Marie Porter

In this paper I will explore examples of general constraints that were placed on Australian women who became mothers between 1950 and 1965. For reasons I will give below, I will refer to the constraints as “confinements”... I will then explore how Roman Catholic¹ mothers were more affected than other mothers because of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Confinement is a particularly appropriate word for the era. I shall use it in two ways: firstly, in its usual meaning of constraint; and, secondly, in what was then its other common meaning, birthing. In the first instance, the socio-cultural norms encouraged, sometimes forced, Australian mothers, to live their lives confined in social interaction in ways that would be unacceptable now. For example, young girls and young women in the 1950s and 1960s were encouraged by their family, by the education system, by the media, by their religious upbringing and in their paid employment to see themselves as future wives/mothers. As wives and mothers, women were even more confined as they were expected to leave their paid work, stay at home and become financially dependent on their husbands. They were expected to do all the work in the home and to interact with the public world only to the degree that was necessary, or possible, in carrying out their duties as wife/mother.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the word “confinement” commonly was used was in a second way to describe birthing. Many people—the mothers themselves, the medical staff and people in general—would speak of a woman’s first confinement or her second confinement, referring to the birth of her first baby or her second baby, etc. Although birthing is not described popularly as “confinement” now, some in the medical fraternity still use the abbreviation EDC—estimated date of confinement. In this article I will argue that, while all mothers experienced confinement in both senses of the word, for Catholic mothers, the experiences of confinement were multiplied in both instances because of Catholic teachings, especially the teachings on contraception. The Catholic mothers usually had more “confinements” (birthings) and as a result experienced more “confinement” (socio-cultural confinement).

This paper is based on the material that emerged from in-depth, open-ended interviews that I conducted with a group of twenty-four Australian women. These women became first time mothers between 1950 and 1965. The group was further divided into two subgroups. The interviewees in one of the sub-groups were reared as Catholics and still claim this religious allegiance, while the other sub-group were Anglican/Protestant when they were young mothers. My material consists of 1128 single spaced pages, representing 67 hours of interviewing. If the whole mothering time of the women is taken into account until 2000, it represents 1001 years of mothering experience. All this material was transcribed and analysed using a qualitative grounded theoretical method (Glaser 1978; Glaser and Strauss 1968). In the analysis I have used NUDIST software². I situate my work within a feminist framework. In this article I will concentrate on one aspect of the data—confinement—as experienced by the interviewees.

To understand why the interviewees accepted the socio-cultural norms and values that constrained them as mothers, I draw on Giddens’ concepts of consciousness that he presents in his theory of structuration (1984). Giddens argues for three levels of consciousness: the unconscious, practical consciousness and discursive consciousness (1984:4-9). His concept of the unconscious refers to those “modes of recall” that the agent does not have ready access to because of some negative bar (1984:49). I am, however, interested in the latter two in this paper. I am not concerned with the unconscious. Practical consciousness is the level of consciousness where people have recall but carry out actions without reflection. They assume that this is the way to act, to do the particular activity. Grounded in practical consciousness and basic to both the agent in her day-to-day activities as well as to the continued reproduction of institutions, is the concept of routinization. Routinization is present when agents act out of practical consciousness. The next level of consciousness, according to Giddens, is discursive consciousness in which the actor has reflected before she acts. The boundaries between the two are fluid and actors move from practical consciousness to discursive consciousness as they reflect and become aware of their assumptions.

The interviewees, as young mothers, had already formed many ideas about mothering as they were growing up and as young adults. Such ideas were usually accepted as basic assumptions about “the way life is”, “the way to live”… These ideas form practical consciousness—that level of consciousness where individuals act without thinking because the actor has learned from the societal context, for example, from family, religion, education and the media. Action takes place without reflection. In contrast, when I was interviewing the women, in many cases, and in many areas, the interviewees had moved to a level of discursive consciousness where they could see and articulate what their assumptions were when they were young mothers.

In this paper I will explore some of the assumptions of “the way to live”, the way to mother, that emerged in the interviewees’ conversations. I will briefly examine how, in general, the women’s formation led them to assume that they were to be women mothers long before they actually became mothers. I will restrict the discussion to two formative aspects of social life—the family and the religious contexts. I will then explore confinement in marriage focusing on the interviewees’ financial and social situation. Finally, I will argue that, for the Catholic mothers, their experiences of confinement were strengthened by the religious teachings of the Catholic Church.

The influence of the social context on mothering was noted by Rich. In her book, Of Woman Born (1977), she argued that while motherhood had the potential to be an enriching, positive experience, the institution of motherhood that was under male control was oppressive and severely limited the enriching experience. The institution of motherhood referred to the construction of motherhood through such social systems as the family, the education system, the economy with its work patterns, the health system and the religious system. Underpinning this construction of motherhood in the period I am examining was a very basic premise held by all the women—the value of conformity.

The interviewees uniformly made the point that they grew up with the notion that it was necessary to conform and to obey and still assumed this was the way life should be lived when they were young mothers. Acceptance of the need to obey resulted in the greatest conformity—a lack of questioning. Some of the women list areas in which obedience was expected as obedience to teachers, to the church teachings, to parents, elders and those in charge of a situation, whether they were the police, the doctor, the clinic etc. Bronwyn, a Protestant, described how conformity was expected of her in these words: “We were just brought up to accept. ‘You must be in subjection to the powers that be!’ I had preached at me. Like that one?”³

Bronwyn’s words express the generality of the expectation of obedience leading to conformity operating across a very broad spectrum to confine the interviewee’s life choices. At the highest level, of course, the “powers that be” were usually men. Hence major societal decisions were the result of masculine views, thoughts and actions. These decisions would be filtered down through social systems and groups, and it may be that the individual woman would not see that her life was being influenced by such decisions⁴. I shall refer to two social institutions—the family and religion⁵—as examples of the presence of constraints that the interviewees’ experienced when they were growing up⁶. I shall then examine the constraints they faced once married.

From an early age it was assumed by the significant others in the interviewees’ lives, and by the interviewees, that their longtime future was to live as a wife/mother, caring for children, husband and home. Girls usually were encouraged to help their mother and to become proficient in the work the mother undertook. Laura is a good example of growing up familiar with “women’s work”. Here she is speaking about her experience as the only girl in a family of boys.

I was the girl – in the - family, and my mother was sick and my expectation was that I would – still do, --- help with the washing, the ironing, the cleaning of the house and the cooking, because I happened to be the - girl within – the family. And - which took up a lot of time in my life as a child. Particularly, I noticed, in my Junior year, when Mum was very sick, and the expectation was I still studied and – still did all the homely things that a girl had to do.

If Laura’s education suffered because she was housekeeping, it did not matter because she was destined for such work, not for any other career. The accepted wisdom at the time was that educating girls was a waste of time and money as they would only marry, leave their work and stay at home where their real career lay (Porter 1983:250). Paid work was to be only an interlude between leaving school and marriage, and, moreover, the wages for women were less than those for men doing the same work. Despite Laura’s desire to be a teacher, her parents, on a guidance officer’s advice, decided she should do office work—work she hated. Laura was not asked what she wanted to do and obeyed her parents despite her misgivings.

And I need [sic] to do a commercial - course, which I didn’t want to do. Which I didn’t want to do, but I was told that this is what the guidance officer had recommended. … It was a regret to me but there wasn’t communication between my parents and myself. The decision had been made.

The guidance officer who gave the advice was working in a state school, but Laura noted that the officer was very involved in the Methodist Church as was Laura. Laura thought that this participation in the religious institution influenced the officer’s advice. Similarly, other denominations played their part in ensuring that girls grew up knowing how to live their gender acceptably. Many interviewees were aware that the religious institutions expected that the married woman would stay at home and be responsible for the moral tone of the family, which would come from the moral guardians who were the church leaders (Hillard 1997:134). Here Anna, the mother of eight, is telling me the ideas she had gained from the Catholic Church about her responsibilities in marriage.

I can remember the priest saying, “If you don’t go to bed with your husband, he’ll run off.” He didn’t say, “Well, he has no right to always impose his wishes.” No. No. That will be your fault. That will be the woman’s fault if he ran away and stuff like that.

While Anna is Catholic, the expectation that the wife would please the husband existed across denominations. Also across the denominations was the expectation of obedience to the church’s teachings. Moreover, the worldview in Christianity encompasses both this world and the next, giving Christians more incentive to adhere to the religious teachings. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, Catholics were left in no doubt that if they did not obey the church’s teachings, they would burn forever in hell fire (Jordan 2000:153-155). I will cite Anna’s words again; this time referring to why she obeyed the teachings of the Catholic Church on birth control. She is speaking about the effect of the missions on her as a young person .

But- it –was very scary and then there’d be always a talk on hell and how you were going to be punished forever. I think I thought, “Well, yes, I’ll be a candidate for hell.” And who wants to burn forever, sort of? (she laughs) I know I had my babies.

All my interviewees had some affiliation with a Christian denomination which played a role in the individual’s construction of motherhood. Obedience led to conformity in religion as it did in the family. Freda, an Anglican, who was in an unsatisfactory marriage, made this remark about her reasons for staying with her husband. “I don’t know what the answer is but I just think I was bound by conformity of staying in that marriage – and the financial constraints.”

Freda’s statement raises another form of constraint that led to a confining situation for the mothers—the financial reality of marriage at the time. This constraint and the social constraint that also arose in part from exclusion from the workforce were important in the confining of the mothers. In the former, because the interviewee usually did resign from her work as she was expected to do, or, in some cases made to do, she became financially dependent on her husband’s earnings. In the latter, the mothers were usually expected to interact with the public world to the degree that it was necessary, or possible, given her mothering lifestyle.

Only three interviewees continued working after marriage, and all three gave up once they were pregnant which was soon after marriage. The woman’s space was the private world of the family and unpaid work. The husband became the breadwinner. Helen was one of the mothers who noted that this pattern was one of her assumptions. In this quotation she also noted other assumptions about the way things were.

Oh yes. I was always going to be a mother. – I think in our day, really, you sort of --- The thing was you – left school. You went to work. You got married. You had children. Your husband went to work and earned the money and you mothered the children. That – was the way I had been brought up – in a way and thought that was the way [things were

THINGS WERE.]

In the world in those days. And I thought everybody did it that way. (Slight laugh.)

Amongst my interviewees, everybody did do it this way at least until their children were at school. Thus the women were confined by a lack of any money of their own. The material from the interviews that related to the distribution of money fitted into three thematic categories—“overt financial constraint”, “covert financial constraint”, and “suspended financial constraint”⁷.

The problem with the husband being the sole financial support for the family was that the amount of money the wife received was totally at the discretion of the husband. He may be under a moral obligation to support his wife and children, but he was under no legal obligation to do so. Money was the source of power then as now. In two cases husbands openly exercised this power over their wives by not giving them an adequate proportion of their money. I label this approach to financial confinement as an exercising of overt control.

One of these interviewees is Ailsa. She had three children and her husband gave her an allowance out of which she had to manage the home and family. This allowance was barely enough for Ailsa to get by on. Her husband kept the remainder and wasted most of it. This is Ailsa’s account of what happened to the money she did not get.

Yes. Yes. He controlled his own but he didn’t know how to look after money. He would just go through it all. – Get it Friday. Go off on Saturday and by Saturday night it’d be gone. – Unless he had a win, which was very rare.

Ailsa acknowledged that when it came to what happened to her husband’s income, she had no control and was therefore in a powerless position.

The second category I label “covert control”. In this category the husband controlled the money either because he was the better money manager or because he and/or the interviewee had assumed he’d manage the money... The thirteen mothers confined in this way were aware of their husband’s power, but since he did not exercise that power to their detriment, they did not feel threatened by it. Carol was one mother in this position. She was conscious of her husband having the final say in money matters and was aware that should something go wrong she would be in a vulnerable position. However, with good reason she trusted her husband and was happy with this marriage pattern. Here is Carol’s reply when I asked her did she feel confined by her husband.

No. I don’t think so. I thought - ---I guess I thought it was equal. Except I was always conscious that if there was some sort of a dispute over something, --- This is just speaking theoretically. – Probably James would have – most say and I just think that’s the way it was in those days. Husbands were the head of the house. But it didn’t have to be put to the test.

I label the third category “suspended financial confinement” because in this group the men believed their wives knew more about the cost of living, or were better at handling money than they were. In nine of the twenty-four marriages the husband gave all the money to the wife. Where the wife had control of the home sphere and all the money, it gave her a greater sense of power. She was trusted by her husband and had the responsibility to the keep the family unit economically secure. Laura freely admitted that this trust was rather misplaced at first.

And I made a - hash of budgeting for the first three months. Every time I went shopping, I spent money. - Ah, we never seemed to have the money left we should have had. (Slight laugh.)

She continued to manage the family finances and became expert at it. Here, she is telling me how she feels about it. “And that’s a great trust between the two of us, that - --- I feel it’s a trust that he’s got in me.”

In this era, the mother interacted in the public world only to the degree that it was necessary, or possible, in her role as wife/mother/housekeeper. A strong public connection for the interviewees, one that many spoke of, and one that was connected to both senses of confinements, was the health system. All the interviewees’ confinements/birthings took place in hospitals with the babies delivered by a doctor. The mothers also attended the Clinic and sought a doctor’s advice from time to time. Thus they were regularly interacting with the health system in pregnancy, confinements/birthings, hospital stays, with babies and with sick children. While some of them expressed satisfaction with all or part of these interactions, many felt confined either by their doctor, the hospital system, the clinic or by all of them. Fourteen of the twenty-four women expressed negative experiences with a doctor. Usually, they felt confined by the lack of validity given to their knowledge and by their treatment. Nine of these fourteen also expressed positive experiences. This seeming contradiction of experiences is often the result of the interviewees’ freedom to change doctors if they were unhappy.

The hospital did not fare so well. Eighteen of the twenty-four mothers expressed dissatisfaction with hospital treatment. Six of the eighteen also expressed satisfaction. Hence twelve, or half, of the interviewees felt their hospital experiences were overall negative. The mothers felt very confined when in hospital, common feelings being isolation during birth, and a lack of consideration for them as individuals during and after birthing. Here I am citing Laura, the mother of four. She is speaking about one of her confinements.

You couldn’t even go to the nursery then to get your own child, or anything. And that’s when I found it hard. – That was one where I had to like it or lump it.

Eve, the mother of five, is telling me about her first confinement/birthing, and how she was both physically confined as well as being confined in the knowledge she was given about her birthing, despite being a fully trained nursing sister. She is recalling her time confined to bed...

When I got up, I read it. And it had all this information about him having the cord around his neck three times, and that he had been given heart stimulants at such and such a time, then ten minutes later, they said he was given more – heart stimulants, and – he had them given to him three times – to – keep him breathing apparently. But, nobody told me that. I just sneaked a look in the book. They didn’t tell you much in those days. Everything was – kept – mainly for the medical staff. The patients were never told much at all.

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT, EVE?

About not being told?

YES. YES.

Well, I just accepted it. I’m afraid in those days we just didn’t ask questions. – It was just the way we were. And we –accepted that was

THE WAY IT WAS.

The way it was, you know. I think, when I look back on it, I think it was wrong. I think they should have - told me that.

Eve’s words highlight how obedience to “the way it was” led to her conformity on the level of practical consciousness. When I interviewed Eve she had reflected on her treatment. In her now developed discursive consciousness, she is critical of “the way it was” then.

Mothers were similarly confined when their children had to go to hospital for any reason. The difference was that the mother was confined outside the hospital instead of inside the hospital. When Carol’s daughter, Hannah, at three, had to have an emergency operation, Carol was not supposed to visit her at all. She acknowledged how “horrible” it was for mothers to hear their children so distressed in a system that suited the medical staff rather than the mother and child.

Yes the doctors used to think that the children played up more when their mothers were there. I think it was a patriarchal thing. I can remember the old ear, nose and throat surgeon that we used to go to saying, “Children behave much better when their mothers aren’t there.”

DO YOU THINK THAT SHOWED MUCH THOUGHT FOR EITHER THE MOTHER OR THE CHILD?

None at all. Only for the staff and the doctor.

The other section of the health care system where mothers felt pressured to conform was the Clinic. While some mothers found the Clinic helpful, twice as many thought their advice was constraining rather than practical. Barbara found them judgmental rather than helpful. Here she is telling me about her experiences of the clinic with her first child. “And you go to the clinic and he’s overfed, he’s underfed or he’s got indigestion (spoken quickly). And so I’ve got this new baby and I think, ‘What am I going to do?’”

Most of the mothers used the clinic to the extent they found it helpful. Usually that was with their first baby or until the mother felt comfortable on her own. Most of the mothers stopped going when they came to a point where they were sure they knew their own baby better than the Clinic Sisters. By this time they found the advice they were being given narrow and confining. Dot’s words illustrate this reaction. She is telling me about her clinic experiences, and how she reacted.

Yes. Yes. Very stereotyped in our --- those times. Take the --- Undress the poor baby. I mean to say, weigh their clothes, do this, do that. Now is your baby doing this, this, this and they’d tick off things and ---, but they were very good guidelines. I think, if you didn’t try to stick to what their rules, [sic] you were right. And if you took everything to heart they said, you’d be really worried all the time.

Thus the mothers were confined on many levels. They were raised expecting to be the homemakers in society, and this assumption confined them in their ideals, their expectations, their education, their work and, consequently, their choices. Once married, the women were even more confined by their financial dependency and the expectation that they would do all the child rearing and housework. Underpinning these confining experiences was the greatest confinement—training in obedience, but not in questioning.

The influence of Catholicism on the Catholic interviewees, was such that these mothers experienced greater confinements/constraints because of their greater number of confinements/birthings. The Catholic Church had an extreme expectation of obedience to the laws of the church. The Catholic women were made aware of these laws during their education⁸, in their home, and in their Sunday attendance at Mass and in the confessional. Since attendance at Sunday mass and regular confession were regarded as an obligation on all Catholics, there was ample opportunity for the parish priest to reiterate the church rules. Most of the Catholic interviewees were raised in Catholic homes, educated in the Catholic education system, often worked in a Catholic work environment, and had Mary, the Mother of God, as their mother model. I will examine two areas of Catholic teaching which seemed to be most influential on the Catholic mothers. The first is the Marian influence and the second, and more direct influence, is the teaching on birth control.

This Marian influence was, and, in most cases, still is, strong. During their childhood and young adult years, the Catholic mothers had developed a strong relationship with their spiritual mother, Mary. In the 1950s and 1960s, Mary was depicted as the stay-at-home mother, whose pleasure came from looking after her son and spouse. She was portrayed as a self-sacrificing, passive, obedient, pure, virginal mother. She was the model mother and the model to which Catholic mothers were expected to conform (Porter 1994). Marian representations and teachings were well remembered by the Catholic interviewees. While in most cases the nature of this relationship has changed, the changed aspect of Marian influence is not the focus in this paper. Here the focus is the teachings with which the Catholic mothers were imbued as children and young adults, and how this influenced their ideas on motherhood. Ingrid recognised this lingering influence of the teachings on Mary.

But I was – aware that - she was my heavenly mother, even though she was human, but - --- Well I suppose, when we were taught to be – pure, and modest Our Lady would have been like that, and that would have just stopped in the back of your mind and so you just --- And that’s there all the time. It’s like - the norm.

Eleven of the Catholic mothers spoke of being taught that Mary was modest and pure. In Catholicism, purity refers to chastity. There was a great emphasis on Marian chastity, on Mary as the Mother of God and as a model for all Catholic women as the Catholic interviewees were growing up. The contradiction presented by a virgin mother model to Catholic girls when they marry and become mothers has never been addressed by the Catholic church (Porter 1994:11-113). Moreover, the Catholic teachings on birth control added to the ambivalence experienced by the mothers. Here Diane is referring to this contradiction and goes on to speak about the connection with these teachings on birth control which the Catholic mothers faced. The way Diane has spoken demonstrates very well the ambivalence she experienced as a Catholic mother who was faithfully following the birth control teachings of the Catholic Church, but had Mary as her mother model.

Well, we were – we were always told that Mary was the ideal mother. That --- And --- Because – she was pure and that’s why you must be pure and that’s what came through all the time, was this purity, – and to keep yourself, - but it was – not motherhood and I can’t remember so much as – motherhood coming through as – chastity. –This is the thing that they – rammed down your throat, always. – But then they didn’t tell you that that was going to finish when you --- or wasn’t going to finish when you got married. – When you got married, then all of a sudden they hit you with this fact that - --- I don’t think --- You sort of knew the facts of life as was, but you didn’t know that it was so constant. – That you couldn’t – that – sex and babies were so closely related that if – that you couldn’t do anything about it. They never sort of stressed that until – It was only when you were getting married that they started telling you about this - --- It was a no-no to have any sort of contraception. – And – in our days, they stressed that it was wrong - and even up until, I mean, they still tell you now. I don’t think anyone listens to them now, but we did. We certainly did. And – you didn’t question it – at all. (Interviewer agrees occasionally throughout.

The church was a very powerful influence._

It was a very powerful influence in that regard. Yeah. I don’t know – so much about mothering because – they did sort of stress on the Virgin Mary and how she was pure and how she was good, but once you’d had two babies, you lost that. Alright she was pure and she was good, but she didn’t have all those babies. – And yet, I had married a man. I wasn’t supposed to be pure and good. But I - --- I was stuck with all these babies. (Both laugh loudly.)_

In a section of her interview cited above, Diane clearly acknowledges the results of the Catholic teaching on birth control. In the Catholic Church, as in the general society, being a mother was held up as the greatest achievement for which a woman could wish. In Catholicism, motherhood was represented as sharing in God’s work. By conceiving, carrying, and birthing a baby, the mother fulfilled her destiny by creating more “souls for God”... This phrase was used by Anna responding to my question about whether she had been influenced by Catholic teaching when she had her family of eight:

Oh, definitely, I think so. Yes. In my notes I said that we were having souls for God and you know, this was an idea that was – that I’d heard, you know. And this was wonderful and God was on my side and he would provide and he’d help.

While Anna consoled herself with the idea that she was having “souls for God”, in reality she had a large family because of both her and her husband’s compliance with Catholic teachings on contraception. The teaching was that only abstinence and Natural Family Planning were legitimate forms of birth control (Mullins 2000:Ch 4). Neither was conducive to a healthy marriage relationship (Mullins 2000:133-136)... Anna and her husband tried both unsuccessfully. When the doctor gave Anna the birth control pill, the teachings of the church were so ingrained, Anna could not take it.

And I took one tablet. And I cried all night. And I said, “I can’t do this.” And that was – that was it. So, you have to say that – the – internalisation of – punishment, the fear of hell, and – and not questioning (was ingrained).

Diane pointed out, married couples do not expect to have to constantly abstain and Natural Family Planning was notably unreliable (Mullins 2000:137). As a result of obedience to the Church’s teachings, the Catholic mothers had more pregnancies, which affected all aspects of their lives—their bodies, their relationships, their ideas and their general motherwork (Mullins 2000:139). In the interviews with Catholic mothers, birth control is the main issue. It emerged as the major influence on the Catholic group of mothers. It is also emergent across all categories and is particularly related to mother work. As a result of the birth control ruling, the Catholic group have more pregnancies resulting in more motherwork. Family size and the concern amongst many of the Catholic women about birth control is a significant area of difference between the Catholic mothers and the Anglican/Protestant mothers. Taking into account only the babies who survived, the average family size for the Anglican/Protestant interviewees was 3, whilst the average Catholic family size was 5.5. Thus the Catholic interviewees had almost twice as many pregnancies, confinements/birthings and almost twice as many children to rear. If we look at the reproductive span of years of the mothers in the two groups, the non-Catholic number is fifty while the Catholic number is one hundred and one.

In the interviews it is practical mothering, motherwork, on which the women reflect and which they recall. Hence a feature of this material is its sheer physicality, its corporeality. There is the physicality of conceiving, bearing and birthing the babies. It is the physicality of the work—the tasks involved, the reaction to it, the ideas about it, the people who helped and influenced mothers in carrying it out—that I heard about. Hence, it is not surprising that mothers who have twice the number of children react distinctively to their motherwork.

Most of the Catholic mothers spoke of the contraception teaching as having a negative impact on their lives. Aspects of this negativity were the loss of sexual spontaneity, the distress of having babies too close, the resulting work and the weariness from the constant work. These mothers also are more inclined to look back and regret that they did not have time to spend with individual children with their individual differences. To cope with the workload and to keep the home running as smoothly as possible, there had to be a routine that did not allow for much flexibility. While these women love all their children and do not want to be without them, the way they had their children was not of their choice. Thus for Catholic mothers, added to the confinement of the social norms, were extra confinements (in both senses of the word) because of the church’s teachings.

As a result of their efforts to limit their families, many of the Catholic interviewees spoke about the negative effects on their marital relationship. Half of the Catholic mothers spoke of the lack of spontaneity in their relationship with their husbands. They felt that they had been robbed of the free expression of their love in marriage. Barbara was one of these women.

No, but what I’m saying, it should have been different. – You should be able to just go up and hug each other and do whatever. But I mean if I did that, you know how that led on.

YES. (INTERVIEWER LAUGHING)

And – I’d think, “I won’t do that because that might --- and then this isn’t the right time”

SO YOU HAD TO BE VERY SELF-CONTROLLED?

Yes. Yes. You had to do that. – I just don’t think that was fair. ‘Cause that --- there’s young life. That’s the best time of your life.

In two cases the mother said that she had practised restraint for so long that she never could relax and express her love for her husband in an uninhibited way. Here Kate gives expression to this claim.

It’s just that deep down you’ve been trained to – withhold these feelings, to such an extent, - all the time. – I’m not advocating premarital sex or anything like that. I still feel, --- I still wish the kids wouldn’t live together and – would wait, because I think there’s really something really, really, special about that, but at the same time, I think - once they are married they should be able to be as free as they want to be. – And I think at that time in your life, that’s a big important part of your life. - It wanes off as you get older but I think, at that time of your life … I think to - then, over the years, you – just --- It becomes second nature. – No, well not tonight. Not tonight.

Loretta, the mother of ten, was one of several of the Catholic mothers who drew attention to the reality that in the practising of Natural Family Planning it was the woman who usually was left to make the decision about the “safe” days. The husband was frequently not wanting another child, but still wanting sexual expression of their love. The woman was caught between the rules of the male hierarchy and the desires of the individual male. Loretta expressed this conflict, as well as noting, as Anna did in the earlier quotation, that Catholic women were made to feel responsible for their husbands’ sexual satisfaction.

I felt powerless in the whole sex thing. Because we’d been reared to believe that men had this – almost insatiable need and – like if you didn’t --- if you weren’t available, and it was your duty to be available, - they were likely to run off with somebody else. … it was just – his need – …

WAS PARAMOUNT.

Was paramount. Yeah and was always - --- It became a nightmare because of the pregnancies and because it was my decision. It would always have to be my decision as to whether this was the right time or not. – And a lot of times I wouldn’t be sure and - I would feel powerless in that way.

The natural desire of the couples to express their love physically and frequently, especially in the early years of their marriage, coupled with the unreliability of Natural Family Planning resulted in larger families for the Catholic mothers than the average for the Protestant/Anglican group. Often the children were very close despite the best efforts of the couple. Several children born rapidly caused a heavy workload. Diane was one of the many Catholic mothers who found it difficult because her babies were too close. She had her first five babies in six years and referred to the rhythm method as a “pretty sour song”.

Cath, a mother of seven, was the most affected by the teachings of the church on birth control. When I did the interview with her she was still distressed about the effect of the teachings on her life. When I asked her the standard opening question, “What stands out about your mothering as most important?”, her answer was,

Well, I think the bad part was the problems with having to have children all the time. It seemed to take – took over our lives. We watched the calendar. We had thermostats, and little things and our whole life was just sort of revolved around trying not to have children and having children and rearing the children.

Cath did not have easy pregnancies or births and so found the constancy of pregnancies difficult to cope with. Here she is referring to lack of sleep.

Yes. Yes. Well, of course, there was a lot of that. It was a sort of constant thing. You were weary and had broken sleep and, of course, you’d get up the next day and --- a few of them I was just sort of about six --- the child was about six months and I was pregnant again. Of course, I used to get sick for the first couple of months or whatever, and that was difficult. You try and mind this little thing of six, seven, eight months and you’re sick and you used to have to drag yourself around, type of thing.

To cope with the workload, the mothers of large families resorted to a strict routine. This routine usually ensured that the necessary work was accomplished, but seldom allowed for the exploration of individual differences. Several of the mothers regret this aspect of routinised childrearing, which influenced their relationship with their children and their enjoyment of them. Here Diane is explaining how she coped with her work.

It’s an automation. That’s what you do. You get up in the morning and this has got to be done and that’s got to be done, and - you had plenty of love to give and you had plenty of yourself to give, but not individually. Not enough individually. And this is - --- This is where it is hard to have had - all those children that --- I don’t know. I don’t know that the children have got those sort of regrets. But I sort of feel, I wished I’d been able to give each of them - a little more of what they individually needed because they are all so different. But you didn’t have time and you didn’t have time to think about it. You just did for one what you did for them all. I mean, you lined them all up and gave them piano lessons. And you - whether they were interested or not you think, “Well, I gave him a chance, I’ve got to give her the chance.”

Why did these women obey the teachings of the church? Earlier I drew attention to the importance of the worldview that religion provided, encompassing both this life and the afterlife in Christianity. If a Catholic woman used artificial birth control, she was in a state of sin. This sinful state put a barrier between the individual and God. This barrier could be minor or major—a venial sin or a mortal sin. If a Catholic died in a state of mortal sin, she would be doomed to hell. The only way to rid herself of mortal sin was to go to confession. The Sunday sermon and individual confession of sin gave the church, via the local priest, ample opportunity to emphasise the need to obey the rules of the church⁹.

Moreover, in this period, there was a focus on birth control because the birth control pill became available in 1961. There was great discussion in both the religious press and the secular press about birth control (Browne 1979). An outcome of the Second Council of the Vatican was a Commission to investigate the church’s teachings on birth control. When the Papal Encyclical, Humanae Vitae, was released in 1968 reiterating the church’s stance on birth control, the problem for those Catholics who followed the teachings of the church was highlighted. Many of the Catholic women spoke of going to confession to ask for help. For example, Cath frequently asked the priest in confession for permission to limit her family.

But I used to go to the confessional many times and just say, “Look, I’ve had three, four whatever - Something I can do to not have any more.” And just the emphatic “No. You just have to practise the Church’s teachings.” I used to go home at night and cry and my husband would see me crying.

This was the usual reaction women had in the confessional. There is no doubt that the confessional was used to make the Catholic mothers toe the line (Jordan 2000:151-8). The priests showed little sympathy or understanding of the woman’s plight. One mother who received such treatment did not believe the priests were capable of understanding the plight of women. These are Barbara’s words.

(Softly.) How could they? How could they at that stage. They wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know what women were going through or as I say, being sick or whatever they may be. And it’s not only that --- If you’re the woman, the mother with a very sick child, - asthmatics and people like that, and you’re up night after night, and with this worry, how do they know what it is like unless they’re living that time - for those mothers.

Three Catholic mothers did not have any particular problem with the teachings. Frances could not be bothered with the intricacies of Natural Family Planning especially when she was not supported by her Catholic husband. Joan had a fertility problem which resulted in her only having two children. She tried to have more, unsuccessfully. She observed that Catholic women who were having frequent pregnancies looked tired to her and that maybe she was lucky.

Hannah and her husband had their own interpretation of Catholic teaching on contraception—one that resulted in them limiting their family to two children. Hannah’s father became wheelchair bound from an illness when she was a baby and she was an only child. She had to help her mother care for her father and was acutely aware of her lack of siblings should anything happen to her. Hannah had a Catholic father and an Anglican mother. Where most of the Catholic mothers report being raised believing birth control was sinful, Hannah had different advice from her mother whom she greatly loved and respected.

Well, Mum said to me -, “You don’t have to have children every year. – You’re entitled to some life --- You and Lennie are entitled to a life yourselves. She said, all you would be doing was to be bringing children into the world and you wouldn’t --- your health would go and you wouldn’t be able to care for them.” That wasn’t a demand, it was just one night we were talking. And I said to her – about – I didn’t really feel I wanted to have a baby. I wanted to have a baby that is a baby for a time, that I could give that baby my – my attention, my love and treat it as a little baby. You see them come along, and one’s six months old and then they’re having the next one. It’s - still a baby sitting there crying and it’s got no cuddles or nothing ‘cause she’s too busy with the next one. I didn’t want that. And Mum said, “Well, - we – used the withdrawal method,” which was not a good one, now I know. – Sometimes condoms, sometimes withdrawal. And then – later on I got onto the Pill, same as everybody else. When the Pill became available I got onto that.

Hannah and her husband went to confession regularly, told the priest that they were practising birth control, but never were challenged. No one else was so lucky. The other Catholic women were not listened to with understanding.

For all the interviewees there was usually what I term a “crunch” baby. This was the baby the mother had and thought afterwards that she could not cope with anymore. For most mothers it was the third baby. Sometimes it was a later baby. For the one Catholic woman who practised birth control, Hannah, and for the non-Catholic women, when they felt they had had enough children, there was no problem. They used birth control. Not all of them used the birth control pill when it came out either because they were successfully using other methods or because of worry about the pill’s long term effects. These mothers look back on their years of mothering with more contentment. They do not want to change the way it was as far as their mothering is concerned. They do not have the same strong feelings that they want things to be different for their daughters in this area.

The Catholic mothers I have interviewed have coped with their load so efficiently and effectively that it is possible such women gave strength to the teaching by proving they could cope. They highlighted the good aspects of a large family. Weariness may have been a problem for many, but lethargy was not. All have coped, but not all would do it again. Of the twelve Catholic mothers, nine would change the “way things were” for them as a result of the teachings of the church on birth control. On the discursive level of consciousness, they reject the way it was for them. Only one Catholic mother would wish her daughter/s to have a similar experience. The others who have daughters are happy there is more choice for them. Gabriella, the mother of a child who had a disability, voiced these views strongly.

And I feel - that one thing that possibly came out of this – I always wanted my - --- the other girls to do their own thing more and to get out there and get into it and for you girls to have a happy life and live happily ever after.

The results from my research show that the institution of motherhood in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s worked to construct girls as women mothers, thus confining their choices in life. This process continued after marriage when, in particular, motherwork and the economic arrangements, tightened the confining ties. The number of confinements/birthings the interviewees had added to their experiences of social confinement/constraints. Most Catholic mothers had large families because of the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. Ten of the twelve Catholic mothers spoke of the negativities that resulted from trying to follow these teachings. Most of the Catholic mothers experienced too many pregnancies and felt the Church teachings confined them in their options.

These mothers described the distress of having babies too close and the resulting work and the weariness from the constant work. They also are more inclined to look back and regret that they did not have time to spend with individual children with their individual differences. While these women love all their children and do not want to be without them, the way they had their children was not of their choice. The institutional rules of the Catholic Church rather than their own wisdom determined the size of their families.

In Gabriella’s words, “It was that obedience almost from the Pope to the doctor, to us. We were doing it all the Catholic way.” In “doing it the Catholic way”, the Catholic interviewees experienced greater confinement in both senses of the word.

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