Do mothers dream of electric babies the importance of emotional bonds for growing nurturing and educ
Do Mothers Dream of Electric Babies
The Importance of Emotional Bonds for Growing Nurturing and Educating Giuliana Mieli
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Philip K. Dick
We live in a society that ignores and disregards attachment needs and feelings. Starting from this consideration, the author describes the stages of human emotional development in a lucid narrative which is both scientifically rigorous and grounded in clinical examples. Mieli critically investigates the origins of a specific weariness towards feelings which is reflected in the history of Western philosophy and science, resulting in a cultural disregard of emotional needs. The book powerfully suggests that if undeterred, this disregard may lead to severe consequences for the future of our society. Research compellingly shows that responding to fundamental emotional needs is a psycho-biological requirement necessary for human wellbeing and survival itself. Mieli contends that its oversight has a counterpart in the dramatic rise of mental distress in contemporary society, as well as in the difficulties that are increasingly encountered around maternity, fertility, and parenting.
Giuliana Mieli, PhD, DClinPsych, Psychotherapist, after working in the first mental health community services in the 1970s, has been a consultant in the maternity wards of St Gerardo Hospital (Monza) and at St Giuseppe Hospital (Milan) in Italy. Aside from clinical practice, she has dedicated herself to the psycho-education of medical and paramedical staff in various local health centres, and to training and supervising freshly graduated clinical psychologists and psychotherapists. She is currently based in Florence.
DO MOTHERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC BABIES?
The Importance of Emotional Bonds for Growing, Nurturing, and Educating
Giuliana Mieli
First published in Italian in 2009 as Il bambino non è un elettrodomestico. Gli affetti che contano per crescere, curare, educare by San Pablo Comunicacion SSP
First published 2019 by Routledge
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CHAPTER THREE The need for a
A brief plunge into the history of philosophy
Joseph Needham: a scientist who reconsidered Western scientific premises through the eyes of another culture82 Critical views on Western science: Whitehead, Husserl, Marx, and Paci
The revolution in physics and its philosophical implications108
CHAPTER FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank my daughter, Lucia, for her help and support in making this English edition possible.
To Enzo Paci and Joseph Needham, who inspired me, and to Costantino Mangioni, who let me learn by doing.
PREFACE
This book is not an academic essay: it is, rather, a journey through the emotional and professional experiences that, in my own life pathway, have brought me to understand what I will describe herein.
My intention in writing this book was to take the reader by the hand and accompany him or her through a process of experiencing and reasoning around birth which has fascinated and inspired me in the first place. No previous knowledge or expertise is required to read this book, as I did not aim to address a selective circle of specialised readers, but anyone who might share my interest around these themes. For this reason, in Chapters Three and Four, I chose not only to reference the authors who inspired me the most, but to quote their words in full so as to give the reader immediate access to texts which are otherwise difficult to get hold of, as most of them are no longer in circulation. Readers who have little or no interest in this theoretical part can simply skip it and move straight on to the next chapter.
For the sake of simplicity, in this book the child or baby of either gender will be generally referred to with masculine pronouns, unless otherwise specified. Since my aim has been to provide a meaning framework to our bio-psychological makeup, as designed in our evolutionary past, and explain how it gets expressed during the
physiology of procreation supporting its felicitous outcome, in this book I will refer to “mother” and “father” as the primary and secondary caregivers; by this I mean two figures united to each other by a reciprocal choice of desire and made secure by a loving attachment bond which concretises in the wish for a child. Obviously, in the course of history as well as today, other emotionally bonded figures have come to effectively impersonate the roles of the caregiving couple, but I believe that knowing what nature prepared for in terms of bio-psychological needs and their organisation remains fundamental for all good caregiving. x PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
“Elderly primiparous . . .” was the startling expression that inaugurated my journey as a pregnant thirty-nine-year-old when I first sought the services of a maternity ward. I vividly remember how this blunt statement profoundly shocked me at the time. It immediately triggered an intense feeling of shame, as if someone were standing there scolding me for having waited too long something that, however unpleasant, I was willing to accept but also suggesting that this delay could have less than positive or even adverse effects on the outcome of my pregnancy. I felt stricken, as I said, by those words, just as I would be in so many instances and procedures I was going to be subjected to during my gestation: just to name the most invasive one, an amniocentesis test1 that was unrequested and performed on me without prior information. This feeling of uncertainty, helplessness, intrusion, and shame would accompany me in all my pregnancies. Then, all I could do was just bear it, whereas only much later I would learn to consider it and understand its roots in a different light. Later, when the circumstances of life led me to my transformation from a psychotherapist working in pioneering psychiatry to an “expert” in motherhood.
But let us take a step back. My first university degree was not in psychotherapy, but in theoretical philosophy. This was a subject that had fascinated me since high school but which I had had to drop until the events of 1968 gave access to the humanities to students who had majored in scientific studies in the lower grades. In fact, I had also been passionate about physics and chemistry, so much so that my graduate thesis, eventually, ended up being a comparative analysis between Western and Chinese developments in philosophical and scientific thought. I was tutored through this difficult but fascinating research by the unforgettable Enzo Paci, and it was he who directed me to the writings of Joseph Needham.
An embryologist and biologist, Needham had been a leading figure in Cambridge since the 1930s, a time when prominent physicists like Rutherford, Bohr, and Heisenberg were intent on grappling with the recent discoveries in physics. At the turn of the century, the momentous introduction of groundbreaking theories such as Einstein’s relativity, quantum theory, the particle-wave theory of light, and the uncertainty principle (just to name a few) had, in fact, fundamentally challenged the basic theories at the roots of classic Western science. Years later, Needham confided to me how the climate in Cambridge back then was one of restless excitement and fierce debating. He was, therefore, surprised to notice that the reaction of the Chinese exchange students in physics and chemistry was, instead, strikingly at odds with the general mood. In particular, they appeared little shaken by the observation of the dual nature of matter and of its dynamism, a concept that, far from clashing with Chinese ancient philosophy, they told him fitted perfectly with it. Needham was fascinated by this revelation, and went on to become the greatest sinologist of the twentieth century. My encounter with him allowed me to understand, through another culture’s philosophy, the advantages and limitations of “classical scientific thought”, which I came to discover was not a transparent outlook on nature. Instead, I learnt to read it as a relative and historically construed framework grounded in determinism and mechanism. In the Western world, however, this approach continues to prevail as the rational point of view to the understanding of nature, serving up false, shortsighted certainties wherever applied to realms of enquiry whose complexity exceeds its heuristic power.
My studies in philosophy and comparative sciences allowed me instead to develop a capacity, or, rather, naturalness, which I later
brought to my work as a therapist, to stay with things, resisting the urge to classify, following the very contemporary (and very Chinese) belief in the continual transformative power of life and energy. These studies also provided me with the assurance that seemingly unknown or strange clusters of phenomena can, in a context capable of understanding, transform themselves and be resolved.
But I would not stop there, in the world of academia. More than in speculation, I was, in fact, interested in action. I wanted to find a way, a field where my speculative passion which had led me to break out of the invisible rules guiding that flat, “normal” reasoning which had proved incapable of grasping the complexity of life, the unity of matter–energy, the complete correspondence of body and mind could find active expression and become a way towards change.
Therefore, I turned my attention to social research and, fascinated and enthused by my meeting with Giulio Maccacaro,2 took part in the first mental health centres opened countrywide just before the Basaglia reform abolished mental asylums in Italy. I had to get a second degree, one in Clinical Psychology, to be allowed to work as a psychotherapist, but it was well worth the effort. Field experience with seriously ill patients, both in hospitals and elsewhere around the country, confirmed to me that the distress expressed in “folly” actually had, rather than organic, deep emotional origins, which were rooted in each individual’s history and had been reinforced by social and cultural double-binds.
My experience with psychiatric patients powerfully conveyed to me how human beings, in order to survive and actualise their creative potential, need not only food and shelter, but also love. This is when I also discovered that the expression of love cannot be haphazard , but that there is an innate, biological template governing the arousal and expression of feelings, which stands at the root of our survival and well-being. I discovered, in fact, that this template is not only useful, but also necessary for the survival of the species. If altered, distorted, or abused by the socioeconomic power dynamics or by cultural values be it in the life of an individual or in society as a whole the penalty is dramatic: suffering, pain, distress, and, ultimately, madness as a last defence of the self, stating the impossibility of survival as a human being under those circumstances, as well as upheavals, decay, and the risk of the dissolution of society on a greater scale.
Working in the first community mental health centres, at the forefront of the struggle for the recognition of the social origins of mental health diseases, was, therefore, an intense and enriching experience for me. However, as I became pregnant and with the birth of my own children, I found that I did not have it in me to pursue this full-time work further. Trusting my emotions as meaningful and protecting what is important for well-being, I actually determined that I would not give up the joy of looking after my children. Therefore, I set up a small private practice, and held back my nostalgia for the socially engaged work I did at the mental health centres for the time being.
It was a hospital St Gerardo, in Monza that opened the door for me to return to work within the public sector, the same hospital I stumbled into when, as an “elderly primiparous”, I was desperately seeking a more humane, caring environment than the one I had encountered at other maternity services. A more humane environment that I did find at St Gerardo, where, after coming to know me and my previous work, I was asked by the Head Physician if I would be interested in helping to set up the prenatal courses.
So it was that, pregnant among pregnant women, I began observing obstetricians and doctors at work. I started to study and learn, and to apply my philosophical speculations and experience as a psychotherapist to a completely new field for me, the field of motherhood.
Notes
1.A procedure in which, around the fourth month of pregnancy, a sample of amniotic fluid is drawn through the mother’s abdomen to extract cells of foetal origin, for the purpose of DNA screening for genetic abnormalities. The test can be risky for the mother and foetus and nowadays it is compulsory to obtain informed consent to perform it.
2.A doctor, biologist and statistician who became a prominent figure in sociological and epidemiological research applied to mental health in the 1970s in Italy.
CHAPTER ONE
My clinical experience in a maternity ward
Mixed in among pregnant women, an anonymous observer in the pregnant public attending the prenatal courses, I first of all noted how a great deal of information was being given regarding birth and the post-partum period.
For instance, techniques were taught regarding breathing and relaxation, and a great emphasis was also placed on the importance of breastfeeding. However, none of this I found was in any way justified or backed up by an explanation of the intrinsic link between human subjective experience, as expressed in our emotions, and its embodied manifestation in the body. I noticed with amazement that no mention was made of the extraordinary physical and emotional transformations we each undergo, as children, during our slow development along the demanding, gradual pathway from symbiosis to separation through the difficult conquest of autonomy. In other words, it seemed to me that rules of hygiene and behaviour were being recommended without any grounding within a meaningful framework based on a proper philosophical or psychological understanding of human nature.
How and what were covered, but not why. The result was that the courses conveyed a set of overall superficial instructions, which I
sensed would be easily uprooted by any pseudo-information or fad that parents might eventually come to contact with via all sorts of dubious means of communication, as happens with increasing frequency in our culture. The outcome I observed was a noticeable anxiety among the pregnant women, all sincerely wishing to be adequately prepared for motherhood and all genuinely interested in learning how to act in order to be most useful to their children. However, instead of a framework capable of providing them with authentic guidance, they were instead showered with loads of information and over-detailed, contrasting directions that were, overall, both insufficiently explanatory and contradictory, which easily created disorientation.
For someone like me, accustomed as I was through the practice of psychotherapy to restoring disturbed emotional balances and to healing the emotional debris left by damaging child-rearing practices suffered early in life by my adult clients, it seemed shocking to see that, in a place like this, where children were brought into life, no serious guidance was given in the courses as to what constitutes emotionally healthy parenting. No mention was made of the importance of respecting, understanding, and supporting the child’s needs and growth, and of safeguarding both his physical and his emotional wellbeing. No information whatsoever was provided to increase awareness in mothers and fathers as to what child development entails and what role they would soon be called upon to play to facilitate it. The prenatal courses did not, in particular, provide vital information as to how the child’s slow process of emancipation from dependence to emotional autonomy is, in fact, dependent on the consistent and secure presence and support of qualitativelyspecific parental templates of responses to the baby’s irreducible developmental needs.
I spoke to doctors and midwives in the ward about this bewildering omission in the courses but, to my even greater surprise, I realised they appeared completely oblivious as to the point I was trying to make. I was dumbstruck. Although I did not expect them to be informed about the latest discoveries in evolutionary psychology, I had taken for granted a minimum knowledge of how emotions are organised in relation to the interpersonal context that evokes them: some intuitive common sense, at the very least an experiential awareness of the instinctive set of emotions inevitably evoked in doctor–patient relationships. Even here, in fact, there is a “little one” and a “grown-up”: one in need who yields, entrusting herself to the other’s care, and a
more knowledgeable other who is called upon to meet this trust and attend to the patient’s needs.
I was surprised because ignorance of this fact is not only likely to generate disastrous misunderstandings in doctor–patient communication (just as the same ignorance creates disasters in parenting relationships), but also because not knowing about the basic emotional dynamic underlying caring relationships prevents doctors from being able to do their job effectively and efficiently. Their care, in fact, would require less effort if they knew how to embody and deploy a specific pattern of relating intrinsic to any caring role. I am referring to that qualitatively salient attitude of emotional availability and non-judgemental openness to listen, which is especially apt to hold and contain latencies, uncertainty, anxieties, questions, and doubts which the patient naturally bestows upon her doctor, seeking a soothing response. If the doctor keeps his distance and communication is cold and impersonal, the message actually conveyed to the one in need is not neutral, but, rather, transmits that the emotionality of the doctor–patient relation is rejected, with the consequence that this unaddressed emotional tension could have a negative impact on the outcome of care.
Why on earth were my colleagues unaware of the importance of the relational aspect of their care? Were they aware that their patients were persons? Did they have an adequate enough concept of “person” to be able to relate to one? I came to understand that today’s medicine focuses on the sickness, not the patient. “Elderly primiparous” was beginning to sound like the sign of a certain mentality: the result of a school of thought that transforms patients from persons to a constellation of symptoms on which a set protocol of interventions is performed.
Compared to the doctors, the nurses and midwives on the maternity ward were less distant and more emotionally participant (though not always appropriately). The relationship itself with the patient was closer and longer, as well as more direct, with a subtler definition of roles and less interference from technology. There was more room for familiarity and spontaneity, allowing for a more integrated perception of the patient’s needs, expectations, anxieties, doubts, and fears.
On the other hand, doctors looked more like “unwitting parents” with regard to their patients’ needs: shrouded in their white coats, stethoscopes hanging around their necks, they appeared indifferent to, or even disturbed by, the anxious expectations of their patients.
These, in turn, appeared shrunken during interactions with the medical staff, as if reduced to fragile human beings facing disagreeable, inscrutable deities. I was, however, to discover that this aseptic approach was not considered problematic, but, on the contrary, the prerequisite of an effective doctor–patient relationship. Medical schools, in fact, actually recommend and teach this attitude as the standard, the only means to control and prevent in doctor and patient alike an otherwise dangerous, disturbing, and unscientific emotional involvement from forming.
As I reflected on all this, a new opportunity for an exchange with the medical staff came my way. I was asked to take charge of delivering prenatal diagnoses, which, in this context, refers to the outcome of early tests carried out to identify any foetal anomalies. This obviously involved dealing with feelings of pain, risk, and failure, feelings that we might not like, but which are inherent emotional components of childbirth just as much as are desire, expectant trepidation, and hope. They are much more “inconvenient” to hold, however, since they directly correlate to loss and inadequacy: to a defeat of the project, to a failure of the caring environment. Even in the doctors’ perspective, in these instances an aseptic attitude was no longer fruitful, but it was recognised as an inadequate tool for dealing with pain. Suddenly, emotions, which had been thrown out of the window as unscientific and dangerous confounding variables by the medical diktat, were now coming back through the door; the request was for me, a “psychologist”, to become a sort of “bereavement expert” and be left to deal with all these inconvenient feelings they wanted nothing to do with.
Naturally, I refused to play this role. I felt, in fact, that accepting the management of the problematic cases would have meant being collusive with the general denial of affectivity in place among the medical staff. If I had complied, I felt I would have confirmed, and even implicitly authorised, the prevailing schism between the purely medical and the emotional aspects of care. It would have meant abiding with the notion that the emotional aspect of childbirth ought to be taken care of only when absolutely necessary: namely at times of bereavement and suffering linked to failure.
Since then, I have taken it upon myself to spread awareness of the scientific fact that there is no life without the affective process that underpins our experience of being alive; we simply cannot cleanse it out, and neither should we. Our emotional experience of events is, in
fact, comparable to our physical perception of hot and cold, hunger, thirst, or tiredness; it provides human beings with a fundamental sixth sense fostering the survival of our species. In the same way as physical perceptions, our feelings provide us with the basis to identify whether any given context, be it physical or interpersonal, fosters our well-being or hinders it. If recognised and listened to, our feelings, therefore, guide us towards addressing what causes us pain or distress, promoting wellbeing through the active negotiation of a better relationship with the environment, both physical and interpersonal. Fear, anger, joy, curiosity, trust, suspicion, anxiety, pleasure, desire, sympathy, and so many other emotions explain to us our environment and what surrounds us. Nothing happens in a vacuum. There is always some kind of feeling to go with our living body and this ends only with our physical death. It is never really possible to be unaffected by the feelings that we feel and by the ones experienced by the people who surround us.
Accordingly, I did not like the idea that only when dealing with bereavement should we suddenly notice the emotional component that permeates pregnancy. I could not accept the notion that pregnancy and childbirth might be reduced to purely physical events, shunning the myriad feelings that accompany and orientate us through this process. I felt that the emotional component had to be reconsidered and reaffirmed so that, at least at the moment of birth, life could be restored to its complexity, poetry, and to its mystery and sacredness. Therefore, instead of accepting the bereavement expert role, I proposed that the doctors joined me in a “training in affectivity”. In the course of our encounters, I would provide them with an understanding of the meaning, function, and organisation of emotions, something that would help them to acknowledge, regulate, and deal with their own emotions as well as those of their patients, making them aware of how crucial a role they play in accompanying women through the adventure of childbirth. This would accustom them to navigating and dealing with their own limitations, with pain and failure, all inevitable parts of their lives and profession, with no magical cures or escapes, but manageable only through empathy, participation, sharing, and solidarity.
I will never forget a significant episode I witnessed in the obstetrics A&E, which happened at around that time. In preparation for the
training, I was given the task of observing doctor–patient relationships during consultations so as to be able to point out and eventually work through any deficiencies in emotional communication I might identify. Consequently, in my white coat and without revealing my true identity, for a while I stationed myself in the obstetric visiting centre, observing in complete silence and withholding any comment for a later moment.
One day, I entered a consulting room just as a young doctor was seeing a couple of more or less her own age. The woman had suffered some bleeding and the doctor was trying to explain to the couple how it was impossible, given the early stage of the young woman’s pregnancy, to make a proper diagnosis of what was happening simply on the basis of an ultrasound scan. That meant that there was no way of knowing whether or not the patient was still pregnant, or if she had had a miscarriage, or if her pregnancy was extra-uterine. The patient was to go home and not be left alone, just in case there was any more haemorrhaging.
With every new hypothesis regarding her condition, I saw the patient a slim, emaciated young woman with a pained look sink deeper into her seat, curling up as if to protect herself from the increasingly painful darts with which she was being bombarded. She looked terrified and helpless, while the doctor coolly rattled off the various medical hypotheses and not one word more. This was July and it was very hot. The patient’s companion, who was standing beside her, was wearing only an undershirt, barely concealing what once might have been a handsome body but which had now grown stout. Nevertheless, he had a manly “leave it to me” attitude, taking in every diagnosis in the way in which one would parry a blow and showing an incredible ability to think positively. He would be the one to look after her at home; he would even take time off work. From the way he spoke, you could tell this was not the first time they had tried to have a child, hitherto unsuccessfully. But this time, whatever the outcome might be, at least she was pregnant, which meant that his own undergoing of an operation for a varicocele on his scrotum a varicose enlargement of the veins of the spermatic cord had been useful. While the couple sadly walked out of the room, I felt pity for that quiet, emaciated-looking young woman who was dying of shame and guilt for still not having made it to motherhood.
I was still thinking back on the sad episode and weighing the options of suggesting to the doctor a slightly more participative and
concerned approach with her patients, when, all of a sudden, the consulting room was invaded by an exuberant gypsy. I suddenly remembered having seen her outside as she paced up and down the waiting area. She was a young and breathtakingly beautiful woman, with a cheerful face lit up by a pair of bright green eyes, and she was obviously pregnant, with her belly jutting out boldly. Not in the slightest bit shy, she came in without knocking and came to a halt in the middle of the room. She demanded a scan: she wanted to see her baby. No, she did not have an appointment, and neither did she want to make one; she could not wait; she was a ride operator with an itinerant funfair and who knew where she would be tomorrow with her caravan? “Quick, doctor, show me my baby!” The young doctor was taken aback by such determined assertiveness. She tried to appeal again to the need for an appointment, but to no avail. In the end, having tried in every way to put her off, she gave in and, against all rules and regulations, proceeded to see the patient, throwing desperate glances in my direction in search of some complicity from me.
The gypsy answered evasively to the usual basic questions; she was vague about the number of children she already had, and even more vague about when she had had her last period. As she was getting ready, shedding layer upon layer of colourful skirts to take her place for the examination behind the screen “so I can see my baby”, a more experienced male doctor who had previously been called in for a consultation on the previous patient’s case, unexpectedly walked into the room. He was an old acquaintance of mine, happy to see me, and asked what I was doing there. Before I had time to answer, the gypsy woman instantly jumped up, grabbed my male colleague by the shoulders and shouting “A man!” literally threw him out of the room without any of us daring to intervene. So it was that she finished her examination undisturbed and far from what her culture had obviously made her experience as male prying eyes.
I remember feeling at that moment as if the gypsy’s healthy impetuosity, her guileless, direct defence of her needs, redressed the scales somewhat towards avenging the shy little frightened patient who came before her. The young doctor, who had managed the earlier patient in strict accordance with medical school recommendations, had clearly suffered a destabilising blow to her hard-won aseptic stance; a blow brought to her by a simple, probably ignorant person who merely clung tenaciously to her powerful, explosive, emotional need to “see her baby”, not taking no for an answer.
Let the newborn be.
Let them have room so that they may breathe.
Do not let them have everything thought for already.
Do not read to them from the same book.
Let them for themselves discover dawn and give their kisses a name.
Pablo Neruda (2003, p. 36)
CHAPTER TWO
From undifferentiated to differentiated. Birth, growth, and the achievement of independence: an emotional perspective
In the human animal, pregnancy lasts forty weeks. This is, arguably, a very long time, but it is so designed to protect and foster what needs to be a slow and delicate process. Similarly, the child’s process of separation from parental figures after birth needs to be a slow and gradual one. The need for this becomes apparent if we just think of the complexity of the neurological and emotional development that needs to take place within the facilitative environment represented by the relationship with our carers. Nowadays, the World Health Organization sets the age that marks adult autonomy at twenty-four. In considering this slow process of emancipation from infantile dependence to adult autonomy, I find we often forget to take into full account its deeper meaning. There is, in fact, a difficult and complex process that must take place within the primary relationships so that a sense of security a sine qua non conditionfor survival, let alone well-being can transform from being dependent on the contingent availability of unconditional support, originally ensured through the physical and emotional symbiosis with mother, to gradually become a feature of emotional autonomy of the self. This is what, in turn, makes it possible for adult human beings to navigate the world, to plan and make responsible choices.
This transformation of security from an interpersonal to an autonomous feature takes place by way of the slow internalisation of the dependability of the earliest experiences of care through their repetition and gradual modification over time to accommodate the child’s expanding capacities. In their watchful and attuned participation, parents, hormonally and emotionally equipped for this role, fulfil their core task when they support and facilitate the passage from security in dependence to autonomous self-confidence for their children.
Compared to other animals, human beings are equipped with a far greater capacity for self-determination, agency, and for changing the environment to accommodate their needs, rather than adapt to the status quo. Nevertheless, we are conditioned in our ability and freedom by a physical and emotional physiology pertaining to our nature as animal-men. This dictates clear, unavoidable conditions for our survival, for our well-being, and for attaining an emotional quality of existence which is more fundamental than usually supposed. Following his free will, in fact, a man can easily drink cyanide or jump from the tenth floor of a building. However, having disobeyed the natural rules of physical survival, he would not live to tell of his expression of “free choice”. Our considerable freedom is, therefore, not unconditional, but unavoidably linked to the natural laws of an environment in which we live and from which human beings cannot escape. Before addressing mental distress, psychology is or should be the science that studies the emotional and relational conditions that allow our survival and well-being. If we did not know them, or they did not exist, in fact, how could we claim we could help our clients restore them and feel better?
In the history of Western thought, it has never been sufficiently considered or scientifically theorised that human survival is not only dependent on certain physical requirements, but that emotional conditions also exist and are just as binding. The discovery and scientific theorisation of these binding emotional conditions for human existence is only recent and seem not to have been translated into common knowledge or to have made an impact on the organisation of our social life yet. This ignorance represents, I would argue, a severe danger for our survival, at least as much as the blind form of technological development that is currently threatening the preservation of life on earth. On the contrary, I believe that the introduction of
a cultural perspective capable of considering human beings in all their inconvenient yet splendid complexity a perspective, therefore, able to make us aware of the conditions which are necessary for the full realisation of our humanity could inspire a revolution in thought. I am not alone in this awareness. As a society, we are, in fact, becoming more and more aware of a need for a cultural shift to embrace a meaningful framework for life based on a more attentive consideration of the quality of relationships. A framework, therefore, centred on, and capable of, creating the specific conditions which foster human wellbeing within nature, is the only possible way forward if we want to overcome the current crisis our society is facing.
When Teilhard de Chardin predicted, fifty years ago, that humans would one day learn how to harness the energies of love and that such a development would be as pivotal in the history of mankind as the discovery of fire, his vision was regarded as purely utopian. Not so today, for in the closing decades of the twentieth century the nature of love and how the capacity to love develops has become a subject for scientific study, the implications of which are at least as important as those of genetics, electronics or the quantum theory. (Odent, 1999, p. 1)
The emotional experience of pregnancy: mother, father, and child
In order to understand the physiological organisation of emotions underlying secure attachment bonds, it could be argued that there is nothing more eloquent than looking at the origin of human life, letting it speak to us emotionally as well as rationally. In human beings, we find, in fact, a close link between physical and emotional development, provided this synchronicity is facilitated rather than hindered. By this, I mean that the stages of physical and emotional maturation are meant to coincide, but the two aspects can run smoothly parallel only if their distinctive meanings and mutual interdependence are taken into account.
Human beings begin their adventure in life emerging from symbiosis. We begin our lives thanks to a relationship from the standpoint of evolution, the loving encounter between a man and a woman and within a very close relationship: the one between the maternal body and the embryo, which implies an emotional and corporeal fusion, a symbiosis.
12 FROM UNDIFFERENTIATED TO DIFFERENTIATED
If I dwell upon the nature and quality of this beginning, it is because it is difficult to understand the emotional journey made by human beings during their existence unless we carefully consider where it all starts. Insightfully, some Eastern cultures set the beginning of an individual’s existence not at delivery, but at conception, so that the nine months inside the mother’s womb are counted in. This tradition embodies an ancient philosophical wisdom which understood the importance of the prenatal period not so much for the physical development that takes place in the uterus, but essentially because its consideration facilitates an understanding of human beings in our more complex essence as psycho-physical units. To rephrase, the prenatal period is an important part of development just as any other, but it becomes an essential one to consider in order to understand how and why it unfolds as it does. From the moment the egg and the sperm cell meet, it is in the uterus that we find not only the prelude to, and foundations of, physical development, but also the beginning of an emotional and sensory perception of being alive that, just like the body, precedes the moment of birth.
What the mother feels
It is common wisdom that, at the beginning of human life, lies the encounter between egg and sperm, adult sexual cells from physically and, one hopes, emotionally mature individuals. We shall find, however, that, contrary to popular belief, although necessary, this condition is in itself not sufficient for a baby to be born.
I once watched a fascinating video that showed the fertilised egg descend along the Fallopian tube, dancing lightly like a multi-coloured soap bubble not yet subject to gravity, until reaching the walls of the uterus. There, thanks to the thickening of the endometrium (the mucus membrane coating the walls of the uterus) provoked by a specific hormonal change aimed at facilitating implantation, the egg could nest within the wall’s villosity and, through this sudden contact, the cell would begin to grow.
Let us take a moment to consider this. It is the rekindling of a connection again a symbiosis and not mere fertilisation that gives the go-ahead for life: the fertilised egg must be nested in a welcoming endometrium prepared by hormonal modification, otherwise it will simply slip away and be lost.
We can gather from this observation how nature suggests, from the very beginning, that for the purpose of survival, human life needs a welcoming environment, that is, one suitable for life to express itself. Any premature interruption of this early connection between baby and mother-environment, whether caused by physical or emotional factors, will lead to risks to the pregnancy or even failure, as we shall see.
Following this insight, which shows that the woman needs to become a facilitative and nurturing environment from the moment of fertilisation and not just from birth onwards, we may observe that nature works on the expectant mother and on her body through changes that already favour an increased attitude towards nursing. The physical and emotional modifications that occur during pregnancy are, in sum, not cursory epiphenomena, but important signals for the woman to experience and understand. Once properly deciphered, in fact, they can give meaningful suggestions as to the right attitude the woman will need to actively bring to her nursing and mother role once the baby is born. In this light, pregnancy and childbirth are truly extraordinary events, capable of inspiring a profound reflection on the physical and emotional needs of human life: a real treatise on psychology in a nutshell and an invaluable head start for any philosophical enquiry aiming to gain an insight into the meaning of human life.
Nature first expresses the templates of care and concern for new life within and through the body and emotions of the mother, because that is where the child is formed. We must then read what happens and take it into account if we want to seize and understand the message that is buried within this covert in the sense of out of sight process.
But let us take a step back. Males and females differ not only physically but also hormonally, hence in how they emotionally process and experience the world. Indeed, if we consider the survival of our species when we evolved, males and females have been clearly designed to perform complementary functions. During adolescence, males reach a hormonal peak that more or less remains constant over time. Their bodies become more robust. Nature equips them physically and emotionally to fulfil their role in the physical fight for survival. It seems self-evident, when men first came out of their primitive cave dwellings, if they had had the same physical and emotional endowment as women, the human race would have probably become extinct long ago.
Women, on the other hand, entrusted as they are with the tasks of conceiving and nursing the offspring, are endowed with a more vulnerable physical makeup, yet one marked by an enhanced flexibility and finer perceptive sensitivity. The core of the maternal role lies in the capacity to attune to, and mould oneself to meet the child’s needs. In contrast to the relative hormonal stability of males, the mature female endocrinological makeup follows a cyclical pattern, reaching a peak and then declining on a monthly basis. This makes women more sensitive and emotionally flexible, a feature designed to help them perform the psychologically complex role of shifting between their own adult experience of the world while also being able to identify with that of their child and to his emotional needs in order to meet them. Sensitive women, even in the absence of an offspring, can, in fact, feel their mood markedly change at the time of ovulation and menstruation, respectively the creative peak and the moment of decline within the monthly fertility cycle.
Conception is, therefore, a meeting of two worlds: the male and the female one, which we could think of as two complementary, but not overlapping, domains. They can be intended as two emotional fields from the perspective of which men and women inherently explore and interpret reality, which becomes integrated in the forming of the parenting couple, thus setting the stage of the experiential world within which the newborn will securely move.
In is important to note, however, that male and female emotional fields do not equal man and woman. Men have a small share of female hormones, just as women have a small share of male hormones, allowing for a partial overlap in each individual of the two emotional fields and ensuing experience of the world. This facilitates mutual understanding and perspective taking between the genders as well as the negotiation of tasks and roles within the couple and society at large (or, at least, it should).
During pregnancy, a woman is subjected to important hormonal changes. A sensitive woman, or one who has already had a child, has no need for a pregnancy test to know she is expecting. She can tell. Nature actually sends signals in this sense that cannot be missed: nausea, squeamishness, sleepiness, and fatigue, all transformations of a woman’s usual experience that convey that something has happened. This occurs mostly during the first three months of pregnancy, at a stage when there are not any marked physical changes
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The Ministry of Munitions immediately began, during the summer of 1915, to develop an elaborate organization for increasing production and for “dilution” and, as has been noted, by the fall of 1915 the great rush of women into munitions work was under way. Besides numerous departments dealing with the various branches of production from the technical side, the Ministry organized a large labor department. One section, called the “Labour Regulation Department,” dealt with working conditions and trade disputes. The other section was the “Labour Supply Department,” which had charge of “dilution” and the supply of labor In organizing the production of munitions the country was divided into forty-three districts, and in August, 1915, the Ministry of Munitions appointed three commissioners in each district to promote “dilution.”
As a further aid the “National Advisory Committee,” which had helped draft the “Treasury Agreement” and the munitions act, was enlarged to include additional labor members, representatives of the Ministry of Munitions and others, and became the “Central Labour Supply Committee,” whose purpose was “to advise and assist” the Ministry of Munitions regarding the “most productive use of all available labor supplies.”[64] “Local Advisory Boards” of labor representatives were also appointed to help the central committee.
However, the officials on whom fell the brunt of the work of increasing “dilution” in individual shops were the “dilution officers” of the Labour Supply Department. These officials went from establishment to establishment, finding out the employer’s needs in the way of labor and working out, with his cooperation if possible, plans by which the use of unskilled labor, especially woman labor, could be extended. The “dilution officer” reported to the central authorities and was advised to submit all plans to them for approval. In case complaints were made that women were not doing satisfactory work, where the use of women was not progressing as rapidly as desirable or if there was difficulty in finding suitable women workers, a woman dilution officer might be sent to straighten out the difficulty.[65] The women officers were also sent to investigate where women were being used for the first time “in order to ensure a
good beginning,” and in some cases they advised on the suitability of work before women were tried.
While the government gained the legal power to force dilution on munitions work through the first munitions act, “in practice it has been found necessary, almost without exception, to proceed by way of negotiation.”[66] The London Times complained, in the spring of 1917, that after “the suspension during the war of all restrictions on output having been first agreed with the trade unions and then passed into law, the Ministry, instead of securing that these restrictions were in fact removed, proceeded to debate them ‘from town to town, from lodge to lodge, and from works to works.’”[67] But those administering the act gave instances in which the men refused to obey compulsory awards suspending trade union rules made without their consent, and believed that “it is impossible to set these practices aside except on the basis of their voluntary suspension, first by the representatives of all labor and then by the actual workers themselves.”
At all events, the instructions sent by the Ministry of Munitions in November, 1915, to employers in controlled establishments, outlining the steps to be taken in effecting dilution, stressed the importance of consulting the workers, and, if possible, of obtaining their cooperation. The workmen should be asked to form a “deputation” which might include their union officials if desired. Any proposed change should be explained to this body and its consent secured, if possible. Only in the event that an agreement could not be reached either with the deputation or with the local trade union officials, should the change be put into effect and the dispute settled under the compulsory arbitration clauses of the munitions act. In addition “before female labor is hereafter employed in the highly skilled branches of the engineering trade the proposal of the employer in question should be submitted to the Ministry for approval.”
Propaganda by the Ministry of Munitions
Besides its legal powers, its “dilution officers,” and its various advisory boards, the Ministry of Munitions carried on by a number of devices what was to all intents and purposes an advertising campaign to secure the utmost possible extension of female labor in diluting male labor. Over and above its numerous official instructions, the Ministry has published not a little propaganda material. In February, 1916, a large illustrated booklet was issued, “Notes on the Employment of Women on Munitions of War, with an Appendix on the Training of Munitions Workers.” It contained photographs and descriptions of processes on which women were then employed. Its purpose, as given in a preface by Lloyd George himself, was as follows:
This book has been prepared by an expert engineer, who at my request visited workshops in various parts of the country where the dilution of skilled labor is in actual operation. It illustrates some of the operations which women, with the loyal cooperation and splendid assistance of the workmen concerned, are performing in engineering shops in many parts of the kingdom.
The photographic records and the written descriptions of what is actually being done by women in munition factories, on processes hitherto performed solely by skilled men, will, I believe, act as an incentive and a guide in many factories where employers and employed have been skeptical as to the possibilities of the policy of dilution.
Being convinced that until that policy is boldly adopted throughout the country we can not provide our armies with such an adequate supply of munitions as will enable them to bring this war to an early and successful conclusion, I very earnestly commend this book to the most serious consideration of employers and employes.
D. L G .
[68]
January 28, 1916.
Beginning with October, 1916, dilution officers were aided by an illustrated monthly, Dilution Bulletin. Aside from instructions to the “D. O.’s” as to reports and procedure, the periodical was practically given over to descriptions of the work women were doing, and exhortations to the dilution officers to promote the use of still more women on munitions work. “Process Sheets,” containing details of operations successfully carried on by women, were also issued. A special collection of photographs of women workers was likewise available for the use of dilution officers, and was said to have been effective in convincing skeptical employers that they could use women. Expert women “demonstrator-operatives” might be secured by the dilution officers either to act as pacemakers in speeding up production or to demonstrate that a particular job lay within women’s powers. In the spring of 1917, the Ministry developed still another method of propaganda, namely, an exhibition of women’s work which was shown in different industrial centers.
The results of all this activity in the rising numbers of women munition workers have already been pointed out. The gain during the war of 424,000 in the metal trades, which was nearly three times the prewar level, the introduction of 25,000 women into Woolwich Arsenal, and the statement by representatives of the Ministry of Munitions in November, 1917, that 80 per cent of all munitions work was then performed by female labor, have been cited.
Yet, as late as October, 1916, the Ministry of Munitions stated that the “average of dilution remains very low.” Beginning March 31, 1917, all contracts for shells were let on the conditions that on all shells from two and three quarters to four and one-half inches, 80 per cent of the employes must be women, and that on all larger shells the instructions of the Labour Supply Department as to the proportion of women, semi-skilled and unskilled males must be obeyed. Nevertheless, in March, 1917, it could be said that “we have by no means reached the limits of the possibilities of employing women in connection with war work,”[69] and in May the Times
complained that only a fraction of the replacement which had been proved possible had actually been made.[70]
While in America in November, 1917, Mr. G. H. Baillie, the “Chief Technical Dilution Officer” of the Labour Supply Department, said that “dilution” was progressing on a large scale, and even up to the last months of the war the increase of women in the munitions trades continued.
“Dilution” in Other Industries by Trade Union Agreement
In a number of other trades besides engineering where union rules hindered the replacement of men by women, agreements were reached between employers and employes which permitted substitution during the war period. The agreements were not the subject of legislation, but were, in most cases, the result of trade conferences called jointly by the Board of Trade and the Home Office at the request of the Army Council. The purpose was to reorganize each industry so as to release as many men as possible for the army.
Most of the agreements were made during 1915 and 1916. Among the industries covered in that year, either nationally or in some localities, were cotton, hosiery, leather, woolen and worsted, silk and felt hats, printing, bleaching and dyeing, woodworking, biscuit, pastry baking, wholesale clothing, boot making and earthenware and china. In 1916, similar agreements were concluded in lace making, hosiery finishing, printing, electroplating, cutlery, textile bleaching, tobacco and brush making. Heavy clothing and flint glass decorating were covered in 1917, and several local agreements were also made in light leather tanning and scientific instrument making, two occupations in which women substitutes were particularly successful.[71]
The trade unions were, on the whole, as unfavorable to the introduction of women in other new lines as they were in munitions
and yielded only reluctantly, under pressure of the necessities of war Even after agreements had been signed in the electroplating and leather glove trades, the continued opposition of individual workers greatly hindered the progress of substitution. They frequently alleged that a given kind of work was unsuitable for women on moral or physical grounds. But their real objection was probably the fear either that women would lower the men’s wage rates directly, or that the existence of a reserve of experienced female labor would endanger the men’s position in any postwar industrial depression.
The union’s point of view is revealed in the conditions which they required before they would sign substitution agreements. “The operatives,” said the factory inspectors, “not unnaturally asked for guarantees that those who left to join the Forces should have their places kept open for them, that suspension of rules should be regarded as a war emergency only, that there should be a return to former conditions at the end of the war, and that there should be a fair settlement of the wage question affecting the employment of women or other labor called in to take the place of the men.”[72]
The conditions of the agreement made in June, 1915, between unions and operators in the leather trade, whose needs had been greatly increased by the demand for military equipment, were typical of these settlements, and of the precautions taken to safeguard the regular employes. Women were to be allowed on “men’s work” during the war period when men could not be obtained. Their work was, however, limited to operations “they are physically fit to perform,” they were to be paid men’s rates, and the local trade union officials were to be consulted in each case before substitution was made. When men and women were employed in the same department, it was recommended that they be separated, as far as possible.[73] It should be emphasized that wherever women replaced men under these agreements or under the munitions acts, unless the trade unions consented to other arrangements, the women were supposed to hold their new positions only during the war period.
Other Measures to Increase Substitution— Industrial
The activities of the government to enlarge the scope of women’s work in cases where no trade union rules stood in the way form still another interesting series of propaganda efforts.
The first such attempt was a scheme of national voluntary registration for women, begun in March, 1915. Stating that its object was to find out what reserve of woman labor could be made available if required, the government invited all women who were “prepared, if needed, to accept paid work of any kind—industrial, agricultural, clerical, etc.,—to enter themselves upon the register of women for war service at the labor exchanges.”
The appeal caused many protests among representatives of labor, first because there was still believed to be much unemployment among women wage earners, and second, because of the failure to propose any safeguards to ensure good working conditions or “equal pay for equal work.” It was charged that the farmers’ union was behind the plan and that it was trying to get cheap woman labor instead of raising the wages of the men.
The War Emergency Workers’ National Committee immediately passed a resolution pointing out “that there are still 60,000 men and boys and 40,000 women and girls on the live register of the labor exchanges.... The committee is strongly of opinion that in drafting women into any industries care must be taken to prevent the stereotyping of bad conditions and low wages, or to endanger standard conditions where they obtain; that this should be secured by a tribunal representative of the organized wage earners—men and women; and that further efforts should be made to find situations for those persons now on the register before taking steps to bring in fresh supplies of female labor.”
The Woman’s Freedom League, a suffrage society, issued a strong protest along similar lines, with the emphasis on “equal pay for equal work.”
The Women’s Freedom League are glad to note the tardy recognition by the government of the value of women’s work brought before the country in their schemes of war service for women. We demand from the government, however, certain guarantees.
Firstly, that no trained woman employed in men’s work be given less pay than that given to men.
Secondly, that some consideration be given when the war is over to the women who during the war have carried on this necessary work.
Thirdly, that in case of training being required proper maintenance be given to the woman or girl while that training is going on.
Recognizing that the government’s scheme offers a splendid opportunity for raising the status of women in industry, we urge that every woman should now resolutely refuse to undertake any branch of work except for equal wages with men. By accepting less than this women would be showing themselves disloyal to one another, and to the men who are serving their country in the field. These men should certainly be safeguarded on their return from any undercutting by women.
The “War Register” having brought the question of increased employment of women to the front, on April 17 the workers’ national committee called a national conference of trade unions with women members and other women’s labor organizations at which the chief resolution demanded “that as it is imperative in the interests of the highest patriotism that no emergency action be allowed unnecessarily to depress the standard of living of the workers or the standard of working conditions, adequate safeguards must be laid down for any necessary transference or substitution of labor.” The safeguards outlined included membership in the appropriate trade union as a prerequisite for war service, “equal pay for equal work,” no war employment at less than a living wage, maintenance with
training where necessary, preference being given in this to unemployed women who were normally wage earners, and reinstatement of the displaced men at the end of the war, with, at the same time, “guaranteed employment” to the discharged women.
The “War Register” did not, after all, prove to be of much importance in the extension of women’s employment. Though 33,000 women registered within a fortnight, and 110,714 during the whole period of registration, up to the middle of September, jobs were found for only 5,511 of them,[74] because, it was said, they lacked the necessary skill to fill the vacancies for which they were wanted.[75]
Much more effective than the war register was the work of the interdepartmental committee of the Home Office and the Board of Trade appointed in November, 1915, “to consider the question of utilizing to the full the reserve of women’s labor.”[76] The committee worked principally through local committees, which were at work in thirty-seven towns in November, 1916. The members of these committees were “chosen for their interest in women’s employment,” and included employers, employes and representatives of such societies as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Women’s Cooperative Guild. An officer of the local employment exchange acted as secretary of each such committee, and representatives of the Home Office and the Board of Trade attended its meetings “in a consultative capacity.”
The work of the committees varied according to local needs, and included efforts to keep up the supply of women in their normal occupations as well as to secure substitutes for men’s work. In several textile towns a shortage of workers in the mills was relieved by securing the services of women formerly occupied, who were now living at home. In one town enough women were obtained by a house to house canvass to restart 400 looms. An appeal for women workers placed in the Glasgow trams brought good results. In places where there were many unemployed or unoccupied women the local committee tried to persuade some of them to migrate to places needing additional labor. In Cambridge, for instance, several
meetings were held for this purpose and a loan fund for traveling expenses was raised.
Some of the most important work of the local committees was done in munition centers where it was necessary to bring in women workers. In such places, members of the committee met the strangers on arrival, took them to suitable lodgings, and “initiated schemes for their welfare outside the factory.” In Gloucester, where, the committee investigated lodgings for 2,000 women, it was entrusted by the Ministry of Munitions with establishing a temporary hostel for women for whom lodgings could not be found.
The committees were active in various other forms of “welfare work.” They arranged a conference of “welfare workers,” and fostered the introduction of factory “canteens.” The Woolwich committee started a club and recreation ground for the women employes of the great arsenal, and a nursery for the children of employed mothers.
Several towns reported “active efforts,” including conferences with employers, on the substitution of women for men. Interesting work of this kind was done in Bristol where a number of unemployed women were persuaded to train for “men’s work” in the shoe trade.
The next effort by the two departments was a joint appeal, in March, 1916, to employers to keep up production by taking on women. Noting that there were already complaints of a labor shortage and of idle plants, the appeal continued:
There is one source, and one only, from which the shortage can be made good—that is the great body of women who are at present unoccupied or engaged only in work not of an essential character. Many of these women have worked in factories and have already had an industrial training—they form an asset of immense importance to the country and every effort must be made to induce those who are able to come to the assistance of the country in this crisis. Previous training, however, is not essential; since the outbreak of war women have given ample
proof of their ability to fill up the gaps in the ranks of industry and to undertake work hitherto regarded as men’s.[77]
Concerted action by employers was necessary to reorganize their work so as to use the maximum number of women and to let the local employment exchange know their exact requirements for women. The Home Office, the Board of Trade and the factory inspectors would give all the help in their power in making any such rearrangements. “We are confident that the women of the country will respond to any call that may be made, but the first step rests with the employers—to reorganize their work and to give the call.”
By July, 1916, the Board of Trade had established “an information bureau for the collection and circulation of information as to the replacement of male by female labor,” and soon after, again cooperating with the Home Office, it issued a series of “Pamphlets on the Substitution of Women for Men in Industry,” describing branches of work which were considered suitable by the factory inspectors and in which women were successfully employed. The twenty-seven little pamphlets covered trades as far out of women’s ordinary field as brick making, “oil seed and feeding cake,” leather tanning and currying and flour, as well as the more usual clothing and cotton trades. Under each trade were enumerated the processes on which women had been substituted for men, opportunities for training, and any relaxation of the factory acts, or of trade union rules which favored their employment. The results of this propaganda by the Home Office and the Board of Trade have nowhere been exactly estimated, but whether due to it, or to the necessities of the labor situation, or to both, it was soon followed by a marked increase in the number of women doing men’s work.
In September, 1916, the War Office took a hand in the propaganda. Its contribution was a large illustrated pamphlet listing occupations on which women were successfully employed. The purpose of the book was primarily to guide the administrators of the conscription act and to reduce the number of exemptions from military service on the grounds of industrial indispensability. Incidentally, it was “offered as a tribute to [women’s] effective
contribution to the Empire in its hour of need.” It was much criticised because of the lack of discrimination shown in recommending certain kinds of work. It would seem that the heavy lifting involved or the disagreeable nature of the surroundings made such work as loading coal, planks and miscellaneous freight, moving coke and beer barrels, handling heavy steel bars, stoking and the removal of leather from dipping beds entirely unsuitable for women. But much of the work pictured, such as reaping, the care of horses, driving a steam roller and bakery work, though far removed from the usual lines of “women’s work,” did not seem to be objectionable Still other occupations, where little strength and considerable skill were required, for instance, piano finishing and tuning, making ammunition boxes, modeling artificial teeth, repairing railway carriage seats and the preparation of soldiers’ dinners, would seem positively desirable additions to the field of women’s work.
The most ambitious of the government’s attempts to keep up the essential industries of the country under war conditions was the “National Service Department,” created early in 1917. It commandeered a hotel for its headquarters, and assembled a large staff. Through this department it was planned to secure the enrollment of all persons of working age, who were then to be transferred to “trades of national importance,” if not already so employed. Volunteers to go wherever they were assigned were first called for, and as the response was only slight, conferences with employers and employes were begun to find out what men various firms could spare, and to arrange for their transference to essential war work by the “Substitution Officers” of the Department. The duplication of the work of the employment exchanges is evident. Enrollment and transference were to be purely voluntary, though among the labor groups there were murmurings that the scheme was but a prelude to industrial conscription. But in April the plan was called a “fiasco,” and it was alleged that only a few hundred placements had actually been made.[78] In August, however, the department was reorganized and its purpose was stated to be that of coordinating to the best advantage the labor power of the nation rather than of acting as an employment agency.
In the winter of 1917 a “Woman’s Section” had been set up by the “Director of National Service” in charge of two women well known for their interest in the problems of women’s work, Mrs. A. J. Tennant and Miss Violet Markham, of whom it was said that they had been “asked to bring order out of chaos at the eleventh hour.”[79] The principal achievements of the women’s section were the formation of the “Waacs” for work behind the lines in France, which has been previously described, and also a moderate sized “land army” of women for agricultural work. An effort to carry through another registration of women for war work does not seem to have been particularly successful.
Other Measures to Increase Substitution—Trade and Commerce
The chief governmental reports covering nonindustrial lines of work are those of the “Shops Committee” and the “Clerical and Commercial Employments Committee,” both formed in the spring and reporting in the fall of 1915. The former stated that it was organized to see how Lord Kitchener’s demand for “more men, and yet more men” could be met by releasing men employed in stores. In the judgment of the committee very few men needed to be retained, except in the heavier branches of the wholesale trade. The committee distributed circulars to shopkeepers throughout the country asking how many men could be released for the army and calling attention to the emergency. A large meeting of representatives of the unions and the employers’ associations was held in London and fifty-five local meetings for the trade through the country, at which resolutions were passed pledging those present “to do everything possible” to substitute women for men. “What we feel we have done,” said the committee, in summing up its work, “is to bring home to shopkeepers in England and Wales the necessity (and the possibility) of rearranging their business so as to release more men for service with the Colours.”
The other committee, on “Clerical and Commercial Employments,” was formed to work out a plan for “an adequate
supply of competent substitutes” for the “very large number of men of military age” still found in commercial and clerical work. The committee estimated that 150,000 substitutes must be secured, and that they must be drawn mainly from the ranks of unoccupied women without previous clerical experience. It recommended the securing of such women from among friends and relatives of the present staffs, the starting of one and two months’ emergency training courses by the education authorities and the placement of the trained women through cooperation with the local employment exchanges. The committee went on record in favor of the reinstatement of the enlisted men after the war, and meanwhile “equal pay” for the women substitutes. It brought the need of substitution before the various commercial and professional associations whose members made use of clerical help.
Campaign for Substitution in Agriculture
Propaganda efforts in agriculture were numerous, but judging from the comparatively small increase in the number of women workers, they were relatively less successful than those in industry and trade. In the minds of both farmers and country women as well as in the public mind, women’s work on the land was usually associated with backward communities, seasonal gangs and a low class of worker. Such prejudice was overcome largely by the work of educated women on the farms. The large number of employers in comparison with the number of workers, and the reluctance of the farmers to make use of the employment exchanges, are mentioned as other handicaps to agricultural substitution.[80] The failure to raise wages materially or to improve living conditions was also not an unimportant factor in holding back the movement of women workers to the land.
In 1915 the Board of Agriculture started a movement for the formation of “women’s war agricultural” or “farm labor” committees. In the spring of 1916 the Board of Trade joined the Board of Agriculture in the work. The committees were supposed to cooperate
with the war agricultural committees of men which had been formed in each county, but the connection was considered often to be less close than was desirable. The women’s committees were made up of “district representatives,” who, in turn, worked through local committees, or “village registrars” or both. In the late autumn of 1916 there were sixty-three county committees, 1,060 “district representatives” and over 4,000 “village registrars.” The Board of Agriculture formed a panel of speakers for meetings, and the Board of Trade appointed women organizers for various parts of the country Local meetings to rouse enthusiasm were followed by a house-to-house canvass in which women were urged for patriotic motives to enroll for whole or part time work. The village registrar then arranged for employment of the women listed either through the local employment exchange or as they heard of vacancies. The women were told that “every woman who helps in agriculture during the war is as truly serving her country as the man who is fighting in the trenches or on the sea.” Each registrant was entitled to a certificate, and after thirty days’ service might wear a green baize armlet marked with a scarlet crown.
During the season of 1916 it was estimated that 140,000 women registered. Seventy-two thousand certificates and 62,000 armlets were issued,[81] although many of the regular women workers on the land refused to register for fear of becoming in some way liable to compulsory service. Women registrants were said to be found in almost every kind of farm work, even to ploughing, but were naturally more often successful in such lighter forms as weeding, fruit and hop picking, the care of poultry, dairy work and gardening. They were considered especially good in the care of all kinds of animals.
The elaborate plans of the government and the low wages paid were commented on in characteristic style by The Woman Worker. [82]
W L
It is announced in the papers that the government have decided to start a recruiting
campaign for women to work on the land. Four hundred thousand are wanted; and they are to be registered and to be given an armlet. Now, work on the land is useful work, and much of it is suitable to women; but there are points about this scheme which we should do well to look at. It is said that a representative of the Board of Trade at a meeting at Scarborough, said that the wages would be from 12s. to £1. Twelve shillings is not a proper living wage for a woman; and our masters seem to know this. The Daily News, in explaining the government scheme, says, “It is frankly admitted that much of the most necessary work is hard and unpleasant, and by no means extravagantly paid. That is why the appeal is made exclusively to the patriotism of the women. There is no question (as in the army itself) of any really adequate reward.” Well, why not? The farmers are doing very well. The price of corn is higher than has ever been known before. Why should women be deprived of “any really adequate reward”?
Why should women assist in keeping down the miserably low wages of agricultural laborers? If there was “no question, as in the army itself,” of any really adequate profits, then there might be something to be said for the government. As it is, no armlets and no “patriotism” ought to make women work at less than a living wage.
Another minor but interesting development of 1916 was that of organized gangs of women farm workers under a leader. Several of these were successful in doing piece work jobs for different farms in rotation. Others cultivated unused allotments and waste lands. The principal women’s colleges, especially the University of London, provided 2,890 “vacation land workers” in gangs for fruit picking and the like. Two successful bracken cutting camps were also
maintained, at which women worked for eight weeks under semimilitary discipline.
In January, 1917, the Board of Agriculture further developed its organization by starting a “Women’s Labor Department.” Organizing secretaries were placed in the counties, grants were made to certain voluntary organizations, and 16 traveling inspectors were sent out to advise on grants, inspect living conditions and the like. Steps were also taken to obtain closer cooperation with the men’s county agricultural committees. As has been indicated, the number of women workers failed to increase between 1916 and 1917 as much as between 1915 and 1916, but in 1918 a more decided increase occurred.[83] Later, when the Department of Food Production was formed, it took over both the men’s and the women’s county agricultural committees.
The only English organization dealing with agricultural work by women prior to the war was the “Women’s Farm and Garden Union,” which promoted the training of educated women for gardening. In February, 1916, this body secured land for a training school from the Board of Agriculture, and formed the “Women’s National Land Service Corps,” which was joined by about 2,500 women up to January, 1918. Members received six weeks’ training and were then sent out to the farms, preferably in groups of two or three who could live in a cottage together, “perhaps with a friend to do the cooking.” Others lodged in the villages or with their employers. The members of the corps were said to be “educated girls who had gone into the work mostly from patriotic motives.” Girls entirely dependent on their earnings were not encouraged to join, “because of the low rate of pay.” The corps refused to send out workers, it should be noted, unless the pay covered living expenses, unless, considering the women’s ability and experience, it was equal to men’s rates, or if their workers would undercut or supplant local women. The corps believed that it had accomplished more than its numbers would indicate, in that its carefully chosen members had often convinced doubtful farmers that women could do more agricultural work, and that several of its workers had organized the village women into whole or part time gangs.
In March, 1917, the Department of National Service launched its scheme for a “Women’s Land Army,” using the corps as a nucleus. Women were to enlist for farm work for the duration of the war under semi-military conditions of mobilization. Applications for service were made through the Ministry of Labor, but selection, training and placement was in the hands of the women’s war agriculture committees and officials of the Board of Agriculture. Members of the Land Army were selected with great care so that they could be guaranteed to be strong and physically fit. Out of 40,000 women applying up to July, 1917, only 5,000 were accepted. If necessary, the women were given four weeks’ training with pay, and railway fare to their place of employment. When once at work they were not allowed to leave except with permission of the “district representative.” The numerical results of this elaborate organization were not very large, though the influence of the army’s selected members in showing that women could do farm work was perhaps out of proportion to the numbers. Between 7,000 and 8,000 permanent women workers were placed on farms by the Land Army up to January, 1918, in addition to about 1,000 seasonal workers in gangs.
CHAPTER VI
Sources of Additional Women Workers
The question naturally arises, where did the increased number of women workers come from? Who were the thousands of munition workers, the girls undertaking men’s jobs, and all the army of a million and a third women who were at work in July, 1918, and not in July, 1914?
Transfers from Nonessential Industries
The increase during the first months of war in the industries equipping the troops was met for the most part by a transference of workers from slack to busy lines. “So great has been the passing from industry to industry,” said the factory inspectors,[84] “that at the beginning of the New Year it seemed almost as if women and girls had gone through a process of ‘General Post.’” For instance, makers of high class jewelry in Birmingham transferred to light metal work for the army. Silk and linen weavers went into woolen mills and dressmakers in the west Midlands were taken on in light leather work. In other cases slack industries took up government work. The activity of the Central Committee on Women’s Employment in securing contracts for uniforms for idle dressmaking establishments has already been mentioned. The Scottish fish workers were relieved by knitting orders. Certain carpet mills took up the weaving of army blankets, corset makers were set to making knapsacks, girl workers on fishing tackle were used in the manufacture of hosiery machine needles, previously imported from Germany, and an effort was made to provide the manufacture of tape and braid for uniforms for unemployed lace makers in the Midlands. Army shirts were made by many of the Irish collar factories. In retail trade also there was often a transfer from slack to busy shops, as from dressmaking and millinery to the grocery trade. Middle aged professional women whose ordinary occupations were unfavorably affected by the war frequently took the positions in banks, insurance offices and other business offices which had for the first time been opened to women. Yet in the two trades which suffered most severely from unemployment, namely, cotton textiles and dressmaking, there was a much “less general movement of the workers to find a livelihood in other directions.” This was considered due in the one case to “relatively high wages and specialized factory skill,” in the other to “deep-rooted social traditions and special craft skill.”
Very early in the war, also, married women who had worked before marriage returned to industry. A large proportion of the expanding needs of the woolen trades was filled in that way. In “drapery”—that is to say, “dry goods”—shops, and in cotton and shoe factories and potteries, many of these “dug-out” married women also appeared. Municipalities, when substituting women for men on tram cars and in other services, frequently gave preference to the wives of men who had enlisted. Many married women entered the food trades and they did not seem to object to dirty work in foundries and other places as did single women. In the professions, also, some women returned to teaching and clerical work. Soldiers’ wives likewise entered munitions work in large numbers. While the reason
for their reentering work was probably largely economic—rising food prices and “separation allowances” insufficient to maintain a skilled worker’s standard of living, particularly if the family was large—yet their choice of occupations appears to have been at least partly dictated by patriotic motives.
As the war went on, the transfer of women from “normal” women’s occupations, such as domestic service, dressmaking, textiles, the clothing trades and laundry work to the more highly paid lines, especially munitions work, became more and more noticeable. The actual decline in numbers in these occupations has previously been described.[85] In addition to the decreases in these trades, a considerable change in personnel was observed, involving “the loss of skilled women and the consequent deterioration of the quality of labor.”[86] For example, skilled women left laundry work, and their places were filled by charwomen, or young girls fresh from school. Not infrequently the skilled women went to almost unskilled work, as from textiles to munitions.
On the other hand, war conditions occasionally kept women at home who were previously employed. In districts where large numbers of soldiers were billeted women were kept busy at home attending to their needs. Especially in colliery districts the rise in men’s wages caused married women who were thrown out of work at the beginning of the war to become indifferent to obtaining new positions. In some cases, notably in the Dundee jute mills, separation allowances placed the wives of casual workers who had enlisted in a state of comparative prosperity, and they ceased to go out to work. But on the whole the war doubtlessly increased the employment of married women.
In spite of impressions to the contrary, the proportion of previously unoccupied upper and middle class women entering “war work” was by no means large. Some young girls from school who would not normally have gone to work and some older women who had never worked before entered clerical employment, especially in government offices, and often obtained promotion to supervisory positions. A limited number of well-to-do women took up such temporary farm work as fruit picking from patriotic motives. Many of the women working behind the lines in France and as military nurses were from the “upper classes.” And an appreciable number of munition workers were drawn from the ranks of educated women. One such worker estimated that in the large establishment where she was employed, about nine out of 100 women belonged to that class.[87] Educated women were particularly likely to take up such skilled occupations as oxy-acetylene welding, toolsetting, and draughting, where their trained minds proved advantageous. Daughters of small tradesmen and farmers, who had not worked before except in their own homes, were likely to become forewomen and supervisors, positions for which their reliability and common sense well fitted them.[88] The “week end munition relief workers,” or “W. M. R. W.,” who worked Sundays in order to give the regular staff a rest day, were rumored to include among their members “dukes’ daughters and generals’ ladies, artists and authors, students and teachers, ministers’ and lawyers’ wives,”[89] but this class of workers was, after all, small and was not increasing.
Mainly, however, the new needs of industry have been filled by working women or the wives of working men. Former factory hands, charwomen and domestic servants are found on the heavier work, and shopgirls, dressmakers and milliners on the lighter lines.
A fairly large proportion of the increase may, moreover, be accounted for without the recruiting of new workers. Numbers of home workers, of half employed charwomen and of
