In the early drafts of Shelter, the issue of motherhood was moot. Connie, the novel’s lumberjill protagonist, died, leaving two men to raise a baby that didn’t biologically belong to either of them. I was interested in how this would have played out in wartime (or at any time), not least because the idea that women are somehow more ‘natural’ at childrearing than men seemed worth exploring.
Sarah Franklin by Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi
Several iterations of the novel later, Connie no longer died. In the published version she’s very much alive, and driving the story. But the kernel of the original idea had taken root and as a consequence, she does wrestle with strong maternal ambivalence. War has created opportunities for Connie. She’s only just found a job she adores, after a less-than-stellar school experience and a couple of years of happy but aimless factory work. She’s a combination of pragmatic and idealistic: now that the treadmill of factory-husband-couple-of-kids is no longer her only option, her future is a whirl of opportunity.
I have two kids, and I’ve never been ambivalent about them. I was older than Connie is when my kids were born and they were – are - very much wanted. But I’ve never been ambivalent about work, either. I’m fortunate to have found my way to a career that’s interesting and fulfilling and it’s a vital element of my life, much like sleep and food and exercise. Sometimes more than sleep, in the early-baby days.
I was lucky to be born into a society that largely expects mothers to work outside the home these days, and to be surrounded by family and friends who would have been surprised, frankly, if I didn’t. And my work is pretty flexible and not physically demanding, so a return was relatively straightforward. None of these things are true for everyone, of course.
All the same, the inevitable juggle that’s parenthood and career got me thinking. What if none of these advantages had been available to me? What if I were someone who had really not been convinced by the idea of motherhood? And what if my choices had been far more limited?
These days, we’re almost too used to the concept of choice. We have more TV shows than we’ll ever watch in a lifetime, never mind a week. The ways in which to eat your avocado toast multiply daily. We’re used, as women, to being broadly able to decide, for the most part, the extent to which we want a career and how much of that career we want to balance if we’re willing and able to have children. And if we’re lucky, we have a partner who shares our values and works with us to keep the precarious balance of child-rearing and work, especially during those crazy, hazy early years.
So as I wrote further into Shelter, it was really interesting to think about the women who’d gone before. A whole series of ‘what if?’s sprang up around me.
What if it was entrenched in society that every woman would aim to be a wife and mother? What if circumstances of war then removed that assumption? What if, in fact, your prospects of marriage and children were hypothetically hugely reduced due to the number of young men lost to war? What if you were someone who took hold of this idea and rather than being panicked by it, were completely liberated by the options, however nebulous, that now confronted you?
And then – what if that’s all changed by one evening of untrammeled joy whilst your life literally burns down around you? All your prospects are gone. You’ve finally found something that seems worthwhile, something you can do, but life has pulled itself back in and you’re stuck in your designated tramlines.
Connie feels trapped. She loves her baby, but he was never part of her plan, and she can’t get past that.
This is where my original thoughts about men raising kids came back in. Connie’s cack-handed attempts at child-rearing are enhanced by the far more competent Seppe and Amos, which only serves to make her feel worse. Her sense of being trapped is compounded by a feeling of inadequacy that a POW and an old shepherd know instinctively how to do what she does not. Perhaps she wouldn’t have felt so unequal to the situation if the baby was being raised by a kindly female relative?
I was interested in what assumptions this throws up for and about us, that even now, perhaps, though we strive for equality, we are all still somehow hardwired to find it unusual that these two men are better placed than the woman to look after the child.
Connie doesn’t want to be a trailblazer, I don’t think, and she certainly doesn’t want harm to come to her baby. But she knows, deep down, that he’s not a choice she would have made. Some people consider her selfish for the choices she’s made; others understand the struggle she has. And I, for one, am profoundly grateful to have had a series of choices that just weren’t hers.
Shelter (Zaffre) by Sarah Franklin is out in paperback 1st June £7.99