| Summary: | In Inside Story, Mary Leahy reviews Rebecca Asher’s investigation of how parenthood is shaped by society • REBECCA Asher expected that having a baby would be hard, but she didn’t anticipate the disparity between her experience and that of her husband. As she writes towards the beginning of this frank and sometimes confronting book, “When a couple chooses to have children, all the gains women have supposedly made over the past few decades suddenly vanish as the time machine of motherhood transports us back to the 1950s.” Seeing her situation replicated around her, Asher started what she describes as a deliberate and structured inquiry, conducting in-depth conversations with mothers and fathers in Britain, Sweden, Iceland and Australia and dipping into the academic literature. Her aim was to explore how family life in Britain might better be organised and what would be required to bring about the necessary structural change. Because government policies, employment structures and prevailing attitudes are built on the assumption that mothers will have the primary care of their children, most parents don’t have the option of sharing the care of their children and employment. Although mothers, father and children all lose out, it is mothers whose illusions are shattered. Addressing this inequality, Asher argues, will enable us to address other social problems, including relationship breakdown, child poverty and social atomisation… Read the full article
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