classnotes

Note to the reader

When my mother was 21 years old, she moved from her hometown in England to The Netherlands to work. After I was born, we continued to live in The Netherlands even though my father and all our other family members lived abroad.

As a single parent with an only child, she took on the role of a mother - but also that of a father, sibling and friend. The lines that divided these roles frequently became blurred. I have often struggled to position myself in our relationship due to the many different expectations that come with these roles - as not only were they undefined, a lot of the time they felt reversed. This made it very hard for us to listen and truly understand each other.

As I’ve started to form my own opinions and slowly rely less on hers, I’ve learned that the dynamic of our relationship has had an influence on how I interact with people in power and therefore how I position myself in the many other different areas of life. Since the only person I had to look up to didn’t have a defined role, it is no surprise that I was confronted with the power structures and defined roles that are present in our current society.

This project was an opportunity to go back to the core and reconnect with my mother. Listening can be a complicated task, yet my research has shown me that communicating through storytelling and memories can be an effective way of confronting others and ourselves. I believe that reflecting on our many memories together could be a way to look past the misunderstandings and differing expectations, to see what needs and feelings lie behind.

Glossary

Grown-up:
(adjective)
An adult.

A definition that resonates most with me, is taken from an article by Dr Claire Cassidy, a researcher in children & philosophy:

‘Grown-upness is directional, particularly in its use of the word ‘up’; by definition, it demands some kind of trajectory since nothing is born or begotten grown-up. Grownup-ness is a noun that explains a particular state, deriving from the term, grown-up, and the associated verb to grow up. In order to be considered grown-up something has to grow up and subsequently it might attain grown-upness. We cannot simply ‘reclaim’ grown-upness, because a process must be gone through in order to acquire such status as being grown-up.’

‘When talking about children and being grown-up or exhibiting grown-upness, it presumes that the end point is desirable. The end point for children is, inevitably, adulthood. There is a child/adult binary that ensures the grown-up adult is the destination to be arrived at. It is worth acknowledging that not all adults, conventionally referred to as ‘grown-ups’, act in accord with what people might assert are the qualities required of grown-upness. That aside, however, the view of the child as deficit in some way, has predominated in common discourse and educational thinking, and the proposition that grown-upness as ‘the existential challenge where ego is not put at the centre’ as the aim of education reconfirms this. Indeed, the power to name individuals or groups as grown-up or of demonstrating grown-upness is retained by adults. Even were children to be considered grown-up, it would not likely be that they would ascribe themselves with such an appellation.’

Motherhood:
(noun)
The state of being a mother.

A definition that resonates most with me, is taken from ‘Care of the Soul’ by Thomas Moore:

‘All motherhood, whether that is within the family or within the individual, consists of both loving care and bitter emotional pain. The mother, while feeling pain and anger herself, gives the child the opportunity to become individualized through exposure to experience and fate. She confirms her attachment and her own desires for her child while at the same time remaining loyal as she goes through a transformative experience.’

Research Brief

What does it mean to live in ‘The Grown-up World’? It’s definition is ambiguous and has a different meaning from one person to the next. However, it could be said that the grown up world is built up of various roles, and whether it be a parent, child, partner or boss, these roles come with many expectations.

From personal experience, when we take our beliefs, attitudes and values too seriously, listening becomes complicated. We are perhaps too busy trying to conform to the roles and expectations that are placed upon us, rather than opening ourselves up to new ways of being.

Could it be that we are stuck in the ideology that we can and should stop ‘growing’ when we have fulfilled certain expectations?

The research for this project investigates the different roles and binaries of society within gender and family structures. How can we look past these societal roles and expectations and communicate in a way which isn’t just trying to convince each other that we know best?
‘You rarely change another person’s point of view by giving them ‘better’ evidence.’ (Burton, 2021)

It was important that a variety of sources were used to confront biases. All the texts, documentaries and podcasts were chosen with this in mind.

The book 'Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Made for Men’ (Criado-Perez, 2019) offers insight on data bias and how women are often silenced and thus unaccounted for within politics, literature, city planning and economics. However, this resource, along with other texts such as ‘The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It ’ and ‘Feminist City: A Field Guide’, were highly factual and evidence based, contradicting Burton’s ideology completely.

But Burton’s point is confirmed in practice in ‘Dit waren wij’ by Josefien Hekkers. This documentary is an exploration on how we live up to expectations that are placed upon us by our family members. Especially interesting was how the filmmaker chose to confront her father with the past by revisiting his own home videos of their family. The power lies in her ability to allow her father to come to new conclusions about his role as a parent by himself through seeing the story of their lives from a different perspective. ‘People are not swayed by reason, they are more likely to change their mind through story.’ (Burton, 2021)

One of the earliest known forms of storytelling is Greek Mythology. Inspired by myth, history and art, the book ‘Care for the Soul’ by Thomas Moore re-imagines the things we believe we already understand. ‘Nothing is more revealing and perhaps more healing than rethinking our moral views. People seem to fear that if they delve into their moral principles, they will lose all sense of ethics. But that's a defensive approach to morality.’ (Moore, 2016) Moore puts this ideology into practice by examining myths and tales from the past and applying them to the problems that arise in modern everyday life. The reader learns that even the oldest stories can teach us about the roles that are still in place in today’s society.

‘He who is healed no longer has to worry about the things that hinder him. But care contains an element of continued attention. There is no end. Conflicts will never be completely resolved. Our character will not change radically, nor may it go through some interesting transformations. Consciousness can of course change, but problems will remain and never go away.’ (Moore, 2016)

It is of importance to confront the past in order to keep growing. There should be no set destination. With this research I embark on the notion of storytelling as a way of communicating and enriching the relationships we have with the people around us so that we can level out the roles we take on / the power dynamics which differentiate us.

In his workshop discussing Non-Violent communication, Marshall Rosenburg argues; ‘Words can be seen as windows or walls - we should see thoughts as windows to the need that lies behind.’ (Rosenburg, 2015) With my project, I aim to use the stories of past memories I have with my mother as windows, which locate our expectations and love that we have for each other.