Out of shot

Rifling through the old family albums this Christmas, it’s not just our books and movies that leave women’s parenting and domestic work out of shot and out of mind. 

On one of those days that become mere dates over the Christmas period, I opened the family albums in an effort to avoid the next round of family tea and biscuits in the kitchen.

Excellent thick black 80s moustaches, men sporting short shorts under the guise of a cricket interest, and a fabulous matching towelette outfit. 

In the mix were a stash of happy snaps of a young family growing up in suburban Geelong in the 80s and 90s, my partner included. Dad wrestling kids on the carpet, kids birthday cakes, and a mandatory Christmas cracker.

“There’s no pics of you!” I tell the matriarch, and now well established grandmother. “No,” she answers short and sweet, true to form, but this time gives a knowing smile when I suggest she was no doubt the one behind the camera. 

Her handwriting scrawled under each photo complete with date, names and a family musing. She was responsible for not just lighting the candles, but capturing these moments. 

I garner insights into my partner’s childhood - his siblings, his extended family, and the uncanny resemblance between his grandparents then and our children now. 

I don’t think this is the only family history curated and archived by women as part of their ‘family making’ role. The kind of role that left their photo, and their presence, well out of shot.  

When they say women’s labour is invisible, this is quite literally what they mean. 

Our albums are not the only place where the work of women undertaking parenting, meaning making, and emotional labour goes pushed to the side and unseen. 

Whether it’s in popular culture, journalism or parenting manuals, scholars like Anne Kaplan reflect on the limited representation of mothers who are too often depicted without the depth and complexity (let alone centrality) that they deserve.

Oddly, this is no different in gender studies where course textbooks only feature a small portion, if any, on the diverse experiences and structures impacting m/others and mothering according to the regular textbook audits by Professor Andrea O’Rielly. 

Like most, my thinking turns to the need to make this work, and the wide breadth of experiences better understood, articulated and seen. 

The “mental load” is now common-place among my friends, even if it took a mere 30 years for the concept to stick since it was first coined by sociologist, Monique Haicault, back in 1984. 

More recently, we’ve had the hungry uptake of the self-help book, Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky devoured and shared by depleted parents (neigh, m/others) - published in 12 languages and counting. 

To my delight we also had the likes of Night Bitch, If I’d Have Legs I’d Kick You and It’s All Her Fault, tear rigid constructs of motherhood apart last year offering a deep dark contention to the experience. A dark tint to the excessively pastel sheen it too often receives. 

Of course putting parenting and traditional women’s work back in frame is paramount. Don’t get me wrong, kids are cute, but give me the closeup of the maternal experience, her clothes, her identity. Her breast pump on the sofa.

But oddly rather than ending things there, this time my mind turns to the impact that this invisibility has had not just on generations of women, but their families and our communities. 

All the people who have been raised by m/others whose experiences were overlooked, reduced, and pushed out of frame. Told that their presence should be self-sacrificing, and their curated work now collecting dust in the hall. 

What impact has this had? On these women and on so many of us who have been raised in some way by m/others, in spite of the support that they received.

It is enough for me to be beyond frustrated that mothering work remains unseen, misunderstood, and unsurprisingly unremunerated, with many women who’ve undertaken significant carer responsibilities now facing financial risk and inequity. 

But the sidelining of this work has rippled out. It has directly impacted my cis-male partner, me as a daughter, my mother, and her mother before her. 

It’s personal for the women I love, and structural for people across our community who too have been raised by women sidelined from their own family albums. 

So perhaps next festive season, let’s make m/others and their m/others the feature. 

Let’s pick up the camera and label the photos with their favourite experiences. Their birthday cake, their candles. And let’s remember the arms and strength that they hold, not just the black 80s moustaches and cute kids that filled our albums of yesterday.

Emma 💋