Ten years ago, I was in my early forties with two teenaged children. I was consulting from my back shed and writing up a model for a Healing Farm. Single life suited me; it was full of kids, work, sis-stars, dance practice, gardening, and my dogs Tully and Docker were good company. Those were fun days in between finishing my PhD and taking up the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples Co-Chair role. I loved writing in the early morning, before the rest of the household got up. Then, after getting everyone to school, I would take the dogs for a walk and return to the shed to work, only re-entering the house at lunchtime for a cuppa, a sandwich and to watch Oprah and Dr Phil. A former social worker, I took great delight in these two shows… until the day I heard something I had never heard before, nor even considered.
What I heard that day, sitting on the couch watching the tele, had never occurred to me. It was a major blind spot, and I was stunned. Not like polite hand-over-my-mouth kind of stunned; I’m talking slack-jaw-mouth-hanging-open kind of stunned. I had spent 20-plus years working in sexual and reproductive health, so for decades had heard people’s stories of courage, love, triumph on the one hand, and of deep sorrow, pain and regret on the other. Still, the message I received loud and clear that day came from, of all people, Dr Phil. What he said, to a young woman on his stage, was something that no one ever had ever said to me:
…You have the right and the responsibility to choose a man who will not only be a good partner to you; but a good father to your children...
Well, FAAAAAARK.
I had a right, and a responsibility, to choose a partner and a future father.
I had never. Ever. Thought of it.
I had certainly taken to heart my rights and responsibilities to an education, to work, to rear children on my own, to buy and own property, and to excel in athletics and dancing. But, despite my outward appearance of accomplishment, I had not understood that I was worthy of being shown love, kindness and care. No one had told me that my sexual and reproductive health was mine to cherish. And because I didn’t know, I couldn’t act. My lunchtime sandwich that day was left uneaten, my mind in overdrive:
If only I had heard this prior to becoming a parent in my teenage years.
If only I had known I had the right to a choice about the quality of my intimate relationships, and that I had a responsibility to exercise it.
If only I had known that I could choose a partner; that I didn’t have to say yes to people who chose me.
If only I had known that good girls are good on their own, and are not obliged to say yes to adults or anyone else in order to be perceived as good.
In the house in which I grew up, a stranger’s perception of me ‘being good’ was more important than simply being me. You can only imagine the power dynamics at play – ‘daughter, you be nice to the stranger, you be good’. Then that look – the one that says if you don’t be nice you are going to get a clip up the back of the head. Keeping secrets, stage smiles and lies were part of the ‘being good’ façade, as was ‘being strong’ and ‘keeping up appearances’. On that day, on my couch, I saw, touched and felt the vulnerability and deep longing that had been kept hidden by my blind spot. And I howled my friggin’ head off.
When I’d calmed down a bit, I marvelled that despite the United Nations Declarations signed by governments around the world detailing women’s rights to loving and fulfilled relationships and quality parenthood experiences, I had not been given the opportunity to bring the content of these documents into my own life. I’m not saying I was denied my rights; but I certainly couldn’t act on them because I didn’t know I had them. Information itself is never enough. I had to accept that I was powerless to act on my rights and responsibilities, such was my conditioning to be a ‘good girl’ who always acquiesced.
Is it a lack of information or a lack of power that makes us vulnerable?
According to a White Paper developed by Marie Stopes International, reproductive coercion is behaviour that impacts a person’s right to make decisions about their reproductive health. After years of working in sexual and reproductive health in this and other countries, I understand that reproductive coercion is often expressed in the life stories of individuals, families and networks. Women are exposed to the actions of perpetrators who use manipulation, sabotage or coercion to deny them their autonomy. The more women I spoke to, the more similar stories emerged, and, ultimately, my stories merged with theirs. I recount some of them here.
In suburban Brisbane, the woman who fell pregnant to her partner whose condom broke during sex… just as she was about to leave him.
The young teenager in western New South Wales who was pressured into pregnancy and whose partner attended every appointment; not because he was genuinely interested in the progress of the pregnancy, but because his patterns of control were wide ranging. ‘The contraceptives didn’t work’ she told me, ‘the seal on the pill packet was broken, but he encouraged me to take it anyway.’
The highly toxic relationships in which women’s first experience of domestic violence occurred during pregnancy. ‘My partner punched me into a miscarriage, and I couldn’t tell the nursing staff at the hospital that this had happened to me.’
In some instances, reproductive coercion has not been from a partner, but from a family member.
‘Here’s some money, go and get rid of it’, said the central Queensland parents of a young woman whose early life experiences had left her with drug dependencies. This young woman told me that she had had previous children removed and really wanted a baby to love – but was pressured into having a termination.
‘Can you please sterilise my daughter, she has Down Syndrome and I don’t want her to fall pregnant’, said an elderly parent of a daughter who was dating a man, also with Down Syndrome. The genuine love and fear for her daughter’s future was a driving factor, but the ethics of this were difficult to navigate during my time with Sexual Health and Family Planning in Canberra.
In Melbourne, a newly arrived pregnant 15-year-old girl who had already experienced significant trauma and violence in refugee camps ran away from her family after being offered for marriage to the man who had raped her. Her family had done so because of the deep family shame surrounding her pregnancy.
In all these cases, and many more, we see evidence of reproductive coercion through physical violence, sexual assault and family pressure around issues of conception and pregnancy. Other forms of reproductive coercion have long been evident and have impacted women and their children globally. The pushback against breast feeding, in which a mother is denied the opportunity to feed her baby from her body, is an example of a market-based reproductive coercive strategy (i.e. that baby formula is better than breast milk) with great physical, social, emotional and political consequences.
We need to see and to address the social, cultural, legal, political and systemic drivers that create the enabling environments supporting and allowing reproductive coercion. In so doing, we could advocate for strategies such as the one advocated for by an Elder Matriarch from Canada, that our women’s children only be delivered by other women. As she said: ‘We know our birthing practices will be decolonised when there are no male staff in the delivery suite.’
I was a hypervigilant, intelligent, earnest young girl, poised to be ever helpful. My combination of youthfulness, height and purity was a heady elixir for those who slunk around me with their uninvited, unwanted, unsolicited and unexpected attention, which I was not protected from and not able to discuss. As a pre-teen, I was so very tall and so uninformed – naivety was meant to equate to purity but instead it made me vulnerable. I was conditioned to accept behaviours that were not warranted and to smile and be helpful even when I was not shown the same courtesy. By the age of 16, I was so uninformed and angry that I swapped ballet shoes for martial arts uniforms and spent the next few years beating the shit out of punching bags.
Having my first child as a teenager did two things. My son’s name actually means ‘an incitement to action’, and, when I looked into my baby son’s face, I knew I had to do everything I could to keep him safe. Secondly, I felt invisible – a young unattractive mother with stretchmarks deep and wide around my girth. To me, it looked like I had been ringbarked, and it often felt like it too. As such, my experiences of parenthood were completely different to those on the TV shows I watched as a young mum. I finally found a way to leave that relationship and moved to central Australia. I spent a year in Alice before heading to Wulungurru, where I was an adult educator and then the administrator at the Pintubi Homelands Health Service.
Four years after the birth of my son, and nearly to the day, my daughter was born in Alice Springs Hospital. When we arrived back to Country, Anangu there took us out to Country and we were both smoked. The best love I had I gave to my children. All these experiences are bound up in my ‘why’ of owning First 1000 Days Australia.
Why First 1000 Days Australia
My own story and the many others I have heard about the first 1000 days, from pre-conception to a child’s second birthday, have made me realise that it is a time of exquisite vulnerability, of courage, of purpose and of passion.
One aspect of First 1000 Days Australia’s work is to support those women and men who need to heal from not knowing that they had a right and a responsibility to choose a person who will be a good partner and an attentive parent. To guide this work, we start from the time of pre-conception, and focus on two main strategies: the rights of children, through a Charter of rights for children yet to be conceived; and, because we know the impact that colonisation has had on our men, Our men, our shields: Messages of belonging and hope.
Our people have been subjected to state-based reproductive coercion since colonisation. These experiences have been a significant contributor to our collective, present-day traumas. In a paper I wrote some years ago, Preachers, policy and power, I identified that reproductive coercion has always been embedded in state-based policy and programs, and that these continue to impact upon our people today. My findings included that:
Stereotyping Indigenous people as sexually depraved was a view that dominated medical research and practice in the early nineteenth century.
The belief Aboriginality could be ‘bred out’ resulted in the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.
It was assumed Western ideals of motherhood and Western practices of medical intervention in birthing needed to be taught to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women if they were to become competent mothers.
The widespread belief it is culturally appropriate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have children when they are young is a stereotype.
The high levels of violence in some of our communities is perceived as being acceptable to us.
The disparities in maternal mortality, pre-term births, low birth weight and perinatal deaths between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Australia need to be understood as indicators of reproductive coercion.
We all find pathways that empower us to make a contribution, even if it is just to resolve issues that we experienced when we had no power, little control and a lot of anger.
Through the work that we do, we are attempting to remove the legacy of others having power and control over the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including power over our reproductive rights – an issue that has never been addressed as comprehensively as we would like. This is because the standards established in national Indigenous sexual health strategies have tended to focus on disease eradication rather than a whole-of-community response to sexual and reproductive health. We must put in place prevention measures to address community needs and the ongoing trauma and distrust of government services and non-Indigenous service providers. We also need parents to step up and guide their children safely through their adolescent years, and ensure they have the supports available to do so.
For every person reading this who has experienced reproductive coercion, you are not alone, nor do you have to be. Here is a contact – 1800RESPECT – for you to start on your journey to healing.
For others interested in learning more about reproductive coercion, I will be talking at an online workshop for people living in the northern Melbourne region on National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Day – 4 August 2020. Details here!