Aboriginal mothers as outsiders
Leanne Cutcher and Talila Milroy
University of Sydney
Contact Email: l.cutcher
econ.usyd.edu.au
In this paper we seek to show how media reports about public policy outcomes reinforce negative stereotypes of Aboriginal mothers. In order to do this we examine media reports relating to the introduction of the 1912 Maternity Allowance and the 2004 Maternity Allowance. Through analysis of media reports about the introduction of the two schemes we show how the ‘everyday text’ of the media (van Dijk 1992) has perpetuated negative constructions of what it means to be an Aboriginal mother that do not reflect the way in which many Aboriginal women are mothered and mother.
We see in the way that Aboriginal mothers are portrayed in the media accounts in 1912 and in 2004-8 a deep seated fear about racial purity. We show how the 2004 maternity allowance, and its earlier iteration in 1912, reinforced the construction of women as ‘citizen-mother’ (Lake, 1992; Curtin 2003) a construction that has historically excluded ‘black’ mothers and labelled them as ‘outsiders’.
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