Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Mother’s Milk, I suppose, is about the difficulties for mothers of providing good care for babies and small children in a society where mothering has the status slightly less than that of a street sweeper. At the same time it shows that if the care you received when you were young was unresponsive it leaves you feeling very empty and dissatisfied and emotionally deprived and makes it hard for you to relate well to partners.
Tell us about Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn.
Mother’s Milk, I suppose, is about the difficulties for mothers of providing good care for babies and small children in a societies where mothering has the status slightly less than that of a street sweeper. At the same time it shows that if the care you received when you were young was unresponsive it leaves you feeling very empty and dissatisfied and emotionally deprived and makes it hard for you to relate well to partners. So it’s kind of about the causes and the consequences. The central character is struggling with all sorts of problems that relate to his own early care and at the same time he is a father with a wife and small child and there are parts where he discusses the fact that the mother of his child is up against a culture which is really hostile to the provision of good care.
This is the fourth book in his quartet and he was a heroin addict, wasn’t he? Is that a fairly typical trajectory? From poor care to addiction of some kind?
Well, actually, he’s a friend so I know rather a lot about him and I knew his parents. Heroin addiction is much more… His heroin addiction is associated with personal deprivation in early years but it’s also very much associated with sexual abuse. In his case, of course, he was sexually abused by his father.
Oh, of course. I had deleted that hideous aspect of it from my mind.
But he moved on from discussing that and the impact of that, which was the major theme of the first two books.
And you knew his father?
Roger? Yes, I knew him very well. He was in many ways a charming, intelligent person. Of course, he was also a very cruel person. But he was generally cruel to women rather than men. So he was always a highly entertaining man in my dealings with him, but, obviously, you wouldn’t have wanted to have him as a father. You wouldn’t have wanted to be his daughter or his wife. And also you wouldn’t have wanted to be his son.
You say society is hostile to mothers and maternal care, but isn’t it a lot better than it used to be? I’ve watched the Robertson films [made in the 1950s, documentaries that follow small children going into care and into hospital] and things seem to have come on a lot since then.
In some respects, but I think this is a very difficult question to answer – has mothering got better or has it got worse?
Well, we’re not allowed to beat them as much as we used to be allowed to?
Well, an awful lot of parents hit their children still. About 90 per cent of parents hit their children. My latest book shows that about a quarter of mothers are what I call huggers, and they probably do provide the best care that babies have had in the history of the world, but some of them become depressed, because they are isolated or for whatever reason, and then it’s not so good.
What do mean by hugger?
Well, someone who puts the needs of the baby first, obviously. Lets the baby sleep in the bed, feeds on demand and all that sort of stuff. Maybe there was more hugging in the 60s and 70s but the trouble is that that was when the divorce rate started to accelerate. It’s difficult to speak scientifically about this, but I would estimate that in the last 30 years there has been a dip in the domestic household economy – more women going out to work, though not nearly as many as everyone thinks. Still only a third of children under three have a mother who has any paid work.
Astonishing.
The reason it’s astonishing is that we’re in the top social class and working full time is much more common among university-educated mothers.
So, if we’re huggers and being nice to them all the time, it’s better but still not great?
No, it’s fine as long as you don’t get depressed. There are huggers who work, though they don’t usually want to, but they are more likely to find substitutes who also hug. It doesn’t matter who does the hugging as long as somebody does.
Huggers sounds a bit derisive to me. It’s not meant to be?
Not at all.
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Oliver James trained and practised as a clinical child psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist, broadcaster and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include the best-selling Affluenza, They F*** You Up and Britain on the Couch, which was also a successful documentary series for Channel 4. He is a trustee of the Alzheimer’s charity SPECAL, and lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and two small children.
