Yummy mummies not so palatable

There is no doubt yummy motherhood has an upside. The taboo surrounding pregnancy did, after all, hold sway through most of the 20th century. From the prudish Victorian times on, pregnant women and new mums were regarded as, if not abject, then at least in poor taste.

In the 1960s the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu asked people to comment on a photograph of a pregnant woman and the reactions were similar to those sparked by the controversial Bill Henson photograph of a nude girl. Most of Bourdieu's respondents felt that an image of a pregnant woman could not be beautiful and that it would be extremely undesirable to hang it on a living room wall, or call it "art". The responses were almost always the same: "The things they go looking for! The things they photograph! Taking things like that, for heaven's sake!"

Women who had babies in the 1950s and '60s recall the pressure to hide themselves beneath capacious smocks and to stay indoors. While researching for the Good Mother Research Project, we spoke to women who were hissed at on the streets of Australian country towns for being too visibly pregnant in public, and middle-class women who would pay poorer women to push their babies around the block, so as not to be seen mothering in public.

Yummy motherhood has allowed mothers to get out in public, to hang in groups at cafes. It has also made normal clothes (including skintight garments) acceptable for pregnant women. Mothers can now be seen as sexually attractive. More importantly, it has allowed them to be "hot". As Anna Johnson, author of the best-selling book Three Black Skirts, explains, historically motherhood was not about being "on the market" or even looking like you were on the market - women were once considered sexually defunct as soon as they gave birth. But this is no longer the case.

It is now more acceptable for women to invest more time in themselves. Martyrdom is not as chic as it used to be. It's OK to take time out for a manicure, a spa treatment, shopping or an exercise class. All of this means that women do not necessarily lose their former selves upon having children - motherhood is no longer only about being devoted to your family. Continued...