Whatever Floats Your Boat cast & crew, Shuswap Lake, June 2005
Whatever Floats Your Boat… Perspectives on Motherhood documentary
To be or not to be…a mom? That is the question of the weekend as a group of women set sail on a houseboat. The mother of all topics comes to the surface with courage and candour in this personal exploration about the choices and responsibilities associated with the motherhood decision.
This PGP film was produced in 2005 with the support of the National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker Assistance Program.
The documentary was co-created by Maryanne Pope and Shannon Lyons; produced, directed and edited by Heather McCrae; videography by Jill Roberts. “Ordinary Day” performed by Great Big Sea, Courtesy of Warner Music Canada Co. Background vocals by Liese McClaren.
Running time: 53 minutes.
Whatever Floats Your Boat can now be viewed here:
Whatever Floats Your Boat, Perspectives on Motherhood from Maryanne Pope on Vimeo.
Here is an added feature of a 20-minute facilitated discussion:
WFYB Facilitated Discussion from Maryanne Pope on Vimeo.
Here are some suggested discussion questions.
An educational resource kit is also available for academic use.
For further information on the film, please visit the WFYB subsite.
Please click here to read some sample viewer comments…and we’d love to hear your feedback 
PGP’s community partner on this project was Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids, an organization tackling childhood hunger one lunch at a time. Since Sept 2011 alone, they’ve made 140,000 lunches for kids in Calgary who would otherwise go without!
Interested in hearing more about mother-related topics?
We are starting a Mothering Matters blog series that will cover a wide range of topics from the decision of whether or not to have children, to adoption, to the concept of mothering in the broader global/community perspective, to the challenges of raising children in today’s world, to infertility, to dealing with our own aging mothers…and everything in between!
If you would like to receive the Mothering Matters blogs, please send us your e-mail (and mention ‘Mothering Matters’ in the subject line) and we’ll add you to the list.
“It takes a village – a whole, eco-soul-centred human community – to raise a child well, but it also takes a whole village to produce a parent capable of raising a child well.” – Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul; Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World
I recently watched the WFYB documentary and was surprised at the effect it had on me. I am in my late 20s, currently single, and have never wanted children. If you were to ask anyone who knows me well, they could definitely tell you my strong views about why I never want children. So it was strange that the take-away-message I got from WFYB was that the women in the documentary who did not have children, for whatever reason, were the ones who were upset, having to rationalize their lives and state of “happiness”, and were the ones crying to the camera in the one on one interviews. While the women who did have children, by whatever circumstance, seemed genuinely happy and satisfied with how their life resulted. Not one person with children expressed even a hint of regret for having them (although it’s questionable if anyone would express these feelings if they did as it is considered not acceptable in our society). But it really made me think that in a very simplified and generalized way that children in ones life equals some kind of happiness, while the absence of children equals some kind of unhappiness. Which leaves me with the fear that I might be missing something potentially very important and valuable in this life – that unfortunately has a small window of opportunity in a woman’s life and (ideally from my point of view) requires a devoted, monogamous male partner. Given that requirement, I suppose I should just give up now – lol!
Thanks for the documentary Maryanne – it really made me think!