The Wife Drought

by Annabel Crabb

  When men and women produce a baby together for the first time, it’s an absolute festival of mutual incompetence. Unless you’re one of those people who has raised younger siblings as your own or had direct experience in a child-care centre, odds are you will have no idea – regardless of your chromosomal configuration – which way up the damn baby goes.

  When Jeremy and I had our first child, we were in London, where the National Health Service favours a brisk release-to-the-wild system for newborns and their radically underqualified parents. We were given our discharge forms when Audrey was six hours old, at which point we wrapped her with inexpert reverence in rugs, carried her to the car park and then stood around for approximately ninety minutes arguing over how the baby capsule fitted into the car we had rented for the occasion, during which time I swear I saw the baby trying discreetly to flag down other more experienced passers-by. Eventually we jerry-rigged the thing and drove home, whereupon it was discovered no one knew anything at all about what to do with babies. We had tickets for a Yo La Tengo gig just up the road, and actually considered taking the baby along. That’s how dumb we were.

  How do men and women get from this situation of mutual incompetence to one in which it is wordlessly assumed that the chick is better at babies? Let’s not pretend this is a simple ‘Men want to get out of it; women get conned into it’ situation. Expertise in parenting is like expertise in absolutely anything else; you collect it as you go along. And when one parent is given early opportunities to amass competence (let’s call this parent, for ease of reference, ‘the one with the breasts’) then that parent quickly becomes the expert. And once that person is the expert – the one with a legitimate initiation into the arcane world of colic and settling and swaddling and all of that seriously non-intuitive stuff – then it takes quite a bit of application for the other parent to keep up. It’s like – oh, I don’t know – being a woman executive in a company where all the training sessions are held over lunch in a local topless bar. It’s technically possible to remain competitive in that environment, it’s just not terribly easy. And before you know it, because life is busy, and because humans cleave towards economic efficiency in most technical areas with the possible exception of automotive manufacturing, you’ll hear this: ‘That’s not how you do it! Oh, for God’s sake. Give it here. We haven’t got all day.’

  One of the most common responses to having a baby is the feeling that you, and only you, truly understand just how momentous this feeling is, just how extraordinary this particular mewling infant is, and just how completely all previous perceptions have been atomised by this small and needy hostage to fortune.

  Which makes it doubly ironic that this is – of all life’s junctures – the one at which men and women are most apt to default to incredibly conventional approaches. This is the beauty of humanity; our ability to form broad and reliable social patterns while staunchly maintaining the belief in our own originality. Dad will go back to work, while Mum pursues her new area of expertise. You might hear things like: ‘Oh, yeah, Patrick is really keen to have some time away from work with the baby, but his job’s super busy at the moment. We’re definitely going to split things evenly, but it makes more sense for me to do the home stuff right now; it’s his turn next time!’ And next time Patrick will be earning more, and it will make even less sense for him to take time out, and in any event he won’t be the parent who knows what to do with Farex, and on it goes. Social patterns might be as big as the Northern Lights, but we only see them in our own time; and by the time we realise how deeply we fuel them, it’s already too late.

  In these circumstances, there are plenty of people besides Peter Hitchens with an interest in women being ‘better at it’ than men. For a father ceding nappy duty – whether in puzzlement or guilty relief – it’s a comfort to know he’s leaving things to the expert. And for a mother seeking a rational underpinning to her new existence, which might otherwise be all aswim in a hormonal soup of existential fears and delights, ‘I’m better at it’ is as good a stake in the ground as any.

  What would happen if we could artificially extend that initial period of equal-opportunity incompetence? If we could keep mothers and fathers at the same level of expertise just that little bit longer? Would it help to keep both parents more involved?

  This is the point at which we turn, with a practised sense of resignation, to Norway. Damn those Norwegians, with their foresight and sensitivity, with their well-timed sovereign wealth fund to intelligently invest the proceeds of their resources boom (we blew ours on big tellies) and their relentlessly high quality of life. Wouldn’t you know? It was Norway that in 1993 introduced a coercive model of paternal leave that actually pushed men into taking time off.

  Norway already had a generous paid parental leave system, and since 1977 it had been available to fathers too. But only 3 per cent of fathers were taking it. So in 1993, the Norwegian government decreed that a chunk of the standard paid parental leave would only be paid if it was the dad taking the time off.6

  This system rather fiendishly re-engineered the assumption that men’s primary usefulness in the early days of parenthood was as a provider. By introducing a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ financial benefit, the Norwegian system means that fathers who fail to take leave are worse off financially, rather than better. For a few weeks at least, the compulsion to provide is working with the concept of hands-on fathering, rather than against it as is usually the case.

  Today, 90 per cent of Norwegian fathers take paternity leave. And fathers spend on average an hour a day more on child care and family time than they did ten years ago, and two hours a day more than they did in 1970.7

  The Norwegian experience suggests that men and women can both be good at bringing up children, depending on the options and incentives, and the opportunities they have to get in at the ground level. Of course, they also have bullet-proof child care, which helps.

  But even in Australia, where paternal leave is significantly less evolved than the Scandinavian model, there is evidence that for fathers, taking time out of work early on makes them more engaged parents in the long term.

  Australian fathers who took ten or more days off work around the birth of their child were more likely to be involved in childcare-related activities when their children were toddlers. Only 19.3 per cent of fathers who hadn’t taken paternal leave put their toddlers to bed regularly, for instance, but that rose to 27.9 per cent among dads who had taken ten days or more, according to a 2013 OECD study of four countries including Australia.8

  We have historically looked at paid parental leave as a measure to increase women’s participation in the workplace; more recently, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has talked about his paid parental leave scheme not as a welfare measure, but as an employment entitlement like any other.

  What if we looked at things the other way up, though? And saw paid parental leave as a way of giving fathers the chance to become expert at looking after babies at the same time mothers do?

  Our system doesn’t just allow fathers to be hopeless. It expects them to be. It encourages them to be. And it is perpetually surprised when they aren’t.

  6

  WHAT’S A WIFE WORTH?

  Edith Brown was fifteen years old when her father was hanged. It was 1876.

  Her mother had died in childbirth when Edith was seven, and the young girl was sent off promptly thereafter to a Perth boarding school run by the Misses Cowan. But even as Edith undertook her education, her father – pastoralist Kenneth Brown – addressed himself assiduously to his own self-destruction, drinking himself into madness, beggaring himself on the horses and eventually shooting dead his second wife, Mary Tindall, a crime for which he was crisply sentenced to the ultimate sanction then available under Western Australian law.

  Now, one might ordinarily expect a teenager subjected to such Gothic detail in her early years to take things relatively quietly for a bit. But Edith rallied. Three years after her father’s execution, she married Jame
s Cowan, the brother of her schoolmistresses. They had four daughters and a son, between which happy events Edith also immersed herself deeply in charitable work, and in 1921, much to everyone’s surprise and by a margin of only forty-six votes, Edith Cowan became the first woman to be elected to any Parliament in Australia.

  When I say ‘to everyone’s surprise’, I include Edith, and most certainly I include the man she deposed in the seat of West Perth, Mr Thomas Draper, who was WA’s attorney-general at the time, and had moreover been primarily responsible for the legislation allowing women to run for Parliament in the 1921 election in the first place. Mrs Cowan’s election remains a small but reverberant matter of national pride; keep in mind, another twenty-three years would pass before Frenchwomen even got the vote.

  Her campaign was reasonably orthodox. She concentrated on law and order, industry assistance and reduction in the cost of living. Her husband James assisted by knocking on doors and handing out pamphlets; he was at one point ushered into the drawing room of a lady who assured him earnestly that this Mrs Cowan was neglecting her children (the youngest of whom was by then thirty) and that her poor husband was dying of a broken heart.1

  Edith – an inveterate campaigner, suffragette and activist – in the end spent only three years as a state politician. But during that time she gave Australia the closest legislative run we’ve ever seen at a minimum wage for housewives.

  The question arose rather elliptically, in the course of an established parliamentary debate about whether domestic servants and – of all things – insurance brokers, should have access to the arbitration courts. At the time, there was no formal regulation of servants’ wages, though it was a common joke in the periodicals of the day that the rather emancipated servants of the Australian colonies tended to set their own terms, and did well owing to the high demand for their work.

  Mrs Cowan was still a newcomer to the Parliament. The Bulletin had not yet exhausted its cartoon series ‘The New “House” Wife’, which depicted the Member for West Perth variously scrubbing the despatch box, mopping the floor of the chamber, polishing the mace, and taking her parliamentary seat behind a copper of sudsy water and a washboard.2

  So when she rose to outline her amendment to the Industrial Arbitration Act, the whole country was already predisposed to mirth on her account; what she had to say only exacerbated matters.

  ‘The interpretation of the term “worker” is further amended by adding the following words,’ proposed Mrs Cowan. ‘So far as this Act extends to persons engaged in domestic service, a husband shall be deemed an employer, and his wife, if living with him, shall be deemed a worker employed by him, with regard to work done by the wife for the household which is commonly done by persons engaged in domestic service.’3

  ‘Why should not married women have a union?’ the first woman elected to an Australian parliament continued, in address to the chamber. ‘Why should they be cut off from the same privileges? I do not think members of the Opposition would wish that their wives should be cut off from the same standing and privileges as a domestic worker would enjoy … If it is good for the housemaid and cook to go to the Arbitration Court, if it is good for the washerwoman to go to the Arbitration Court, it is equally good for the wife to do so. That is my reason for giving notice of the amendment,’ she declared.4

  ‘We shall have a revolution!’ exclaimed Mr Frederick Teesdale, Member for Roebourne, a former pearler later eulogised as one of Parliament’s ‘most picturesque and lovable characters’.5

  Replied Mrs Cowan: ‘That is perfectly true. I have heard it stated in this House that there are some things which can only be put right by a revolution … but let it come by degrees, if possible. I stand for the women of this State.’6

  Hansard records that at this point members chorused in unison: ‘No!’

  Mr Marshall, of Murchison, who entered the Assembly at the same time as Mrs Cowan and seems to have spent much of his time spluttering in outrage about one thing or another, was especially empurpled by his colleague’s effrontery. ‘You do not stand for my wife’s cause, anyhow, and I will see that she does not go to the Arbitration Court!’ he declared.

  Mrs Cowan responded evenly. ‘The honourable Member, judging by his tone and the remarks he made here one night, is probably one whose wife might be most happy and pleased if brought under the Arbitration Act.’7

  History is mute on the intoxicating question of Mr Marshall’s marriage.

  But Mrs Cowan’s amendment prompted an excitable and national exchange of views as to the implications of a minimum wage for housewives.

  Some, like Australian Woman’s Mirror journalist Gwen Spencer, felt it was more in the interests of a family that money be given to the wife rather than retained by the husband, who was just as likely to fritter it away on ‘drink, hobbies, racing or investments which might possibly turn out a failure’.8

  Others felt that a regulated wage might assist women by formally recognising an existing arrangement that very much favoured men. Leader writer Helen Normanton argued that the reason ‘many a man can earn a high salary and can sustain heavy mental and moral loads of business anxiety is largely due to the fact that he has in the back-ground a silent partner whose name does not appear on his business stationery’.9

  The industrial implications of Mrs Cowan’s amendment, however, were lost on no one. A poet for the Herald summoned the spectre of the work-to-rule housewife:

  Father:

  I say, come quick, Maria!

  Here’s little baby Ted!

  He’s fallen in the fire

  And burned his pretty head!

  Mother:

  I cannot help it, Father.

  It’s after union time

  Besides, I would much rather

  Read Marx’s work sublime!

  Father:

  This chop’s a little underdone

  I’d rather have some steak.

  It really is but little fun

  My teeth on it to break.

  Mother:

  The Board’s determination

  Is ninepence for a chop.

  ’T’would cause you aggravation

  If my work should stop.

  The price of steak’s a shilling

  If you chose to pay,

  To cook I’d be unwilling –

  Because I’m off today!10

  Obviously, the prospect of a work-to-rule housewife was both novel and terrifying. What if she downed tools in the middle of dinner? Or amid the execution of some more intimate duty?

  The accountability question ran both ways, of course.

  Gwen Spencer, already on the record as advocating the redistribution of earnings from feckless men to their entirely more blameless wives, further considered that formalising a housewife’s wages would bring a pleasing symmetry to the obligation.

  Wages, she wrote, would ‘have the effect of shaming certain married shirkers into doing their fair share of home-making, by emphasising the fact that they are cheating if they wear a man’s ring and take what they can get from him while doing as little as they possibly can in return’.11

  And perhaps husbands – newly chastened by a dose of industrial accountability – would begin to evaluate the quality of domestic work more stringently, and consider suing for specific performance should they awake to a congealed breakfast.

  Sir James Mitchell, WA’s premier, trod extremely carefully. ‘There is some proposal, I believe, to make the wife an employee of the husband. I do not suppose there are many of us who are not controlled by our wives. If the Member for West Perth were successful in getting an alteration made to that effect, I do not think it would very much alter the position.’12

  In the end, Mrs Cowan’s amendment came to naught, as did the rest of the bill, which staggered through the committee stage and expired, largely unlamented, before the Council; Mrs Cowan was voted out in 1924, and the matter was not formally revisited.

  Australia – still only in its infancy as a na
tion, and still working out which way was up on all sorts of fronts – already had a rather erratic national sense of what wives were worth, at any rate. In the early days of the colonies, it was felt that women were a burden rather than an asset: extra mouths to feed, in an alien and inhospitable environment. George Megalogenis, who is always on the lookout for such things, alerted me to a fascinating 1796 dispatch from New South Wales Governor John Hunter to the Duke of Portland, in which the viceroy records his preference that a new shipload of convicts bound for Botany Bay contain no women at all. ‘I must express my hope that the three hundred are all men and not part men and part women, for of the latter we have already enough,’ Hunter wrote. ‘We have scarsely [sic] any way of employing them, and they are generally found to be worse characters than the men; if we had more work for them it would often be difficult to employ them, for we generally find those of a certain age taken up in the indispensable dutys [sic] of nursing an infant.’

  But circumstances changed very quickly as enterprise blossomed in the new settlements, and by the 1850s, with hordes of prospectors flooding into the tent city of Ballarat hoping to retrieve the gold nuggets that were internationally reputed to litter the ground there, wives became quite the commodity. Wives helped keep tents liveable. They supported their husbands with their small business enterprises. Sometimes, when the hefty licence fees outpaced whatever miserable specks of gold their husbands had managed to coax out of Ballarat’s notoriously fickle subsoil, they became the primary breadwinners.

  In fact, the ‘wife rush’ that seized Victoria in the early 1850s was no less fevered than the gold rush, for all that it is less well-remembered. Clare Wright, in her Stella Prize-winning book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, describes the years during which wives enjoyed a seller’s market in Victoria; diggers flocked to Melbourne’s wharves to pay enthusiastic suit to any disembarking women. Newly arrived women wrote excitedly to their friends and sisters in the old country, advising them of Australia’s husband-glut and encouraging them to come over. The prospect of adventure, not to mention independence from family and church, was intoxicating.