Ita Buttrose on why motherhood needs a rebrand because modern society doesn’t value mums as it should

Ita Buttrose thinks motherhood — and feminism — need a rebrand. Ms Buttrose, a trailblazing feminist icon who is also a mother of two, said modern society does not value mothers raising their children the way that it should. “I don’t think motherhood is valued,” she said. “I think it’s just assumed that it’s something we do, we women do, and we can drop the kid here, there. . . and somebody else can look after them and it doesn’t really matter who looks after them. But it does matter who looks after them. “We’re expected to have a baby and then put them into the care of somebody else and leave them all day. And some women choose to do that, and I’m not criticising women who choose that, but I think there’s a lot of women who would like to spend more time with their children.” Writing in her autobiography, Unapologetically Ita, released this week, Ms Buttrose said: “I have always thought that being a mother is far more important than any of my career successes.” Speaking to The West Australian at a time when Australia’s fertility rate has hit a record low, Ms Buttrose said workplaces had to become more family-friendly “and allow women to enjoy their babies”. “I went back after six weeks when my son was born, my second child, and I realise now that that was far too early, but work was waiting, and I had only just started Cleo for the Packers, and it was a big investment, so I went back to work,” she said. “I can look at my son now and I can see that he’s fine and I’ve raised a really healthy young man, and he’s got three children of his own, but, but I still resent the time that I didn’t have with him because I had to go back to work.” She said flexible work and letting mothers work from home where they could was a “vital plank” in creating a society that better valued motherhood. “I think COVID showed us that women actually do enjoy being able to spend time with their families and combining it with work,” she said. “And it does work, and I don’t think all women want to go back to the office full time. “Now, some jobs you have to be in there but there’s lots of jobs where you don’t need to be at the office and if you can find a way to make it work and deliver the product that you’re engaged to deliver and still stay at home and rear your family I don’t see why we should not allow that. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t all sit down and work out a better workplace that allows women and men to care for their families as well as produce the goods for the boss.” If the devaluing of motherhood is, in part, a consequence of the rise of feminism, Ms Buttrose said that was not intentional. “The early feminists will tell you that they didn’t really think of the family,” she said. “They thought that anyone could raise a child, but we now know that anyone can’t. So I think. . . we need to find a way to make it work. And I think the time is right for a new age of feminism. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that, you change as we go along, and we learn as we go along.” At 83 Ms Buttrose’s accomplishments are well-known: the one-time youngest editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly and the first woman to head up a metropolitan newspaper has been named Australian of the Year and received both an Officer of the Order of Australia and an Order of the British Empire. Cold Chisel once wrote a song about her. Her latest book — the first, she notes, not to be written while simultaneously holding down a full-time job — covers her thoughts on everything from leadership and menopause to her time as head of the ABC. It also paints a portrait of a woman getting older and faced with a complication she did not foresee: a disability. Ms Buttrose has been diagnosed with a condition known as an isolated gait disorder that means she often gets around in a wheelchair. She describes the condition as isolating and frustrating when the world is not wheelchair accessible. “What I’ve learned is that there’s a sort of a stigma to being a person with a disability and and when I go out, I realise that many of the buildings are not what I call disability friendly,” she said. “They have steps. They have stairs with no railings. “Then there’s the disabled parking. We’re all familiar with disabled parking, and the signs that are up and able-bodied people park their cars there all the time and I wonder if these people ever look at disabled people and realize how difficult it is to get around. “Then there’s disabled toilets. How many times have you seen an able-bodied person ducking into the disabled toilet because the ladies is full or something, and so they rush into the disabled toilet? The disabled person comes along and they can’t get into the toilet that’s made specifically for people with disabilities. “We need to police these more. And we need to make sure there are more of these things. We need to. We we talk about being disability friendly, but I don’t think we are.”