Jenny Colgan on not liking your new baby

Is Lowri Turner (above) just a typical mum? asks Jenny Colgan in her guest blog. Jenny writes:

Now here's a real problem for working mothers - what if your work involves writing about your life? Then something goes horribly wrong - eg, you break up with your husband just as you have a baby.

So your hormones are in flux, your emotional life is shattered, and you have no idea how you're going to cope financially in the future, which means you might just take on any work that gets offered to you...

Which we can only assume is what happened to Lowri Turner, the short, witty tv presenter, whose found herself all over the papers this week after writing about her shock at the ambiguity of her feelings towards her new mixed-race baby.

With lines like, "She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me", and "If I wanted to pass us off as a nice, neat nuclear family, she would blow my cover at once", Lowri managed to offend/amaze people of almost every colour. After all, her (now ex) husband was Asian; what on earth was she expecting? "Asian genes are very strong" she reports the nurse telling her, in an pitying tone of voice.

The problem is, we all remember that crazed hormonal flux following childbirth. All sorts of things go through your head. Normally it's the opposite response - "my child is so beautiful, I'm amazed people don't keep trying to steal her and I must rapidly inform the world." But many mothers report feelings of doubt and worry over their newborns (in my own case: why does my grumpy baby look seventy five years old? Is that right?) Then you get used to each other and a calmer kind of love can flourish and grow.

Unless, of course, you've just sold your innermost paranoias to the Daily Mail, which you suspect is rarely the answer to anything, however worried you may be about the divorce settlement.

No doubt Lowri's daughter is utterly beautiful, and within a few weeks she'll never think about their differences again. Just as long as they don't keep a cuttings book...

Comments

[Juliette (new baby soon) Gold]

I wonder what will become of this poor child when she grows up? Hardly the basis for a well-balanced and emotionally healthy growth is it?

[Mumoftwo]

I felt a bit queasy when I read this article, not so much because of the contents, but because she almost seemed glad to have something she found difficult to write about, that or she was just so hormonal she shouldn't have been allowed to write it by the editor. I imagine her trundling out regular articles 'what's it's like to have a mixed race toddler?' 'how my mixed race child copes with the Brownies'. It just felt a bit wrong to me although it was hard to put my finger on why, and obviously she is reflecting many people's (not just mixed race couples) early experiences with their 'alien' babies (although not mine, my husband is from Eastern Europe and I expected, and got, children with a very different colouring than my own white skinned red-hair!)

[Nicola Lewis]

I can empathise to a point with Ms Turner. My son was born 17 years ago with Down's and at the time I really believed that I had given birth to an alien. Now with many life events- some ghastly- I can honestly say I am in awe of him, he is wonderful! Lowri should have known what to expect. Some of us don't.

[Keith]

Irrelevant to the argument this is for Tim and 'the silly name'. Lowri is Welsh for Laura. Of long useage recorded as the name of the mother of Bishop Morgan who translated the Bible into Welsh in 1588

[Dr.Eduardo Lopez]

She should have learnt how to keep her legs closed instead of accepting mixing with other races and then regret it.What a shame of this Racist people, and worst of all She thinks, is a Journalist! Better for her to know She is an ignorant English woman.

[supermother]

I've never written about my children without their consent. Sometimes they've written things with me about working mothers and I also don't even take their pictures without consent. I can't send the Christmas lunch pictures to anyone as my daughter only consented if I didn't pass them on (as she hadn't washed her hair).

I suspect it's more of an issue for teenagers than babies, though.

I read that original article and I don't think it's quite as bad as portrayed - she was just writing about her feelings. I have 5 children who look very different from each other, people even think the twins aren't siblings the differences are so marked (although they have the same father and are white) but I suppose she was just musing here about how she felt about having a half sibiling to her existing children who looked different. A bit like those couples who have had non identical twins one of whom looks white and the other black and how differently they will be treated not by the parents but by others who feel they have to define them as black or white.

This particular lady - it is very sad - to remarry which is a nice hopeful thing to dafter divorce but then that goes wrong, That's the bigger sadder issue - that 60% of second marriages fail (ordering my chastity belt as we speak)

[Angela]

Oh Dear,
...and hoping that Jenny Colgan did not mis-quote Lowri Turner...

Sad to read that Lowri Turner continues to remind readers of a journalist with ambitions far outweighing talent. We read the blog of a person who willingly used her, innocent & utterly defenceless, baby daughter as a prop for her column. Lowri knew who she was married to. She knew, I suspect to the exact percent, what racial mix the baby would comprise. The baby is Not responsible for her marriage failure and must not be first presented as a somewhat alarming alien before being forced to represent a result, and potentially indirect cause, of a failed mixed-race marriage.

My experience is as follows: the baby will grow up to be as brown (or yellow, red or black) as the parents condition it to be. Children, I find, always represent the social and racial conditions of their childhood environment and schooling. They do Not represent their genetic heritage unless it has been drummed into them during their formative years.

[j]

I have often asked myself how journalists manage. If I say something which I afterwards think was a bit indiscreet, or might have hutr someone's feelings, or could be misread etc, I get very stressed about it. Who are these magic, tough people, I asked myself, who dare to bare their family secrets and say provocative things for everyone to read? Is it just a facade and a game which they understand and dont take too seriously? How do they get their husbands, families, children etc not to hate them for it? How do you they keep their peace of mind?

I have had a new thought: maybe they don't. Maybe it is almost as hard for them as it would be for me.

If so, poor Lowri, but what was she thinking?

[Daphne]

I read Lowri's article in the family section of the Guardian with facinated horror. There she was, apparently, holding her very tiny brown baby girl with its back to camera and talking so much hormonal, racist drivel that she will come to regret if her daughter ever gets to read about it when she's older.She write: she didn't know her husband was Asian until she met his parents(didn't they talk while courting?), she is too overwhelmed to to help her daughter appreciate her Asian cultural heritage(that's right now, when she's older life might be less stressful and she might get help from his family), and anyway she wanted a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes like her sons (arghhh, didn't this woman think at all?) Surely, this is the ranting of a post-partum mum who has lost it. She need help not a platform.

[Daphne]

I read Lowri's article in the family section of the Guardian with facinated horror. There she was, apparently, holding her very tiny brown baby girl with its back to camera and talking so much hormonal, racist drivel that she will come to regret if her daughter ever gets to read about it when she's older.She write: she didn't know her husband was Asian until she met his parents(didn't they talk while courting?), she is too overwhelmed to to help her daughter appreciate her Asian cultural heritage(that's right now, when she's older life might be less stressful and she might get help from his family), and anyway she wanted a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes like her sons (arghhh, didn't this woman think at all?) Surely, this is the ranting of a post-partum mum who has lost it. She need help not a platform.

[Emily Webb]

To me it's an issue of Lowri Turner facing the uncomfortable truth that her marriage has broken up and she is needing to make some sense of it. I find the 'confessional Liz Jones-type culture' really irritating. Did she really need to write the article? Or, is it a case of she has to pay the bills and keep her public profile up even more now that she is effectively a single mum. It just reeks of self promotion and is really crass.

[tim]

with such a silly name anything
goes in my book.

[Betheny]

I can't comment on the racist angle but clearly remember thinking my first and only child (blue-eyed white kid, much like his mother) looked bizarre. I asked my husband if he looked like an alien. (Response: A startled "No. He's perfect!") I called the child Mr. PeanutHead. And I would have cut anyone or anything that threatened him. Still would, 18 years later, most likely. I must add that he grew up nice-looking, not alien at all.

Just saying, I think many of us look at the invaders oddly, until we get to know them.

[bushra]

agreed with MsTitian - Lowri seems to be scrabbling around for material. i'm struggling to see where she's coming from - is there a link to this Guardian article anywhere?

i personally found the line 'Part of me thinks I should be playing sitar music to her in her cot, mastering pakoras and serving them dressed in a sari, but that would be fantastically fake coming from me' as disturbing. why, why would you feel that? she's your daughter, a part of you and your life, are you *really* considering treating her differently to her brothers on the basis of her skin colour?!

[kieransmum]

That's true, Margot - but it is an easy journalistic technique to highlight an unpleasant yet compelling social stereotype by saying 'can be seen as', thus enabling the writer to use it whilst seemingly retaining a critical distance. Lowri seems to be doing this, and I think particularly writing for the Mail there is a stereotypical audience assumption she is feeding into. It just seems highly socially discriminatory to me - I personally have never looked at any white woman with a dual heritage/mixed race child and thought beyond the obvious, oh that child must have a father of a different race, and TBH I think most people would stop there, without going into the classist discrimination she mentions. I'm suspicious of the motivations she is choosing to uncover, I guess - it seems more about social prestige, and what others will think - and that this really matters to her, is I think slightly alarming.
But should also add that I'm 38.5 weeks pregnant and very grumpy generally so I may not be being entirely rational here!

[MsTitian]

...I'm totally confused here- what is Lowri's point? It's more a sharing of her experience having a mixed race baby and she's probably just using it as a reason to earn a few bob writing articles!

[margot]

You're right Keiransmum - it's a horrible phrase and a horrible assumption, but it's not all there is to that article. It also reads as though it is a phrase used by other people - although I've not come across it.

[Jane]

Having now read the Guardian article (although not the Daily Mail one) I am not sure what the fuss is about- other than that Lowri is articulating thoughts which we all find uncomfortable, as does Lowri herself. It seems clear that she does love her daughter and find her beautiful. I am not sure it is just about race- oddly enough I also went through a phase of finding my second daughter alien looking- although both my daughters are white my eldest has my green/blue eyes and fair hair, while the youngest has her father's dark brown hair and eyes, and I can't see myself in her. My sister has said that she found it hard to take in that the babies she carried and who were part of her for 9 months- both boys- were so clearly separate and male once they were born. Maybe it is not that unusual to find the baby "alien" in some way?

[kieransmum]

OK, Margot - I hadn't seen the Guardian article, BUT I am still horrified by the assumption that those who give birth to non-white children are 'Tracy Towerblocks.' I don't see people that way, whatever the colour of their skin - and what the hell is wrong with people who live in a tower block anyway?

[margot]

This is from Lowri Turner's article in the more highbrow Guardian:

"I too now find myself examining my daughter for signs that her skin is becoming a deeper shade of brown and being perturbed if I find them.

As I read that, I am horrified. But, then, having a mixed race baby forces you to face uncomfortable truths about yourself and the outside world that it is possible to be entirely unaware of if you stay within an easy, uncontroversial all-white sphere."

What more do you want her to say? I think Jenny Colgan's remarks and some on this blog would like to reduce Turner's view to an irreducibly racist one. It's not that simple, and she knows it.

[kieransmum]

The worst thing about this article (the original one, not Jenny's) is the comment about those white women who have non-white children are Tracy Towerblocks. What kind of classist racist crap is that?
I think Jenny's been rather kind, actually - I would have said much worse things.

[margot]

Well done Jenny. You've taken a very honest, and actually, I thought, rather affecting and interesting article by Lowri Turner and quoted her so that she seems some kind of racist monster. Could you either contribute something positive here or refuse any further requests? It's bad enough that the comments section here is often reduced to a slanging match, without the original articles being objectionable as well.

[Abby]

Poor child! What kind of start in life is that when your own mother starts to find ways to marginalise you

[Claire King]

Not living in the UK I haven't read the papers so this is the first I've heard of this.

I read Lowri's article and I thought it was honest, if not very well written. Even if she is in hormonal flux I think it's brave to be so brutally open about a subject that is often taboo, and which, in the broader sense, may leave many new mums feeling they are the only ones to feel this kind of ambivalence to a newborn.

Jenny, my challenge to you is that in your next guest blog please could you write something 100% positive about someone.

[Jennifer]

Reader Emily has written about Lowri's articles (Turner did one for the Guardian as well).

"Am I alone in feeling very sorry for baby Turner? Lowri says in the article that her daughter should not be defined by her colour and that, in an ideal world, the way she looks shouldn’t be an issue. However, that is exactly what she is doing. She is frantically checking that her baby isn’t looking more Indian and less white every day, so that the baby is more acceptable for her."

You can see more of Emily's post on her blog: http://www.doingitallagain.com/2007/07/11/3452-when-white-people-make-brown-babies/