Read & Watch: Where'd you go, Bernadette

For Mental Health Awareness Month, we take a look at Maria Semple’s ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette’. The book tells the story of a woman trapped between two major problems - one is the traumatic blow her creative life suffered following a professional setback; the other is the frailty of her mental health.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (2012)

Bernadette used to be a pioneering architect and served as an inspiration to many as a lively, brilliant and tenacious woman in a predominantly male-dominated field.

When one of her famous, award-winning houses was bought only to be demolished and used as a parking lot, Bernadette loses her creative vision, ambition and inner strength. In the meantime, her personal life takes several other blows which drive her into an even deeper crisis: the challenge of dealing with fertility problems and miscarriages, caring for a sick child, and the pressures of a crumbling marriage.

Bernadette’s spark and appetite for life come from the interaction with others, from palpable experiences and sitting on the edge of her comfort zone, from novelty, from the rush of discovery and movement. Most importantly, they are all derived from the very act of creating and when this stops, so does her interest in herself and everything else that surrounds her. But her love and interest in Bee, her daughter, never lose intensity. Even when depression, anxiety and agoraphobia are settling in, Bernadette always finds the inner resources to connect with her daughter, to stay present and active in her world - they laugh, joke, and blast their hearts out to 80’s tunes. And while Bernadette may not be perfect, she is Bee’s best friend - “I love Mom just the way she is,” she says.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019) © 2019 Annapurna Pictures, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

When reconnecting with her mentor, Paul Jellinek (Laurence Fishburne), Bernadette receives a piece of advice that encapsulates her story. He tells her: “People like you must create. If you don’t create, you will become a menace to society.” This quote highlights the link between Bernadette’s creativity and mental health as two inter-dependent, co-existing facets of her being that will shape her life’s journey.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? isn’t about the pressures of choosing career over family or family over career. It’s not about traditional gender roles or even criticizing architecture’s professional challenges. Instead, this story tells us that we were destined for something, and once we find and pursue that goal, we’re better able to serve both our ideals and those around us.

As Bernadette elopes to Antarctica and rediscovers her love for life and architecture, she doesn’t dismiss or lose sight of the people she loves. She has indeed been blessed with many gifts … and the greatest of all, she knows, is her daughter.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019) © 2019 Annapurna Pictures, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Watch the trailer here:

About Maria Semple

Maria Semple is the bestselling author of Today Will Be Different (2016), Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012) and This One is Mine (2008). Her novels have been translated into over 30 languages. Before writing fiction, Maria wrote for the TV shows Arrested Development, Mad About You, Ellen, 90210 and others.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, an international bestseller, spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and made over a dozen year-end best lists. It was short-listed for the Women’s Prize and received the Alex Award from the American Library Association. It was turned into a 2019 film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Cate Blanchett. Today Will Be Different was an instant international bestseller and was featured on the cover of the New York Times book review.

https://www.mariasemple.com/

Hiding Motherhood: on the Maternal Wall Bias in Architecture

Research shows that after returning to the office mothers often experience sidelining, coupled with the overall assumption that they are less committed to their jobs. There is no wonder then that this phenomenon, coined as 'secret parenting' by economist Emily Oster, is becoming an almost spontaneous attitude women recur to in an attempt to preseve their professional image.

One Fine Day, 1996. [DVD] Michael Hoffman, US: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

The 1996 film 'One Fine Day', portrays Melanie Parker, an architect and single mom, struggling to meander through her day while juggling career and parenthood. Leaving aside the unrealistic representation of the architectural office culture, one aspect that drew my attention was the heroine's almost instinctive reaction to hide the fact that the little boy roaming around the office was, in reality, her son.

A 2014 paper in Gender, Work & Organization (Giving Up: How Gendered Organizational Cultures Push Mothers Out), highlights the pressures of the office culture when women sometimes hide their pregnancies well into their third semester, conceal the fact that they have small children or even “pretended their children’s interests were of small importance to them.”

In a long-hours office culture such as that of architecture where the expectations are high, where the permeability of time boundaries is assumed and where the amount of invested overtime is a reason to boast about over the coffee break, it is no surprise that women find it difficult to keep up. An AJ article written by Simon Aldous casts the spotlight on the illegal perpetuation of these conditions, revealing “employers are forcing staff to opt out of the EU Working Time Directive, which enforces an average 48-hour working week.” Leaving aside the unsustainable effects overworking has on the mental well-being of employees regardless of their gender, the bypassing of this directive could also lead to ‘further entrenching the profession’s male domination’. Under these circumstances, the adverse effects on the ability of women to progress in their architectural career become clear, even more so with the 2020 pandemic that puts further pressure on women as the primary caregivers for their children. The long-hour culture becomes a gender equity issue and breaking this bad cycle is critical if we aim to promote equal opportunities while becoming inclusive of those who choose to have children.

With few specifically tailored strategies designed to help re-integrate the returning parent, employers often propose part-time work as a win-win solution. In most cases, however, women find themselves trying to cram more work in fewer hours of allotted time.

Drawing from personal experience, this left me wondering: is the opportunity of working fewer hours per week really a viable form of support for mothers? Research shows that after returning to the office mothers often experience sidelining and demotions, coupled with the overall assumption that they are less committed to their jobs. There is no wonder then that this phenomenon, coined as ‘secret parenting’ by economist Emily Oster, is becoming an almost spontaneous form of tailoring our image to suit the work environment we operate within.

So why would people feel forced to choose a side to demonstrate their commitment to their profession, by minimizing the proportion parenthood actually occupies in their lives? Why pretend children are ‘of little importance’/ a negligible factor to prove they are invested in their work? Why are we scared to acknowledge our child-care obligations openly to our employers?

Hiding parenthood as the moment that completely re-defines not only our schedules but also our general approach and vision of life and therefore work, means we are providing our employers with a false image and limiting our own opportunities to design and access a more flexible working model within the office.

In a nutshell, if we want to see change, mothers and fathers alike should become transparent about the nature of their challenges, about the pressures they face. As she confronts and embraces the reality of motherhood in one of the film’s key scenes, Melanie Parker confronts both her boss and client in the meeting she chose to attend over her son’s soccer game: “Gentlemen, if you're smart, you'll want me as much for my dedication and ability as for the fact that I am going to ditch you right now and I am going to run like hell across town so that my kid knows that what matters to me most is him.” The client looks at her boss and says: “I like her”. Who knows, maybe this is the response we could also trigger if we decide to come clean about who we really are.

Ethos: Architecture and Motherhood

Pinch Point has emerged as a response to one critical career 'pinch point' that women working in the field of architecture face when negotiating the position of motherhood across their priority-scale.

Image: Being an architect and a mother at the office of Almut Grüntuch-Ernst. Copyright: Edgar Rodtmann

Pinch.Point aims to expose this blind spot within the profession and delve deeper into the challenges and changes a woman's identity experiences. It centralizes the discussion around the stigmatization of motherhood in the world of architecture and highlights the importance of rendering the physical, mental, professional, and financial shifts a woman experiences during this stage in her life. During a time of such great transition, characterized by geographic or social isolation, identity transformation and new demands many women take a step back from their professional lives and find themselves struggling to reconcile the three dimensions that make up their identity as a whole - woman, mother, and architect. It's no news that women pursuing a career in architecture are particularly invested in carefully constructing an image of power, cemented in strong work ethic, loyalty, and determination. So what happens with our professional persona when motherhood comes into play along with its chaos and vulnerability? How do we find a balance and play to our new-found strengths while helping others understand we have become anything but less competent, valuable, or devoted to our craft?

Despite recent efforts to highlight and solve the issue of equity in the field of architecture, the image of the woman and her reproductive capacity continues to clash with the patriarchal model of the architect. Statistics show that even though the number of female architects has been steadily increasing across the last few decades, the number of women achieving qualification and practicing architecture experiences a dramatic drop midway through their career. Conversely, life shows us that throughout the first years of a child's growth, a considerable amount of the caregiving and responsibility still lies with the woman, stalling or often interrupting her career trajectory. All of a sudden, we are faced with the reality of having to plan out and design not only our own lives or that of the buildings we put on paper but also structure and carve out the physical and mental evolution of an entirely new human being. Once again, we are back to the drawing board with a blank canvas in front of our eyes - one that we are responsible to nurture, love, and help reach the beauty of its full potential. This time, however, there is no liner pen, scale ruler, metric handbook, or 3D program to guide us through the process.

The content on this page does not prop itself on mantras of feminism, nor is it aimed to celebrate, victimize, or reinforce the domestic identity of the mother. Its goal, however, is to acknowledge the reality of this stage in a woman's life and empower those reading to explore different ways to articulate the notion of motherhood and challenge the current cultural construction defining the identity of the mother.

Why not and how to gracefully shine a light on this event, the impact of which is so profoundly experienced by women, without domesticating their image? Is there a way to help mothers shift their perception away from that of a professional setback? How can we challenge this resistance towards the feminine and maternal in the workplace? And how can we help mothers navigate the return to work and encourage employers to support flexible schedules and opportunities for career advancement?

We believe that women have to remain part of the architectural community once they have become mothers. As a result, this platform aims to engage, stimulate, and keep the professional interest of young mothers alive by providing resources, support, and social capital. It is a place where women can find empowerment and help re-write the definition of motherhood as one that can be transformative for their experiences and understanding of this stage in their lives.