One obstacle to proposing that parenting should be shared equally between the sexes is the cultural significance of the mother role. Women have traditionally fulfilled all aspects of parenting from the everyday tasks of family support to the higher level responsibility of taking an active interest in their children’s development. The benefits of contraception and equal opportunities in ‘liberating’ women have been offset by the ever increasing demands on parents to support their children’s social (emotional and educational) development.

“But you are a mother now…” an employment consultant explained to me after the birth of my first child. The implication was that with my parenting responsibilities I would be unable to travel far from home. When you say that you are a mother (particularly of small children) most people assume that you have a labour-intensive role in the family even if you work full-time.

In fact the term ‘mother’ serves two purposes. It obviously indicates the relationship but, for many people, it also implicitly means someone who is a ‘housewife’ with a daily occupation in the home. This differs significantly from any other family relationship. The term ‘father’ does not imply a domestic support role. When a man has family it is assumed that his partner will take on the majority of the work involved in supporting the family in a practical sense.

“It’s a good thing that women are programmed to love their babies. Any other activity that caused sleepless nights and loss of free time would be avoided at all costs.” (p21 Bluffer’s guide to Women)

Mother is best

The first female mammal must have been a very stupid creature indeed! Consider, for example, how it might have affected the development of society if our reproductive biology had evolved along the lines of birds rather than mammals. In this case the parents could theoretically take equal roles in incubating and rearing their offspring. We could not then attribute the entire burden and disadvantage of reproduction to women.

But we are not birds and presumably for good reason otherwise the intelligent species on the planet would be strutting about wearing feathers. Our evolution as mammals has allowed the two genders to evolve different roles and contributions to the family and to society.

We have been successful as a species because of our ‘intelligence’, which causes our young to mature over an extended period of time. There is no doubt that children benefit from the interest of a caring adult in developing their intellectual and emotional maturity. The question is: does this person need to be the biological mother (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)?

“In possessive or smothering love, the child becomes the emotional crutch and toy of the parent. The parent is dependent on the child and on the child’s dependence. Parents want to do everything for the child. They want to be its constant companion, its loved one, and want to deprive the child of the chance of growing up and out into the world.” Dr Thomas Stuttaford (Doctor and writer) The Times newspaper Nov 10, 1998.