If you put ‘mum jewellery on your Christmas list’ you’re ‘insensitive’, says maternal health advocate Clio Wood

IT seems that mumsy just got trendy.

Or at least jewellery featuring in its design the word MUM.

The latest craze has seen Phoebe Philo, former director of celeb favourite designer Celine, unveil a chunky “Mum” choker with a £3,000 price tag, while an Alison Lou “Mama” necklace is £800.

There are also more affordable high street buys but we should think twice before putting such bling on Christmas wish lists.

I had my first daughter in 2014 and, despite what greetings cards and newborn baby clothes would have you believe, I wasn’t launched into a pastel-hued motherhood dream.

I’d been sick for most of my pregnancy and scared of childbirth then went on to experience a traumatic labour and delivery.

In the long days and nights of new parenthood, one of the only things you can do is scroll on your phone.

And that’s how I came across all the mum merch.

The word “Mama” was stamped across the sweatshirt of a grinning influencer, in bright colours.

There were multiple colourways and variations on the slogan.

I immediately wanted one of the sweatshirts.

They were worn by the new cool girls of motherhood — the girls you wanted to hang around with in the playground, they were proud of being mums and owned it. I wanted to belong.

Suddenly, motherhood stash was everywhere — on T-shirts, jumpers, necklaces and bags.

Whatever you could plant a logo on was colonised.

It was hard to escape, and at first the concept made me feel good — but then quickly ashamed.

Ashamed, because I found being a mum hard.

Most of us do at some point — and while I’m happy I am a mother now, mum merch puts us all in a box and asks the world to judge us on mumming alone.

It doesn’t do that with dads.

Still a lot of secrecy around miscarriage

Plus, imagine how painful it might be, for women who are struggling to conceive or have lost a baby, to see this merch on friends, colleagues and family.

After my first daughter was born, I had severe post-natal depression, and PTSD from a traumatic birth.

I struggled to breast-feed and was lost.

It took a long time, and lots of therapy, to even feel comfortable with the idea of a second child, let alone have one.

Then when I suffered an ectopic pregnancy — removed by emergency surgery — while trying for a second baby it felt like something else I’d done wrong.

Baby loss and miscarriage is common — one in four pregnancies in the UK will end in miscarriage.

But we don’t talk about these losses, we in fact usually wait to announce pregnancies until the “safe” 12-week mark — which means there is still a lot of secrecy around miscarriage and a resulting feeling of shame.

Mum merch — the latest incarnation of which is this lovely- looking jewellery — has had a big role to play in the elevated status of motherhood.

It has become a marker of success for a woman and it’s implied that if you don’t achieve the goal of becoming a mum in the expected timeframe, or expected way, you’ve failed.

And isn’t that all a bit, well, insensitive?

As I’ve spoken openly about my own motherhood journey, women have tended to be open with me in return.

And I’ve heard the sadness, the grind of years of trying, the weight of heartbreaking loss — first from friends but then also acquaintances and now social- media followers too.

Women are bursting to be heard and understood.

And while being a mother might seem like the ultimate goal, nearly one in five of us won’t be one.

Among those who do become mums, many are choosing to have children later.

In fact, first-time mothers aged over 40 is the only consistently growing birth rate demographic in England and Wales.

Women recognise we’re more than motherhood

That means women recognise that we’re more than motherhood and want to explore our identities fully before we get there.

Not only does the mum merch blare in the face of all that emotion, it ignores all the nuance of the decision to become a mother.

It also undermines the extraordinary breadth of woman-hood and all that we are able to achieve outside of motherhood.

Fashion changes, it’s diverse and multi-faceted — as are women.

Women, whether mothers or not, are career power-houses or number whizzes, they’re creative and adventurous, driven, strong, powerful, they are clever and kind.

And that’s pretty hard to sum up in a piece of easily tarnished slogan jewellery.

• Clio Wood (Instagram: @andbreathe wellbeing) is a maternal health advocate and author of Get Your Mojo Back, Sex, Pleasure And Intimacy After Birth (Watkins, 2023), which is out now.