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I’ve been reading this book, which I picked up at a recent AASW conference I attended. This post is a bit of a review of the book, but is also liberally peppered  with my own experiences and thoughts both as a social worker and as a woman who has grown up with a mother who, I now recognize, had mental health issues.

Firstly, Catherine’s book (and research) is primarily based on the experiences of 11 women who are all 40-ish or so. This places these stories in a particular period of time, generally speaking the 60’s-70’s. The research is Australian and reflects Australian practices around mental health and institutional care of women/mothers who were diagnosed with significant mental health problems. It serves a reflection of the mental health system as seen through the personal narratives of the women who participated in the study.

The book addresses the stigma associated with having a ‘mad mother’ – and the isolation, shame and fear that these women experienced as children, the impact on their everyday lives – and the ongoing effect it has had on their adult lives, relationships etc. As a collection of lived experiences, the book certainly highlights the resilience of children and families. The criteria that the mothers must have been institutionalized was frustrating for me. I would have liked the broader inclusion of women who had experienced growing up with ‘mad moms’ who were not medicated or institutionalized but still left their daughters with a legacy of ‘wtf’.

I grew up with the peripheral understanding that my mother was an alcoholic. I say I have ‘peripheral’ awareness as there are many things, which are not openly addressed in my family and I left home at the age of 15 and have had, all in all, minimal contact with my mother or my extended family. Many of the situations which were a part of my growing up, I attributed to having a very young (she was 16 when I was born) mother who struggled with alcohol addiction. I saw her emotional estrangement and violence in this context and it was not until I was an adult that the story shifted to include a diagnosis of bi-polar depression, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated (as far as I am aware) while I was growing up. As an adult I am aware of my mother’s ongoing relationship with mental health professionals, drug therapies and hospitalizations, which include electroshock therapy. I have been peripherally aware of the fact that her mental health issues have prevented her from working, or using the social work degree she earned in her mid 30’s. I am also deeply aware of how unhappy she has been most of her life, and the impact that has had upon me, my life choices, my relationships and my parenting.

This is not about ‘mommy blame’, as I sometimes felt while I read Catherine’s book. For me, the book lacks a clearly articulated social justice framework, and a gendered analysis which may have allowed for more of a compassionate view of the mothers than that which I found while reading this book. And tho I found the stories of the daughters highly compelling, I would have found the book more balanced if the mothers stories, the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been considered in more depth.

I imagine the context of the book was to give each of the women an opportunity to be central in their own story. So often when someone in your family is ill, they become the ’star’ and everyone else becomes a shadow – hence the book title. However, I believe the possibilities for healing would have been greater, again, if the stories of the mothers and the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been more fleshed out.

For instance, a daughter may view their mother’s ‘crazy’ behavior in relation to the impact it has on her thoughts, feelings and physical reality – but would that reality change with an appreciation of how the mother was experiencing that same moment? Also, again, would there not be greater capacity to be gentle and generous with our own struggles to maintain relationships and raise children, if we could understand where personal issues begin and end?

It is not the ‘fault’ of the mothers that they had mental health problems. It is not the fault of the mothers that mental health problems carried/s such social stigma. It is not the fault of the mothers that there were/are very poor supports, services or resources for themselves or their families. It is not the mothers fault that the institutional care provided to them was so very often the best of a worst solution. It is not the fault of the mothers that the fathers and wider family and community were not there to offset and support the mothers or their children. Yes the mental health of their mothers created a legacy of issues for each woman, but locating the responsibility of those issues with the mother, who was ill,and also suffering, seems to me, to grotesquely miss the mark.

We don’t talk much about my mother’s mental health problems. Actually, we don’t talk. Estrangement is part of the legacy of the mental health problems in my family, as is the inability of individual family members to locate themselves in those issues. My mother’s mental health problems are one variable in a complex tapestry of family dynamics. What I can say is, I have come to see my mother’s story in a gendered, socially conscious manner – and that allows me compassion – even tho, it does not allow me a relationship.