Germany is a place full of intriguing contradictions, like many countries. I moved here to Berlin from Scotland in 1996, when Berlin was still in the throes of working out its new identity and dreaming of becoming the world metropolis it has since become. What I remember most vividly about those first years living in east Berlin was how fiercely certain rights were fought for, and I found myself understanding that the Nazi legacy had created a powerful backlash in the next generations after the 2nd world war for freedom at all costs in many spheres of life. The most idiosyncratic example that stuck out in daily life was the rights of dog owners – there are many thousands of them in Berlin and in the mid 90s fighting dogs, such as pitbulls and mastifs, and male owners with very short hair were en vogue. Unlike in other capitals however, dog owners were not obliged to remove their dogs’ waste and most people did not deem it necessary to have them on the lead or require them to not jump up at people. If one in any way complained to a dog owner about the excrement or the behavior of their dog, one received a vehemently indignant reaction which translated into: “This is my human right to have a dog and do what I want with it.” Along with the ubiquitous building sites on every other house in east Berlin, this made for an interesting parcours through the streets.
Many years later, I am now an academic mum living in gorgeously picturesque Lüneburg, near Hamburg, and have since lived in Jena and Aachen on the way here. In a sense this has been a tour of Germany, starting in east Berlin, staying in the former east (Jena in Thuringia) and then moving straight across on a line from east to west to live in Aachen on the border with Belgium and the Netherlands, only to move to north Germany a few years ago. From the beautiful biodiverse hills and grasslands of Jena to a central hub of Europe, only 2 hours away from Brussels, replete with Porsches and Charlemagne’s cathedral and a very Catholic view of the world. In Aachen my son was born and as of age two he attended a local Kindergarten full time. This introduced me to a surprising phenomenon still alive in the western part of Germany
Essentially, it seems that the history of east and west has made its strong imprint on top of a surprisingly resilient legacy of perceptions of what motherhood is and should be left behind by the Nazis. The latter implemented a rigid old-fashioned view of women primarily as having a reproductive role in society, supporting their husbands from the home (any other constellation such as single mothers, lesbian or bisexual, trans options were not even considered). Somewhere along the way the concept of “Rabenmutter” appeared, which translates directly into raven mother. A Rabenmutter is a mother who neglects this main role and her children and dares to spend time on other activities, in particular also pursuing other goals in life such as a career or hobbies. Raven’s that have long had a bad name, eating carrion, being black and amassing in large numbers, often seen as imparting omens on people, supposedly do not take good care of their young. Ironically, this is not the case in nature: ravens, crows, magpies and other related birds take extremely good care of their young.
Mothers in (west) Germany live in unspoken often unquestioned fear of being labeled a “Rabenmutter”. Surprisingly, this phenomenon persists even today, despite the vehement backlash against restrictions on freedom imposed by the Nazi regime in other spheres of life (see the dog owner perspective above). One of the most ironic, and to me amusing, outcomes of this Rabenmutter fear is that when I would go to pick up my son at the end of his Kindergarten day, in Aachen at 4.30pm, I would invariably be one of only a few mothers (and sometimes a father) picking up my child. Most all of the other children had usually been picked up in the early afternoon, only spending half the day in the nursery. The mix of parents hanging around in Aachen waiting for their child to grab their coat was intriguing, and at first I did not notice the pattern: there were academic mums (and dads) like myself & east German mums, all of whom worked full time (or the majority of the week) and found this very normal to be doing so. Then there were (other) immigrant mums who also worked longer than half days. This pattern repeated itself rather exactly in Lüneburg, another west German city, when we moved here after I got a professorship at Leuphana University. This was when I started to analyse the patterns, and notice that it was either people originally from outside west Germany, east Germans, or lesbians and single mums (no husband at home working full time and earning the larger paycheck). I suspect strongly that when one goes to pick up one’s child in a kindergarten in former east Germany, there would be a much larger proportion of the children still in care at the end of the kindergarten day than in the west. Germany’s tax system still supports the general pattern that one parent tends to stay at home or work part time so they can take care of the children, and this is in most cases the/a woman, with tax breaks for the higher earner, if the second earner does not earn well. Such tax breaks that have since been removed in countries like the UK, seem to help entrench the idea that it is not a good idea for children to be taken care of in childcare, despite them learning many skills about social interactions in groups, and despite studies showing that the quality of time spent with parents (the level of focus and interaction one develops during the time period together) is an essential component of good parenting.
Given the Rabenmutter framing of this story, I find it fascinating to observe that the change in paradigm instilled by the German Democratic Republic, encouraging women to work and follow career paths, still prevails today. Academic mums’s per se will need the flexibility of full-time child care or flexible child care, so this seems to override any serious concerns about ending up in the Rabenmutter category. It seems that recent history trumps second world war history in Germany, luckily, but it does beg the question of when the false concept of the Rabenmutter will be put to rest.
Author: Vicky Temperton
Mama is an Academic 