MAVERICK MOTHER

CONCEPT / DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

MAVERICK MOTHER is an autobiographical hybrid documentary about 39yo film-maker Janet Merewether’s embarkation on a journey of pregnancy and solo motherhood. In contemporary Australia, many educated working women find that they cannot find male partners willing to participate in relationships or parenting. Why are so many attractive and talented women single and childless? Has the breakdown of the marriage structure and the ability of professional women to ‘have it all’ enabled men to relinquish their responsibilities? Women approaching 40 are very conscious of the ticking of their biological clocks.

Rather than accepting their fate as ‘barren spinsters’ and remaining childless, and due to the availability of work, childcare, donors or men who avoid using contraception, many of these women are now finding ways to conceive and raise children as solo mothers by choice or chance.

The documentary examines the role of the father and how is this is changing in contemporary society and presents a dialogue between the ‘fallen woman’ filmmaker daughter and her father, who holds traditional patriarchal values in relation to women, working mothers, social stigma and solo parenting.

MAVERICK MOTHER documents the emotional journey from pregnancy, childbirth and the first year of a baby's life through video diaries, photographs and studio reconstructions. as well as examining the outdated legal status of ‘illegitimacy’ and the historical stigma attached to the term ‘unwed mother’. In the twenty first century, the age of new reproductive technologies and women’s economic self-sufficiency, traditional concepts of the ‘nuclear’ family and the role of the father are being redefined. This is a film about a woman who set out to become a  ‘single mother by choice’, but became a ‘solo mother by chance’, defining a new adventurous pathway, rather than settling for a traditional passage through life. In this era of the 'man drought', deciding to be a sole mother voluntarily is a new and increasingly common social phenomenon, which overturns the traditional patriarchal control of women’s lives and fertility. Women rejected by men due to their confidence or less conventional appearance no longer have to remain on the margins of society.

This has only been possible in recent decades, with the abolition of the legal concept of ‘illegitimacy’ and the introduction of the supporting parents’ benefit in 1975, as well as equal rights in terms of education, wages, child-care and property ownership. The documentary presents alternative models of living such as the share household and extended family which provide the child with a ‘village’ structure in which to be raised.

Up until the early 1970s, unmarried women who 'fell' pregnant were socially stigmatised, and forced to abort, relinquish or commit infanticide. Unwed mothers were deemed by psychologists as damaged, a threat to society, and bordering on the criminal class, to be equated with murderers and drug users. Even today, women, if unwed and pregnant in regions such as the middle east or Africa might experience stoning, arrest and imprisonment. murdered? Today in Australia, solo mothers have the choice to raise healthy, happy children without such social, legal and financial prejudice.

Solo motherhood is now on the verge of becoming chic in the west, a sign of ultimate independence. MAVERICK MOTHER taps into a very current and contentious debate about the nature of ‘family’ in contemporary western society and contemplates the past, present and future concepts of motherhood, and the attitudes of women who, rather than being ‘left on the shelf’ by men because they are too smart, too funny, too ‘ugly’, too talented or too independent, embrace their own sexuality and fertility to immerse themselves in life’s greatest love and greatest challenge.

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