New Zealand's Midwifery Council banishes the words 'mother' and 'woman'.

Well, silly me! What’s that saying about telling God your plans and hearing the ensuing laughter? I should have known that when I planned to only write periodically on my new Substack account, it could be a short-lived plan.

I mean, how can I not write about the New Zealand Midwifery Council’s bizarre new proposed Scope of Practice guidelines, where they’ve removed the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ from the narrative. We might all be forgiven for thinking that mothers and women are the centre of the universe in midwifery, but apparently we’d be mistaken. Those two words have been completely erased from the afore-mentioned guidelines.

To be fair, the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ appear elsewhere on the NZ Midwifery Council’s website, however, I can’t help but wonder if their days are numbered, too.  

The revision of the guidelines has been in the making for one and a half years, and, as far as I can see, no group broadly called Mothers, Mothers-to-be, and Women appear to have been consulted. Of the groups which have been consulted, there are probably mothers and women in them, but they seem strangely on board with being erased. I don’t know about you, but it looks like incredibly bad business to me to drop the words with which the overwhelming majority of your customers identify, and not ask them even in passing how they feel about that.

When I use the phrase “overwhelming majority of your customers” I refer to all bar the estimated 6 – 12 women who give birth in New Zealand each year who don’t identify as women. Although midwifery is there for all women, irrespective of their identity, isn’t it more efficient and far-reaching to use language that the most people will understand most of the time? If there are women in the world who don’t identify as women, but still want to use their woman-body to grow babies, then I believe there must surely be a better approach to reach them than dropping the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ out narratives they may encounter.

Now, I admit that I’m not a mother, but I do know that it’s women who have babies, and when they do, they become mothers. So far, so good – I think that’s a 10/10 score for me, even though I know that mothering involves a lot more than just giving birth (and I also know that there’s no “just” about giving birth). Every mother I know says becoming a mother is life-changing in a kind of massive and extraordinary way, so I reckon the word ‘mother’ is a tiny bit important.

The NZ Midwifery Council has given the public two weeks to give feedback on this erasure – closes 21st November 2022 - after giving themselves a year and a half to dismantle mothers and women and create bollox in their place. The email address for feedback is near the bottom of the page in this link Scope of Practice.

Not satisfied with decimating the visibility of mothers and women, one of the head honchos at NZ Midwifery Council tweets that the problem is actually with the public, because we don’t understand how much there is to be gained from this, and we just need to change our hearts and minds.

Someone has succumbed to a great sales pitch from woke PR experts, I’m picking.

Oh, and if that isn’t enough, somehow this all ties in with Māori culture! In the words of Michelle Uriarau from Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak), “bullshit”.

Speaking with Michelle in this video on behalf of Speak Up for Women NZ, I have an excellent chinwag with her about this no-disagreement-from-me bullshit.

Speak Up for Women NZ speaks with Michelle Uriarau from Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak). - YouTube