Motherhood Studies

Every time I bear a child, I find myself sinking into a contrary research topic. When I bore my first child, I read tons of books on being single while on maternity leave. I asked my partner at the time if this offended him. He shrugged and responded that if it was a question I needed to wrestle with, he’d prefer I wrestle with it and come to a conclusion. And wrestle with it I did. 

When I bore my second child, I was reading books about women who chose not to have children (the “childless” or "child-free") which led me to a plethora of books on motherhood as a concept all its own.  

I find myself wrestling with this idea of motherhood, of mothering, of being a mother as a role I perform rather than an all-encompassing definition. I find it amusing that it has taken the birth of my second child for me to start questioning who I am as a mother, or more aptly, who I want to be as a mother. 

Perhaps that’s not so unusual. The first child is whirlwind of life change, of grief over the life you let go, an onslaught of decisions you feel quite unprepared to make, and coming to terms with a high level of risk and uncertainty as you determine the course of another human’s life. 

By the time the second child arrived, the first one is getting old enough to look at me with a certain awareness that I am his mother. Not just the person that feeds him and changes his dirty clothes. I am a concept to him now- someone who knows things he wants to know, someone to make pain go away, someone that does or doesn’t hold space for his bumbles and triumphs, someone who is supposed to be something to him. 

Perhaps it’s because of this, or because I’m approaching thirty, or because my own relationship with my mother seems to be at a crossroads, or because my husband’s relationship to his mother seems to get more complicated with every text message- but every book I’ve pulled off the shelf this month, every podcast I’ve listened to, all the music heard has something to do with how our mothers shape us and impact our lives. 

The weight of it, quite honestly, brings tears to my eyes. 

I’d long been commenting to my husband that for some reason I seemed to be the center of gravity in the house- both literally and figuratively. Figuritivity- all living beings seemed to sync to my moods. If I was in a crabby mood, holy shit it seemed like tantrums would abound and everything became a struggle. Conversely, if I felt calm and grounded, things ran much more smoothly. Literally- if I sat down it seemed like every living being in the house had to be touching me or sitting on me. A baby at the breast, a toddler snuggling himself as deep into my skin as humanly possible, and the blasted fat cat curled up on top of it all. Some days I feel quite claustrophobic with so many hot, beating hearts pounding against mine. 

Since I found out I was pregnant with our daughter, I have read no less than 15 books on motherhood. But my current train of thoughts really started by listening to the Good Ancestor Podcast hosted by Layla Saad. At the beginning of each episode, she asks her guests who they consider their ancestors. Listening to these women speak so respectfully and reverently of their mothers, about the colonizing effect of breaking up families and what that reclaiming has looked like, about the hyper-capitalist individualism that has us believing we are the sum of only ourselves has me questioning my own life narrative. Who am I in relation to my mother, and to her mother, and to her mother? Who is my mother in relation to her mother? Who will my children be in relation to me? In what ways has buying into hyper-individualism damaged these relationships? 

Then I picked up a book that made the statement that “our mothers are the contours of our lives.”

Then I picked up a different book that talked about how our mothers show us how to be women and thanked her mother for providing the map. 

So I started practicing every day considering the ways my mother had positively contributed to my life. One thing a day, every day. It was a shift in focus for me- from focusing on how my mother was not the mother I was convinced I wanted her to be, to seeing her as the mother she was and is. And feeling that as a contribution all by itself. 

Then I wondered- would my kids grow to hold my worst days against me? Would they accuse me of childhood slights in a courtroom of awareness that hasn’t yet come to light? Would they be able to reach beyond themselves to understand my context? Is there any way to tell your children that you’re trying...doing your best in a system that is disadvantageous in so many ways, bearing up under the overwhelm, trying to love through the crippling early years of their lives when there isn’t enough sleep to think straight or money to pay the enormous hospital bills?

But like a romcom mantage- your children won’t see you as you are now, young and uncertain in the face of their little lives. They will come to know you later, when the struggle is less and you seem stable and boring. They won’t know how hard won that “boring” is. 

Oh dear, I’ve lost my train of thought again. 

Right. Motherhood. 

One book says motherhood is a verb, not a noun. 

Another says that it’s a transformation a woman undergoes. Once a mother always a mother. 

Another says that mother is a condition of perpetual anxiety. 

Another depicts how the mother sets the culture of the household, how she is the container for the family - giving it both shape and direction. 

Another connects motherhood and the bearing of children to the capitalist need for the reproduction of the workforce. Thus its emphasis and its disadvantage. 

Another discusses how religion has used depictions of mothers as a tool to further the oppression of women throughout human history. 

Another questions the idealization of the womb. While another questions why so little attention is paid to the breasts. 

Someone invents a new breastpump I desperately want but can’t afford. And I’m left once again to wonder if I’m cheating my daughter because I want to stop breastfeeding. Or do I want that? Or is it that my work position makes the logistics of breastfeeding a point of overwhelm and tears for me? 

Why does feeding my children have to be warped into my perception of myself as a mother? If not being the “breadwinner” can be divorced from concepts of masculinity, can I divorce the method of feeding my children from my concept of motherhood? 

Somehow saying that mothers give shape to us makes it seem like they knew what they were doing. I do not know what I’m doing. And it’s so much harder than I imagined. Am I a “bad” mother to admit that I can’t wait for them to be disinterested in me so I can sit down in quiet with a cup of coffee and book uninterrupted for a sunday morning? 

Concept of “bad” mothers - a hold over from the witch trials that is seared into our consciousness. Accusations of bad mothers, of baby killing, of drinking the blood of children.