a

lot of time being guilty, . . . [examples]— ‘I’m not

spending enough time with him; I shouldn’t have

smacked him; I shouldn’t have done that; I

shouldn’t have spoken sharply; I’m not as good

as so—and—so’. (Alison)

But, as we will see below, this feeling of guilt was

talked about exclusively in the context of the need to

ignore it. As the phrase ‘it comes out with the

placenta’ indicates, the guilt, like the impossible

standard, was wryly accepted as an inevitable con-

sequence of having children, and that dealing with it

built strength and self-confidence.

The self-surveillance in relation to caring for chil-

dren did not operate in the same way as in relation to

housework peace from anxiety were never fully

achieved just as perfect motherhood was never

achieved. The reward of motherhood was not an

escape from anxiety but a sense of feminine fulfilment.

I feel pleased to be a woman because of having

children . . . I think it is a good thing. I think that,

you know—it sort of expresses—being a woman,

being a female. (Mary)

Boulton described motherhood as satisfying for some

of her respondents, not because they enjoyed the day-

to-day work, but because it provided their lives with a

sense of meaning and purpose (Boulton, 1983). This

was true for my respondents. Helen struggles to

express this in the following passage.

I feel that it’s really—being a mother is really

basic—like it’s just—simple, but not in the way

of stupid, but just something that’s really—like—

I don’t know, . . . the basic thing in life—to be able

to see these little children, and to be able to have

them and look after them. (pause) . . . I’ve been

really lucky been able to have such simple

pregnancies and home births, and healthy children,

. . . I mean it’s part of life—like it is life. (Helen)

For the respondents in this study, having children,

families and the relationships between people were

considered ‘real’ things—the most important things

in life, they found pleasure and reward in caring for

people. Women were talked about as closer to these

important values.

RESISTANCE AND REFLEXIVITY

As I explained above my understanding of resistance

is not in terms of a ‘non-social’ or ‘non-constructed’

true self opposed to the impact of ‘society’ on

subjectivity. I understand resistance as based in

reflexivity, which Butler (1997) explains as simulta-

neous with the process of identification. This reflex-

ivity arises from an experience of guilt. Guilt is self-

surveillance, the subject examines itself in fear of not

fitting the category it is recognised as. But guilt

simultaneously introduces distance from the identity

because the subject fears/knows the identity is not

‘really me’ and thus it opens up space for resistance.

Guilt was a persistent theme in the resistant talk of

these respondents. Guilt was not spoken about when

the values associated with the Pakeha mother identity

was the basis for challenging some of its terms, for

example, in imagining alternative family arrange-

ments that were envisaged as better for the children.

Mothers’ sense of their unique value also provided

the basis for asserting the importance of taking care

of their needs for ‘time to myself’ without guilt. Thus

an identity as a Pakeha mother allowed women to

speak authoritatively about what is good for mothers

and children. Again, I will first discuss housework

and then mothering.

HouseworkAlongside the theme of competence at housework

as a feminine attribute was a theme of rejection of the

Agency and Identity 119

norm of female responsibility for housework. It was

in talk about housework that the most dissatisfaction,

distress and sense of internal struggle was evident.

Respondents were uneasy about an identity which

incorporated doing housework as an expression of

femininity at the same time as they expressed pleas-

ure in their feminine mastery of domestic manage-

ment. On the one hand, domestic competence was a

pleasurable experience of femininity; on the other,

respondents recoiled from being defined as ‘tradi-

tional women’. Such an identity was resisted through

their choice of self-description, through struggling

against their impulses to take all the responsibility for

housework and to control how it was done, and

through ignoring their ‘self-surveillance’.

Self-description

Most of these women signalled their rejection of

housework responsibility by their choice of self-

description. In New Zealand, the term ‘housewife’

was commonplace at least until the 1970s, but seems

to have become less so in the final decades of the

20th century. The responses of the women I inter-

viewed indicated that it has become outdated because

of the meanings it carries. Only three said they were

happy with being called a housewife, while two

others said they preferred to be called homemakers.

The majority said they rejected the term ‘housewife’

because for them it meant a focus on doing house-

work and accepting responsibility for it.

I wouldn’t be at home in the house if I wasn’t a

mother, if I didn’t have children I wouldn’t be at

home. I’d be out working, or doing something if

I wasn’t being paid to work. I don’t think I’d

ever call myself a housewife because I can’t

stand housework. (Lynne)

Lynne and most others commented that while they

may in fact do most of the housework, they felt there

were much more important aspects to what they did

at home and to who they were. Most said they

preferred to be called a mother because they saw

their children as the reason they were at home. Thus

the rejection of the label ‘housewife’ was a rejection

of responsibility for housework and being in a

servicing role to a husband. It was not a rejection

of motherhood but of the definition of motherhood

which includes housework responsibility.

Sharing housework

Most respondents expected their partner to do

some portion of the housework. Some were happy

for their partners to be ‘helpers’, which meant that

they were given specific jobs to do regularly, as well

as doing some other tasks if they were asked to. Others

emphasised that since looking after children was a

full-time job in itself, the housework should be shared:

When one person is at home, and one is full time

in paid work, it gets tricky as to whether the

person at home should do all the housework or

not. And I tend to think not—you know, because

often—looking after a child is a pretty full time

occupation, and if you fit in housework, then oh

well that’s great, but if you can’t—then it’s just

something that’s done—shared out at the week-

end or something. (Mary)

Those who took this attitude emphasised that the

responsibility for housework should be a shared

thing; regardless of the actual division of tasks, it

was important to them that their partner did not

consider it more her responsibility than his.

The ability of a respondent to share housework

with her partner was dependent on his willingness to

co-operate and on her willingness to introduce conflict

into her relationship when he did not want to co-

operate. Housework could become a source for ten-

sion and fights between respondents and their partners

when the respondents decided not to accept the status

quo but to struggle to get their partners to do more.

I’m not the passive good wife that gets on with it

all when he’s not around, he sees me doing it. I say

‘look the dishes haven’t been done yet, and you

said you’d do them’. ‘oh well I will’. You know,

he’ll start to do them at one o’clock in the

morning, and then you crawl into bed—and you

feel really guilty, whereas if he’d just done them at

six o’clock—he gets waylaid with other things,

making it a real big chore to do them, and we

haven’t got much to do, we’ve got a dishwasher—

but no-one else ever unpacks it, things like that—

and it’s quite a lot, like it adds up. (Barbara)

In this case, Barbara’s mention of her guilt suggests

she is ignoring an impulse to do the dishes herself,

she not only has to struggle with herself but with her

husband to have him do a simple domestic task.

Reflexivity involving guilt is evident here as the basis

for resistance, in that Barbara is standing apart from

comfortable identity patterns for herself and her

husband, rejecting her guilt, and from that position

attempting to change their division of housework.

However, Barbara is still controlling housework

standards and routines. She has decided it is impor-

Carol Harrington120

tant for the dishwasher to be unpacked before bed-

time, doubtless because this is necessary for her

overall system of housework management.

Ignoring self-surveillance

The struggle to share housework was not only a

question of getting partners to do it but of fighting

guilt feelings about telling them that they should be

doing it. This meant that it also involved an internal

struggle. Mary and Kath both talked about finding it

difficult to not take over their partner’s ironing:

I don’t agree—but it is a feeling that I have, that

women should do it [housework]. Just as an ex-

ample, I remember before I married Bill, he—on

Sunday nights he always used to iron a big pile

of shirts and I used to sit and watch TVwhile he did

it, and I used to feel really guilty and think well—

you know, I feel really guilty, I should be doing

that. (Mary)

Well last night he ironed for about three quarters

of an hour, and—at first that really upset me, I felt

I should be doing it—you know, it really was—

it’s not kind of in my head, it’s in my gut. (Kath)

Both of these women talk about their impulse to iron

for their partners as against their actual beliefs, and as

something they had to work to resist.

Confronting such feelings, in some cases, led to a

deeper level of reflexivity as a basis for resistance in

so far as they began to critically examine and reject

their ‘internal messages’ and the discipline of their

standards and routines. While most respondents dis-

played some kinds of resistance, only about a third

demonstrated this level of reflexivity. These women

talked about having to ‘force themselves’ to leave

housework for their partners to do in their own way.

Alison had recently recovered from a period of de-

pression at the time I interviewed her; as part of her

recovery, she was making an effort to involve her

partner in some of the domestic work.

Before it was sort of ‘my domain’, it was very

important that I had it . . . I didn’t want him to do

it because I didn’t feel that he did it properly, i.e.

he didn’t do it the way I did it, so it was wrong,

therefore it just wasn’t good enough. (laughter)

But now, yeah I can actually watch him folding

the nappies without wincing (laughter). (Alison)

Alison’s use of the term ‘wincing’ reflects that it took

a lot of self-control to relinquish domestic control to

her partner. However, some of these women were

willing to do this, and identified in their own desire for

control an aspect of their subjectivity, which they

wanted to overcome. Gordon’s (1990) research into

the experiences of feminist mothers reported similar

findings. Many of her respondents said that their

partners had much lower housework standards than

themselves and that they did not attach as much

importance to the state of the house. This led these

women either to become very frustrated with their

partners, or to reassess their own standards and re-

actions to housework.

This struggle to overcome self-surveillance mech-

anisms in relation to domestic work did not only arise

in relation to attempts to share housework with

partners, but in terms of attempting to prioritise other

activities above housework. I have pointed to mastery

of domestic tasks as constitutive of social identity for

Pakeha mothers, and that perceived failure to master

the requirements of the domestic sphere may lead to

intense distress. Many respondents reported such

distress, but many also reported making a conscious

effort to not be controlled by such feelings, which

they considered to be oppressive or limiting. Com-

ments about ‘letting go of standards’ were more

common in the context of doing so because of other

values than in the context of sharing housework.

Many, like Raewyn, said they had decided that for

the sake of their own health and happiness, they

would have to live with more mess than they would

ideally have liked, and fight the ambivalence and

guilt involved.

Oh—see the place! I’ve given up dusting, I was

brought up to dust, and dust right down to the

skirting boards, and cobwebs, everything. . . . I’vedecided that’s not important. You know, so I’ve

actually lowered my standards—when I didn’t

lower my standards I was very unhappy because I

couldn’t keep up with the standards (laughs).

(Raewyn)

Letting go of their housework standards also entailed

confronting worries about the judgements of others

concerning their domestic standards and deciding not

to be controlled by these.

I guess it’s something I’ve had to work quite hard

at, not worrying about being judged by the state of

the house. (Karen)

Karen and Raewyn both identified their internal

urges to meet a certain housework standard, but

reflect upon those urges and decide not to submit

to them.

Agency and Identity 121

For two respondents, the power of their house-

work standards was too strong to resist. These women

did not lower their housework standards, but avoided

the stress of finding them difficult to maintain by

employing a cleaner for a few hours, once a week, to

do housework. They both said they believed that

people would judge them as lazy for paying for

cleaning when they were at home full-time and so

hid this from most others. Helen, explaining why she

did not tell her husband’s family about the cleaner,

comments on the way in which contact with people

who hold such views reinforced her subjective feel-

ings that she should do the housework herself:

Like if my mother-in-law comes—or my sister-in-

law, . . . Because I know that they are quite

judgmental people, and they judge me, depending

on what the house looks like, and how my children

are doing from what their behaviour is like . . . it’sa constant thing that I have to work at—that—not

to be affected by that. . . . A friend of mine, she has

a woman that comes in and does a bit of cleaning

for her. And she says she calls it her ‘mental

health’—when she puts aside the money her

‘mental health money’ is to pay this woman to

come and do her housework. You know—I just

know exactly what she means—like yes—you

know—this is for me and I’ve earnt it! So that’s

what I really know inside, but sometimes it’s hard

to—you know—when you see a lot of them [her

husband’s family]—I try not to, because I don’t

want to be affected by that. (Helen)

Thus the decision to employ a cleaner was not simply

a matter of whether or not they could afford to pay

someone, it involved overcoming feelings of guilt

relating to responsibility for doing housework. In this

case, Helen is very conscious of the surveillance of her

domestic skills by others. Because she cannot fully

avoid her guilt in relation to this surveillance, she

practices deception by having a secret cleaner.

Mothering

Talk about mothering, even of the most traditional

kind, easily flowed into resistant talk in that it was the

basis for a sense of self-value, and strength. As I noted

above, mother was the preferred self-definition of

almost all of the respondents. Identifying as a mother

seemed to provide an authoritative voice, at least so far

as matters that affected their children were concerned.

Well I found—since becoming a Mum, like you

have to have confidence. Like—if you were my

sister and you came into my house and said ‘—the

way you fold that nappy, I don’t like it’ you have to

be able to say ‘Look, it’s my child, what I do with

her is my business’ And I think that’s where you

get it from, because you have to learn to say ‘Look

this is my child, and what I do is my business’. I

mean if it’s not beating her or anything—I mean if

I’m beating her then that’s somebody else’s

business as far as I’m concerned, but if I’m a

good Mum, then it’s my business. (Vicki)

As mothers, many respondents spoke strongly and

confidently in opposition to the arrangements of paid

work, which they saw as the main barrier to greater

input into parenting from fathers. Almost all based

claims to better living conditions for themselves,

especially more leisure, in their special work as moth-

ers. Thus identifying as a mother provided a self-

confidence that enabled some of the oppressive aspects

of mothering practices (e.g., endless availability, sole

responsibility for caring work) to be dismissed.

How much was this kind of resistance based in

reflexivity in regard to the Pakeha mother identity?

The answer is complex since so much of the resist-

ance talk about motherhood was based very firmly in

values traditionally associated with Pakeha mothers.

Yet simultaneously there was reflexivity about this

identity so far as norms of childcare were concerned,

spoken from the authoritative position of mother who

knows best what is good for children. Thus the

processes of self-identification and reflexivity are

clearly inseparable here. I have grouped the resistant

statements about mothering into three themes: Imag-

ining or trying different patterns of parenting, taking

‘time for myself’, and ignoring surveillance.

Imagining or trying different patterns of parenting

All of the respondents were the primary carers for

their children while their partners were in full-time

paid work (there was one woman who did not live

with her partner). Most said that they were more

involved than their partner in most aspects of the care

of their children. They commented that because they

were at home with the children full-time, it was

inevitable that they would be more aware of their

needs and abilities and so would best know how to

deal with them. However, most did not consider this

situation satisfactory and a number commented that

they would prefer the responsibility for the children

to be shared equally.

I would prefer that he were an equal partner in

housework and child rearing—making all the

decisions. But he still sees himself as a helper, and

Carol Harrington122

uses terms like ‘baby-sitting’ the children if I’m

going out somewhere. . . . so he sees that as—my

job, that he will help out, you know, if I want to

go out. (Jackie)

As in the case of housework, many emphasised that

parenting responsibility was shared with their partner

even though as the parent at home they spentmore time

caring for them. They spoke of making an effort to

include their partner in the day-to-day care of the

children and of discussing how to deal with the

children with him before making any decisions.

The limited contact their partners had with their

children worried many. Ten said they did not consider

the current division of domestic and paid work they

had with their partner the best way for their families

to live. The alternative to full-time motherhood

mentioned by these women was for both to do part-

time paid work and be part-time at home with the

children. But to most, this seemed an unrealisable

ideal because the chances of finding well-paid part-

time work were known to be slim, the majority of

employers demand 40 h a week or more commitment

from workers and part-time work is usually not well

paid. Janine talked about her frustration about the

constraints of the paid working world:

I was in the situation when I took maternity leave

that to go back to work after maternity leave I had

to go back to full-time employment—which I

didn’t want. I was still breast-feeding and didn’t

want to go back full-time. . . . And so I resigned

and—we’ve talked about when the next one is six

or twelve months old—if it’s financially viable—

to both work part-time—both be part-time care-

givers. Because . . . often she wasn’t waking until

after he’d gone to work in the morning, and then

she’d be tired and be going to bed a couple of

hours after he got home in the evening . . .And thatdidn’t feel comfortable. . . . But also it’s the

financial thing that both of us working part-time

probably couldn’t earn as much as he can working

full-time—and it’s really a difficult situation,

we’ve got commitments with the mortgage and

different things. It’s really—you feel like you’re

caught—you’re trapped in a situation that we

don’t really want at the moment. (Janine)

Janine felt trapped by social arrangements based on the

assumption of a mother who will care full-time for her

children and be financially dependent on her husband.

She and her husband would like to parent in a different

way but their way does not fit with the structure of the

paid working world. This example shows that while

reflexivity can provide a basis for imagined resistance,

there are entrenched social patterns that work against

this. Changing such patterns begins with alternative

imaginings but requires such imaginings to be col-

lective, rather than individual.

The demands of the paid working week made the

division between one full-time worker and one at-

home parent seem practical to many. There were some

that thought about changing places with their partner

for a period of time, so that he would become closer to

the children and she would be able to have the rewards

of paid work. But for most, this was not realistic, since

their partners’ earnings were higher than their own.

Again the limits that the organisation of paid work put

upon parents decisions about how to care for their

children are evident. Once a woman has a child (and

most do), then prime responsibility for day-to-day

care, and carrying that out according to normative

practices, is extraordinarily difficult to avoid.

Of those women who could earn enough to

support their partner and children, one had tried this

arrangement briefly in the past, and another was

considering it as a possibility in the near future.

The one who had supported her family while her

husband was a full-time caregiver pointed out that

this division was still unbalanced for both parents.

I have my reservations about it being that good for

anyone to stay home long term full-time. I actually

think you need a bit more of a balance in your

life. (Karen)

Those respondents with part-time work, part-time

parenting ideals echoed Karen in saying full-time

domestic work was not an ideal way of life for any

person, male or female, while full-time paid work was

not ideal for someone who wanted to be an engaged

parent. Karen had hated working full-time because it

gave her such limited time with her children. At the

same time, her husband had felt socially isolated, he

did not have the mothering networks which she had

developed in her time at home, and social taboos

meant that at-home mothers were careful not to

become too close to him. Thus for both of them, it

was better to go back to the traditional pattern, in spite

of their reservations about it. Again this demonstrates

the difficulty of living out resistant imaginings.

Imagining that a man could be the full-time parent

calls into question the discourse of the special bond

between mother and child. In considering this possi-

bility, some questioned the naturalness of such a bond:

Well yeah—because when he (her eldest son) was

about four or five months old I began to realise—

Agency and Identity 123

it dawned on me that I was actually in love with

him—that I really loved him, and appreciated

him. And since that time it has been much easier

for me. . . . that’s why I think men could do it too

you see. I mean—if the so called natural mother

love that wasn’t at all natural to me, you know—a

woman, a mother and all this, then there’s no

reason why—given the situation, you couldn’t

actually work to get to that point. (Ruth)

While more than two thirds made definite statements

about the particular suitability of women as primary

carers for young children, most of these, at other

points in the interview, questioned whether this was

in fact the case.

None of the respondents had considered the pos-

sibility of both parents doing full-time work. Priority

was given by all to the importance of a parent being

with their children for most of the time while they

were small. Full-time childcare for small children,

and even school-age children (who would require

after-school and holiday care), was regarded as irre-

sponsible and selfish. Joanna’s response was typical

when I asked if they had thought about this option:

We decided to have a baby, one of us ought to be

home to look after it. Otherwise what’s the point

in having them? I mean it’s all very fine, but I can

remember the odd time I’d get home from school,

my mother wasn’t there—you know, it’s not nice

going—coming home to an empty house, you

know. I think that basically if you have a baby and

you leave it with somebody all day, somebody

else is literally bringing up your child. (Joanna)

The ideal of children spending most of their time

being cared for by parents is very strong in New

Zealand. While the gendered aspect of full-time

parenting may have loosened over recent deca-

des—most of my respondents accepted in principle

that a father could be the main carer—the aversion to

having children in school and/or childcare for most of

the working week was very strong.

‘Time to myself’

No matter how much they identified as mothers,

none wanted this to be the full story of who they

were. Having time, activities and interests separate

from their domestic world was talked about as

valuable because this represented that they were not

‘only mothers’. Wearing argued that claiming ‘time to

myself’ for the Australian mothers she interviewed

was a form of resistance, often based in the individu-

alist assertion that ‘mothers are people, and people

have a right to time and space for themselves’ (Wear-

ing, 1990, p. 50). The assertion of being an individual

with needs and diverse interests is one way to resist

being seen as a mother only. The experience of ‘loss

of identity’ in mothering, meaning that the mother

identity seems to become all there is to her, has been

documented by many researchers (e.g., Boulton,

1983; Oakley, 1979; Rossiter, 1988). This feeling of

being subsumed by motherhood was mentioned by a

number of respondents in this study in terms of their

efforts to resist it.

But this form of resistance was most frequently

talked about as crucial to being a good mother! In

response to the question ‘what makes a good mother?’

a number of the respondents said that it was impor-

tant for a mother to have time, activities and interests

apart from motherhood.

I also think that it’s important to look after

yourself at the same time. I don’t mean you should

devote yourself entirely to your children, but I

think it’s possible to also have activities just for

yourself alone. So that you can come—when

you’re mothering you can be refreshed. (Michelle)

I think you need something to keep your own

person, because we don’t provide it naturally in

the home. (Raewyn)

Even those who were most firmly committed to

the importance of full-time mothering, such as Rae-

wyn who was adamant that men and women had

different divinely ordered relationships to their chil-

dren, asserted that this should not absorb all of a

woman’s time and energy. These women included

themselves as subjects with needs that could not be

satisfied only through their families in their talk about

good mothering.

‘Time to myself’ could only be achieved when

women deliberately defined child-free time as such.

There were some who spoke of making a conscious

effort to use their child-free time for relaxation.

some evenings I’ll be really conscientious and do

all the mending and that sort’ve stuff, but then the

next few nights I make sure that I just relax and

maybe read a book. . . . You know, because you

have to make—you have to make your own time

out, and if you don’t get it nobody’s going to

say—oh it’s lunch time now, you’ve got a free

hour. (Helen)

Thus a belief in the unique importance of full-time

mothers can form a basis for women claiming better

Carol Harrington124

conditions for themselves. There is a movement from

focusing on what a ‘good mother’ should do, to

focusing on what conditions enable women to be

good mothers. For example, Raewyn’s belief in the

importance of mothers to family life gave her a sense

of her own value and the significance of her happi-

ness and well being.

I think if you’ve got an unhappy mother you’ve

got an unhappy family, basically. I think it affects

the husband, it affects the kids, —and when I’m

happy, everyone else is happy. (Raewyn)

Many of the other respondents also commented that

in order to be a good mother, they needed to take care

of their own needs for relaxation.

Ignoring self-surveillance

As was observed above, guilt was part of the

experience of motherhood for all of the respondents.

Guilt was usually associated with not being com-

pletely available or accessible to their children all of

the time, with putting their own needs before those of

their children, and with losing their temper with their

children. These were also the most common reasons

for guilt reported by Wearing’s respondents (Wearing,

1984, p. 53). In this study, the respondents’ talk about

the guilt they felt as mothers indicated some of the

contradictions involved in the process of resistance.

Guilt was almost always talked about in the context

of the need to ignore it, Phillipa says [she experi-

enced guilt]:

When I deal with situations badly. If I shout at

Sarah, and then I think I shouldn’t have done that, I

should’ve done something different. Yes, oh

yes—I think guilt’s quite a large part of being a

mother actually. Because you always have an ideal

of what you want to be—and I don’t think you

ever measure up to that. And you can’t be. You’re

just a person too, you’ve got the same—I mean, if

I do things there’s a reason why I’m doing it. And

that might be because I’m having my period the

next day—all sorts of things. (Phillipa)

While respondents’ feelings of guilt are evidence of

the impact of the Pakeha mother identity and may

have led them to try to conform to such ideals, a

number fought against their guilt feelings. Guilt

created some distance from the identity and thus

introduced the possibility of resistance.

For those respondents who struggled against their

guilt feelings, their own experience of caring for

children had led them to reject the standards of

idealised motherhood, while at the same time, they

measured themselves against that standard.

Lots of times I feel all I’ve done all day, or felt

like it, is snapped at the child, or yell at him or

scream at him, or something. And I think—oh,

I’ve been horrible—but he deserves it really, he

can just be so aggravating . . . yeah, I feel guiltysometimes, I think why can’t I be like— you

know always good . . . it’s unrealistic to think that

I’m gonna be perfect, and he’s going to be perfect

as well—because neither of us are. Sometimes I

feel guilty. (Joanna)

The assertion that ‘mothers are fallible human beings’

bridged the gap between ideal and experience, while

the ideal still provided a standard against which they

could not avoid measuring themselves. Thus guilt as

a mechanism of self-surveillance and as introducing

reflexivity was highly contradictory in terms of its

regulatory effect. By its very nature, it introduced

distance between the subject and the identity which

opened up the possibility for her to question the

content of that identity as well as to measure herself

against it.

CONCLUSION

This paper presented my analysis of texts of inter-

views with 21 urban Pakeha mothers in terms of their

identification with motherhood. I argued that such

identification worked through processes of mastery,

discourses of difference and self-surveillance. I also

analysed resistant talk in these interviews, showing

that such talk could occur within the framework of

values associated with the Pakeha mother identity,

which conferred authority to define what good moth-

ering meant. For example, it was agreed being a good

mother required having ‘time to myself’ and for many,

it would have ideally involved shared parenting, to

allow their children to have more contact with their

fathers. Thus the identity was not static; speaking as

mothers, many of these women produced innovative

ideals about what good mothering could mean.

Guilt was a constant theme in resistant talk.

Butler’s (1997) analysis of guilt as occurring simul-

taneously with recognition and as introducing reflex-

ivity can help us to understand that guilt is an integral

part of resistance to the regulating effects of identity.

Guilt, while being a mechanism of self-surveillance,

introduces a subjective distance from the identity and

thus allows room for rejection of some of its content,

as when these women ‘allowed’ their partners to do

Agency and Identity 125

housework or refused to be overcome by guilt when

they were impatient with their children.

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