A sharp take on parenting culture and ‘mummy politics’

FICTION
The Mother of All Calamities
Lisa Moule
Allen & Unwin, $34.99

What does it take to be a good parent? For the mothers of 3P at Greengully Public in a gentrified suburb on the outskirts of the city, the question fuels conflict, drama and personal vendettas.

Lisa Moule’s The Mother of All Calamities circles the lives of four hyper-competent women as they navigate the emotional and psychological tumult of the school playground – aka “mummy politics”.

Jenny, the longstanding PA president, is the poster mum for emotional regulation. Organised and methodical, she is maniacally attentive to detail and overly laborious in her mothering duties. She wakes at 5am to make cupcakes on the first day of the school year because, well, she’s desperate for her son, Val, to have a friend. After all, the ultimate fear harboured by all parents is that your child will be socially rejected. But Val has thorny behavioural issues and is regularly violent to his parents. Jenny will do anything to ensure that her son is accepted by his peers, even if that means bending her ethics.

Enter Estelle, an old acquaintance who returns to the neighbourhood with her daughter Harmony to escape a toxic past. Finally, Val has met his match. Harmony is rude, pugnacious and prodigiously conniving. This eight-year-old is described as having “unfiltered arrogance” and permanently sporting a “mendacious pout”. Finally, Jenny can sleep better at night, knowing her son has a friend. Only, not really. Soon, Harmony is weaving her Machiavellian weight over poor Val. Too bad Jenny has already fallen so hopelessly and gratefully for Estelle. How do you sustain a friendship when your child is being bullied by the child of your new best friend? Privately, Estelle is trying to wrestle her own feelings towards her daughter, waking up most mornings numbed by an intense hatred.

For their teacher, Miss Petty, her problems are of the bureaucratic kind. When a new male recruit (clearly underqualified) is promoted, she questions her purpose as a teacher. And look – which of us hasn’t experienced that sting? Feeling cheated and unrecognised, her raison d’etre is further tussled by the demands of parents, insisting their children get special attention.

“Her good energy was always usurped before she even entered the classroom,” Moule writes. “Everything she did as a teacher, beyond the lessons and delivering them, all the juggling of hearts and minds, all the listening beyond the words, answering parents’ worried emails or nurturing a child through a difficult time, these acts were un-CV-worthy.” Herein lies the book’s most compelling agenda – examining the ways society’s most necessary and urgent services are undertaken mostly by women. They are also mostly unpaid. These are female skills, often exercised by teachers, nurses and overlooked caregivers; mothers. “Women have been wired to feel for others while keeping a numb space for ourselves,” ponders one of the characters. Who has engineered said wiring? Men? Compliant women? Ah, that wonderful old thing, the patriarchy!

The fourth female in this quartet, Viv, is the least compelling character, though her struggles are no less noble. Heading back to paid employment, she secures a desk job at the police station to confront old demons. She wants to help young vulnerable women, like she had once been. But the job risks triggering long dormant nightmares. It also doesn’t help that the full-time unpaid mothers are gradually excluding her from coffee dates and weekly catch-ups.

All of these women are in subpar relationships with subpar men, only strengthening the argument Moule seems to be making: women are extraordinary at finding a way through. They’re even better at making social connections, which, at the end of the day, is the most important skill of all.

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