Mother’s Day is an emotionally rough day for me. I don’t want to harsh the squee of the many people so lucky to have wonderful mothers. And that is particularly true because I receive so much support and love in my challenging parenting journey, and this year, received the best Mother’s Day present I have ever received and ever expect to receive:
I’m literally going to frame a copy of this.
But even with this amazing gift, I truly wish this holiday did not exist because this mother-mythos is FUCKING HARMFUL (and maybe was created and continues to be used to replace the strength and blatant sexuality of female goddesses, which frankly we could use at this point!). It is my greatest wish for gender parity in relationships and child-rearing, that all children be lovingly cared for, that women – regardless of their motherhood status – be celebrated in their everyday lives for their gifts and strengths both in and outside the home. And I wish to just not ever have to get through the complex emotions of another’s Mother’s Day.
I have been blessed with four mothers, three of them very complicated, two of them now dead, and one the example of calm loving motherhood that I lean on today. All of them are a piece of who I was and some of them guided my decisions regarding who I have intentionally chosen to become. The one thing they all had in common was a fierce all-consuming love of their children, and a joy in the concept of motherhood. Despite these examples, I have never wanted to be defined by motherhood and despite having intentionally made the decision to parent children, I am daunted, daily, by the expectations of society, the needs of my children, the lack of space to exist as my own human self in the margins between work, marriage/partnership, and parenting.
Mother’s Day pushes female parents into a single shape that excludes the lived experiences of so many. The fuss and hype of Mother’s Day is inescapable. The women posting about their pregnancies, labour, the children they made out of their own bodies, and their family resemblances. And, the postings that motherhood is “the best job on earth”; being a mother is “the greatest gift”; literally “I was put on earth to be a mother to this child”.
In my own life, I receive so many wonderful accolades and gifts and support as a mother and I am beyond grateful. But despite attempts to include non-traditional mothers, I feel no space for me, my family, and many of my friends in this “holiday”. For me and my family, the painful heartbreaking history with my own mother, the reality of being a mother after 4 miscarriages, and adopting through non-traditional paths, the complicated self-doubt and pain of my relationship with my older child, the complications and pain of adoptees like my children (many of whom feel thrown away or abandoned by mothers – BUT RARELY BY FATHERS), and particularly of foster care adoptees who may have complicated feelings of disloyalty to their biological family while they are pressured to treat their adoptive mother as a savior, means that Mother’s Day is just amplified pain.
The celebration And deification of mothers as the center of children’s definition of self reinforces the societal notion of what it must mean to be or have a “mother”. Last year someone said happy Mother’s Day to me then said “Oh, should I say that to your partner since he’s more the mom and you are more like the dad” (because I am the working parent and my husband is the primary caregiver). Thereby offending both of us in one fell swoop, while reinforcing the idea that mothers must be the primary caregivers to children, even if we are smart, driven, career-oriented, and not particularly warm/nurturing by nature, or even just don’t want children! And, that dad’s are by nature absent, hard-working, less-important, and not emotionally available and are at least extraordinary if they are remotely close to equal parents. That my partner is feminine because he chooses to do the intense, constant, overwhelming work of raising young children without daycare; and that I am masculine because I do not wish to be surrounded by young children all the time and feel validated by my intellectual and economic successes. This (hopefully becoming dated) vision makes no space for modern families seeking gender parity, single parents fulfilling all of these roles, or same-gender partners.
It also leads to increased pain because mothering is NOT simply natural. There are a lot of bad mothers out there. And a lot of mothers who do not live in pure joy simply because they are raising children.
My biological mother made every effort and choice to give me the best life she could and was home with me full time for the first six years of my life. She read to me non-stop, she co-slept, nursed me until I was four, found ways to send me to camps and special education opportunities while we were so poor we ate at the Loaves and Fishes dinner and from government hand-outs regularly. There is no doubt of her love for me.
Despite this, she is severely mentally ill, revisionist, difficult, toxic, manipulative, and abusive. She has no boundaries, has no respect for or ability to follow the boundaries set by others, and is rarely able to maintain long friendships. She is the victim of parents who so severely abused their children that 6/7 remain unable to have a stable romantic partnership, they cling to relationships with each other like war survivors, unable to separate despite constant enmity because they are the only ones who can understand their past together constantly reinforcing their unhealthy methods of interactions as somehow normal human interaction. Even that is not enough – my mother and her sister are in a fight right now because one of them believes their father was more abusive and one of them believes their mother was more abusive; this pain is so alive decades after getting out of the parental homes that the inability to see and validate the other’s suffering leads to an enormous emotional blow up. The majority of children produced by this group of siblings carry on, in some way or another, the generational trauma of this abuse, and struggle with depression, mental illness, and addiction.
I have a toxic, painful, hurtful, guilting, mother. So many of my friends have toxic hurtful parents. But there is a guilt to not celebrating your mother even when she is awful. I have heard so many times, in so many cultures, that you owe your mother fealty and celebration because she birthed you or because she raised you. Just being a parent is NOTHING to celebrate. Being a not crappy parent is a lot like not going to jail, finishing high school, not getting fired from your first minimum wage job, it’s the minimum expected of the person who took on the job of raising children. The contract between children and parents runs one way; from the parent to the child. Hopefully, the bonds of a lifetime together mean that the children grow up to love and cherish their parent and have a lifelong mutually supportive love. But it is like all relationships, it requires mutual love, respect, and not actively harming the other person. Mother’s are not and cannot be exempt from the general standards of humanity just because “mother”.
For me, and my partner, and many that I know that have mothers who are deceased, Mother’s Day it raises sadness and guilt. We were not close enough while alive, we missed chances and opportunities, we have holes where important people should be. We can already have those emotions on birthdays (ours and theirs), holidays, parents’s birthdays. We do not need another day dedicated to poking that bruise.
And, after four miscarriages, it doesn’t matter that I have two wonderful children – I have a moment of sheer pain that penetrates my entire body when I think about my friends and colleagues being pregnant. EVEN THOUGH I AM SIMULTANEOUSLY SO HAPPY AND SUPPORTIVE OF THEM. (It turns out you can be bitter from BOTH sides, before I wanted kids I was all “ugh, being pregnant” and now that I been unable to physically reproduce I’m all “ugh being pregnant”. Pregnant women ARE smug – but mostly societally)
Mother’s Day again celebrates women as the creators of life, that nurturing and motherhood are women’s natural state, that our very selves are created by our mothers. This societal focus on motherhood as the epicenter of self-creation and emotional support creates crises in adopted children. Studies have found adoptees are between two and four times as likely to attempt suicide than children with their biological parents. Go search for blogs and groups of adult (malcontented) adoptees – there is a common theme that their mothers threw them away. In addition to having adoptees like this in my own life who are very critical of the mothers who (IMO bravely and selflessly) gave them up for adoption, I’ve read so many of these blogs, and I rarely even hear fathers mentioned. It is this toxic awful concept that women are mothers and mothers naturally love and nurture that causes adopted children to feel that THEY must be damaged, otherwise no mother could give away her own flesh and blood. It is painful, heartbreaking, and infuriating to read. And it is in part the result of the societal fetishization with motherhood that means adoptees are deprived of “self” or believe they are worthless. The less fetishized we make motherhood, and the more we normalize alternative families, and discuss the multigenerational trauma and abuse in many families, the more that we can foster healthy self-image in children who have all sorts of stories that do not involve “perfect mother”.
Mother’s Day is also an amazing source of guilt for me. Guilt that attachment for my daughter is not automatic and that I do not feel that overwhelming joy in motherhood. That I feel most fulfilled when I succeed at a task that requires self-determination, work, and public accolade for my skills. That I would rather be on vacation without my children, because it is their constant need, the lack of sleep, the lack of time alone, the lack of space to be myself uninterrupted without the pressure of knowing I will be rushing back to children momentarily, that I need to escape. That my greatest need as a parent is NOT a celebration of my female parenting role but space away from my children, to connect with my partner as adults not as parental roommates. Especially RIGHT NOW, when we have been locked in a home together for six weeks rubbing against each other’s last nerves and trying to keep a very dysregulated child feeling safe and connected.
Being a mother is the hardest job I’ve ever taken on. It is overwhelming, constant, exhausting, exhilarating, loving. My children are strong, brave, sassy, tender, sweet, and amazing.
But I loathe the cult of motherhood, its exclusionary aspects, its celebration of basic biological reproduction as the highest form of humanity for women, and honestly believe that there is no way to have this unnecessary societal celebration without doing more harm than good.