Supermum

It’s getting pretty weird at mine this week because every time I turn around something very strange has happened in the blink of an eye…. Here’s some photographic evidence…

DVDs in perfect straight lines along the edge of my daughter’s cot

A chair on top of the table which was cleverly placed directly behind me in the middle of the kitchen

Zack’s baby food jars neatly stacked on top of each other

My mum never used to let us say the P word as she hates it. ’Poltergeist’; It even sounds pretty scary to pronounce doesn’t it. Almost similar to the ‘candyman’ thing my mum was certain that if you say it three times something horrific will happen. Spooky or what! But despite me being a little afraid of my loft (its an old house goddammit!) and needing to have the light on if I go to the bathroom in the night,  I’m pretty hopeful that this little ‘poltergeist’ at my place goes by the name of Abigail (my 2 year old.) You can even see her running off in most of the photos.

I mean, what a strange thing to do, but it raises questions in oneself as to why we often just accept the norm. Maybe its time to start questioning things all over again with a fresh set of eyes. Taking an objective, ‘from the outside looking in’ type of view can really open up your mind to your current way of living.

It’s convenient and simple to slot yourself into a designated ‘motherly’ stereotypical rut. We resign ourselves to a lifetime of domestic slavery as it’s ‘the right thing to do’ and it’s what is expected of us as mothers.

However, I’m fighting this idea every step of the way as I have experienced it for the last two years and I hate it with an insurmountable passion. Things need to change as happiness is the priority here; not how well-pressed our linens are.

Although The Supermum Project seems to have a large focus on achieving a domestic standard in the home; I would not go as far as to say that we are a similar ideology to women’s institute groups or hopeful of any kind of sixties ‘housewife’ revival.

In running the home, household duties are not our only ‘job’ as such because when you are running a family it is ‘total control of an entire social institution’ that we are faced with. This requires serious skill and acumen when attempting to be in control of such a hugely demanding enterprise.

I know the cliché is that ‘children don’t come with instructions’ but you can get pretty damn close with all of the information available to you. There is, with this information however, a general focus on the health aspects and physical care of the children and this is unfortunately only a tiny aspect of the colossal role; that we have been ‘blessed’ with.

Women today are in real need of support with other basic things that many older generations will often take for granted as they have never had to struggle without them. Ingrained into their whole existence, basic household duties were clearly passed down to new mums by generations of mothers. Many young girls often benefited from the practical life experience of helping raise their siblings and doing all kinds of manual chores around the house for their own mother.

The decline of the family unit is a key factor, in the issues today that cause women to struggle in early motherhood. With broken home origins being a common occurrence it is unfair to expect young women to have any sort of idea how to run a home and manage every demand that comes with being the head of a family. If they didn’t have a chance to learn from their own mum how else would they learn such basic tasks? Not in school that’s for sure.

In our schools teenagers needlessly struggle with Pythagoras’ theorem; something that they will most certainly never come across again in life. Month long projects take place on the geography of Kenya and its tribes, a distant land with no practical relevance to the majority most of us. Technology teachers are paid over £22,000 per year to teach us how to build structures out of straws and glue and then don’t even get me started on the science lot with their atoms and planets and general not-of-this-world nonsense.  The UK education system spends thousands on ‘French’ lessons when English is the most spoken language in today’s world and most of the children never actually reach a fluent enough standard to actually converse with a French person.

I actually achieved an A* my in French GCSE and I was once stopped in traffic by a French lorry driver who was struggling to find a nearby factory. I had no idea where the factory was so despite being a pretty good French student, my French GCSE has still not been any use to me yet. I’ve had it for eight years now. Here’s to hoping that maybe one day it may be worth  the three years I studied for it and the over £60,000 total salary that a certain private school French teacher was paid to teach my class over the three years.

Meanwhile new mums all over the country are struggling to effectively manage their finances and could end up in massive debts. These women have never been shown how to wash clothes, clean their homes, cook meals, plan events, organise bills, change a fuse/tyre/plug/light bulb/nappy, do food shopping or just generally how to be prepared for all of the serious real situations that life will definitely be throwing at them.

The UK as a nation is suffering financially so it would be in our best interests to reduce the amount of people with depression and this in turn would reduce the current government spending on mental  health is currently in the region of over £6 Billion,[1] with an average real increase of 8.8% a year[2].

At the moment mental health is a massive issue for the government. According to Boardman et al (2004)Total non-psychotic mental illness in general practice is reaching 278 per 1000 people[3]. That’s more than one out of every four people that go to their GP.

When planning Perinatal health services for women in pregnancy and for the postpartum year, it has been widely accepted[4] after statistics show that “Women are at increased risk of developing a serious affective illness following childbirth. Women with pre-existing mental health problems…are at risk of relapse or recurrence of their condition during pregnancy and an elevated risk following childbirth”[5]

The current statistics show that out of every 1000 births, close to 196 women will suffer some kind of mental illness in the first year after giving birth[6]; that’s nearly 20% of new mums i.e. one in every five women!

The Supermum Project

The alarming rates of mental illness show us that The Supermum Project will be much needed, as our women today need as much help with coping as possible in their new role as a mum. We aim to prevent women from even starting to feel overwhelmed and depressed and we also want to help those who are already depressed to manage better.

An official doctor / health visitor referral

We are aiming to offer complete support network and extensive basic and in-depth practical advice. If the idea of a face to face weekly group meeting could be achieved this would be very instrumental in making us an official referral for mothers seeking mental health help after birth.

With more chance of funding we can reach out to more mothers and help tackle such a huge issue.

The project as an interest group

To eventually push educational policy towards a focus on the necessary life skills that will help new mothers will be a key outcome for the The Supermum Project as an interest group.

To make it possible for the existence of more useful “practical life” classes in schools will prevent as many women needing our workshops as these things will already be getting taught at a lower level. If women see the actually difficulties involved in parenting while they are at school we may be able to reduce the number of underage parents by crushing the ‘idealism’ of family life and show the realities of it all.

We also want to keep in place the support for mothers such as sure start activities for the poor and depressed mothers and keep our network available to mums who need help. If we could get a Samaritan style network to help mothers then this would really be an exciting achievement in our community.

To keep a regular up-to-date account of upcoming free events would be helpful in the community as mums can use the site to keep their diaries full e.g. a timetable for the week of different options.

Discussions with local MP’s may be of use to us so we will continue progressing watch this space for any further information as to how we can make a real change.

It isn’t just the effect of broken families or a lack of realistic useful education that can cause a woman’s lack of awareness of their household demands and roles. Coming from a rich and privately educated background, my parents were together throughout my teens and my mother was the epiphany of domestic goddess. With an Irish background my mother seemed to effortlessly live up to the demands on her as a mum and managed the entire home perfectly. Whilst organising all of her four children’s daily lives, as well as her own and my dads; this woman also managed to have a full time job and a constant smile on her face.

So how come I turned out to be so goddamn useless?!

You see, this is the problem in today’s culture; we’ve either never seen what mums are meant to do or we’ve had it all done for us by a Super-mum and never had to learn ourselves. As a self-confessed lazy student-‘bum’, I can see now that my mum did everything for everyone and was completely taken for granted. Until the day she left of course.

Despite such a lucky beginning; I started parenthood absolutely unaware of where to begin. Possessing no cooking skills whatsoever, no practical knowledge about laundry, cleaning and organising myself, I was financially idiotic and practically clueless in every way. I was in fact, the polar opposite of Mary Poppins; I was more like Mary BOBBINS.  I was frankly an absolutely unsuitable candidate to run any such enterprise. It was chaos at my place for about a year.

With terribly high post natal depression rates as they are, there is a desperate need to source the causes of the illness and attempt to make the situation better. The many roles of a mother can be overwhelming and confusing, to say the least, when a woman is first faced with the concept. Some of these essential roles can go undiscovered for the first year or two and many mothers would have benefited from a real management strategy from day one. Most of us may not have been ‘cut out’ to be a mother in the first instance but there nothing to say we cannot learn. Learning is a lifelong thing after all, is it not?

If more mothers felt confident they had the tools and knowledge to cope with their new position; it is common sense,  that this would most certainly cause a reduction in the number of mothers feeling that they ‘cannot cope’ and therefore less cases leading to post natal depression.

Initially we will uncover the many requirements that a woman will face while in her role as a mother and can hopefully we can shed some new light on one of the hardest vocations in the world today; parenthood.

Tags: about us, child's eyes, mother's role, mums, objective views, princes trust, siobhan kiely, studentbum to supermum, supermum, supermum mission, the supermum project, women power, women roles