One more contradiction of feminism and motherhood is that education (on all levels) is not yet a major feminist issue. Below Linda Pearl describes her experiences with her local preschool centre. The article was originally published in Broadside (P.O. Box 5799, Auckland NEW ZEALAND).

In 1979 I became involved with my local play centre starting my training as a parent helper. Completing the Parent Helper Certificate, I went on to do a written and practical course and finished my training for the Assistant Supervisor Certificate; I started work last year as assistant supervisor at the play centre here.

During this period I travelled extensively to other centres in the province and was able to share, observe and assess the needs of the mothers and children I met. For many, play centre was their only social contact outside of the home and they often spent up to nine hours a week at play centre with their children.

Through my involvement with the Women's Centre here, the Women's Movement generally, and because of the freedom I was Initially given to plan and make changes at the play centre, I started a notice board there with relevant pamphlets, contacts and information for women which included SOS referral and counselling and Working Women's Charter information, etc. etc

At that time there was a controversy raging around the use of tampons and I mounted a display of relevant articles from Broadsheet and the local newspaper, and also offered sponges for sale on behalf of the Self-help Health Group I belonged to. Some women came to me and bought sponges and discussed the issues.There were endless conversations around women's problems especially those of marital discord and unwanted pregnancies but no-one wanted to talk about possible solutions and when I began to  introduce the occasional feminist interpretation relating it back to my own experience, everyone began to shy away from me

 I was verbally challenged and then abused by my supervisor for my stand on abortion and the display of SOS contacts, and someone stuck a large, dirty, kitchen sponge on my tampon/sea sponge display. It was a dilemma to find that the women were either openly hostile, ignored me altogether or were in awe of me.

While my regular activities and workshops with the children were innovative and exciting I was becoming more and more estranged from the women I worked with. There was no-one I felt I could talk to about how I was feeling. No-one seemed to want to discuss openly any of the problems within play centre apart from day-to-day petty administrative hassles or the continuing saga of the play centre freeplay model versus the more structured kindergarten model debate I No-one seemed interested to discuss, confront or recognize sexist, classist or racist attitudes and practices within our own play centre (our own children s library was riddled with sexist books) or the
attitudes of many of us towards each other and our children.

At the beginning of 1981 I took a long hard look at myinvolvement with play centre and decided to leave. I found that I was choosing to associate with a group of women with whom I generally would have had very little to do in any other situation, and that I was being paid appallingly for it. I suffered from strong guilt feelings around my leaving play centre because they were very short-staffed. I found that the women themselves were passive, apolitical, depressed and oppressed; they personified the total mother/wife feminine stereotype. What I had learned from the children was invaluable but because of the destructive feedback from the women I worked with, I felt generally demoralized by the whole experience. Even around the few women I did have a working relationship with I found I was constantly toning myself down. I just felt that I couldn't be myself.

I realized it was an environment I didn't want my child in; the very worst of female stereotyping was constantly being reinforced. I also realized that my son's experience was right now and, while I could battle through and seek some kind of analysis later, he could not. I realized also that I badly needed a break from preschool education and, therefore, withdrew from play centre, placing my son in Montessori Preschool where virtually no parental involvement is required. I needed to withdraw, gather my forces and think about where we were going.

I began to think about future education. I had always maintained when the question arose that my child would have an alternative rather than a state education. My concept of alternative education was rather nebulous to say the least. I think I honestly imagined, naively, a perfect environment without personalities involved!

At this stage I had very definite ideas about what I didn't want, but was rather confused about what the alternatives could be. At the same time I had a prenatal yoga programme going on in the city and through this became actively involved in a move to establish a Home Birth Group in Taranaki. The group attracted a large number of "New Age" folks. There was a lot of rhetoric, but when it came down to it the nitty-gritty was nuclear family. The statgs-quo power relationships between men and women that this implied became painfully obvious in the way that the group began to function.

I'd been involved with committees and collectives before and realized how important it was from the beginn ing to establish an overall perspective of the aims of the group and how it would operate within a political framework. However, the group refused to give these ideas any credence or time. I found that I was back again on the same merry-go-round of being stereotyped as the loud aggressive feminist. Politics for them began and ended with what they put in their mouths! The group needed a doctor to operate legally and the whole thing came to a nasty head when they found a "patron saint" In the form of a prominent pediatrician who also ran the local neo-natal unit but
who also happened to hold an important position within the ranks of SPUC. This didn't appear to bother any member of the Home Birth Group committee. In fact, the very opposite view prevailed, so much so that I was not invited to meet with him with the rest of the committee because of my known feminist views on abortion. As one group member put It, (mother of a son the same age as mine — with lots of eye contact and soft smiles of course I), "Well, Linda, we all know how outspoken you are and
how you have a habit of coming right to the point, so we decided that It wouldn't be a good Idea for you to meet with him." I resigned in protest from the group!

In 1981 I came out as a lesbian and attended the Lesbian Mothers' Conference In Auckland and through a dialogue with Elizabeth Thom I began this article. Previously I had not met anyone (feminist or non-feminist) whom I could talk to about education, who did not have the attitude "it's a terrible system but we have got to live with it."

I've only to look as far as my own experience to know that preschool motherhood burns women out until their oppression reaches such extremes that their child's magical age of five seems to be the clearing in an otherwise horrible, physical and emotional entanglement.

There are all manner of rationales to explain why education has not become a major feminist issue. However, at the root of this lies, I believe, the single fact that politically mothers, by the very nature of their oppression, have been prevented from coming together and formulating theory and policy with the result that Motherhood has never been reclaimed by the Women's Movement.

We are raising a new generation and I feel that if I hand over my son to be educated by the state that that will equal state control and I am allowing him to grow up with the learned mentality of the rapist = rape of woman's body = rape of the land = rape of woman spirit.

I don't want a ghetto school but one that bridges the gap between classroom and community reality. I want a school run by women on feminist principles within an environment where my lesbianism can be shown to be the positive lifestyle that It Is. Such a school should be financially viable for all women. I'd like to begin a dialogue with women around the country to learn what the experience of other women has been. A lot more ground work has to be done and decisions need to be made
collectively.

All I know is that I've a great deal of life experience and many organizational skills which I've come to recognize as having credibility through the perspective of feminism.

"There are ways of thinking that we don't knew about. Nothing could be more Important or precious than that knowledge however unborn. The sense of urgency, the spiritual restlessness It engenders cannot be appeased."

It's Not As Easy As We May Have Thought...