Mother’s day… the emotional landmine of popular culture’s unwavering dedication to the only truly acceptable female accomplishment.
As we move forward with our plans to build a family in an entirely nontraditional route, the way that society, and I unconsciously for so long, define mother-hood is just another one of the many daily needle-sticks of uncertainty. What or who is a mother? She is the one who carried you for nine months literally feeling you growing inside her body…unless she didn’t. She literally feeds her baby from her own body…unless she didn’t or couldn’t. She is the one who is always there for a young child – unless she is the primary bread winner and the father (or other partner) is going to stay home with baby. She is the one who spends those first sleepless months, the primary caregiver, the person who teaches baby attachment and the meaning of family…again, unless she is the primary breadwinner and your household is set up for a male partner to do the vast majority of caregiving. If you cannot grow your child, if you cannot feed your child, if you cannot set aside everything to care for your child, if you are not the first relationship to the child – what, exactly, does it mean to be “mother”?
I’m not stupid, I know families come in all shapes and sizes and styles…but when you can’t check even ONE “supposed to” box, when you cannot see yourself reflected in any “mommy blogs”, “mommy books”, or even general “mommy” conversations the already difficult struggles of a more than convoluted road to parenthood just feels that much more exhausting.
And then there’s mother day! On mother’s day, we elevate “women’s work” (generally denigrated) to a pedestal – the ONLY broadly acceptable pedestal for women. Mother’s day focuses on women’s most important relationship to the world – procreation with nurturing loving relationships with their offspring and the essential gratitude and debt that we all owe to the caregiver we are supposed to love the most and the most instinctively.
Except for all of those valuable and amazing women who don’t want children. Except for all those who have been hurt, abandoned, abused, or otherwise estranged from their mothers. Except for all those who have lost their mothers and feel only pain and loss on this day. Except for those who cannot have children and are therefore not afforded this one day of respect and simultaneously reminded of their endless failure. I’m just not sure this particular holiday has any good aspect to it; it is reinforcing of traditional ideals, reinforcing of gender-roles, and painful to many.
