Most
mothers, and certainly society at large, do
not understand that the standards
upon which we define “good mothering” are culturally
constructed. According to Ann Dally in her book Inventing Motherhood,
mothers of previous generations were told by various experts to
do such contradictory actions as to feed their babies on a strict
schedule, not kiss them, subordinate the child’s will to that
of the parent’s and other’s authority.
As the conditions that
gave rise to these standards disappeared, the standards themselves
changed. For example, as childhood mortality improved, mothers were
told that they could kiss their children. It seems reasonable to
conclude that today’s emphasis on the psychological health
and development of the child comes from our more sophisticated understanding
of the psychological process, as well as the reduction in infant
mortality. Why the burden for this development still falls onto
the mother, despite women’s advances in so many other areas
of our society, is open to conjecture.
Women give birth to
children. This biological fact has been taken to mean that therefore
mothers, of all the adults in all the world, are the ones most devoted
to their children. And certainly most mothers are devoted to their
children and indeed revel in the sweet, fierce bond that exists
between themselves and their children. But we know the myth of exclusive
maternal devotion to be patently untrue—adopted parents, for
example, are capable of being as devoted as biological parents,
fathers as connected to their children as mothers. Still the myth,
the image of Madonna and child, persists in our cultural consciousness.
Then Freud came along,
and insisted on the all-powerful mother, one with whom the child
exists in helpless dependency until he is able to break the bond.
As Chodorow and Contratto state in their essay The Fantasy of
the Perfect Mother, the belief in this grandiose mother “spawns
a recurrent tendency to blame the mother on the one hand, and a
fantasy of maternal perfectibility on the other” (192). They
argue that even much of feminist theory has perpetuated this belief
in maternal omnipotence, most noticeably in the way mothers are
blamed for the burdens their daughters carry. Feminist theory, they
argue, does assign some of the blame for the mother’s behavior
on social conditioning, but much of it still holds onto an image
of maternal perfectibility that would emerge if only patriarchal
conditions could be overthrown. This reminds me of the language
of natural parenting, with the insistence that if medical technology
would just get out of the way of childbirth, for example, the body
would naturally know what to do and there would be little pain or
need for intervention.
Psychiatrist Jessica
Benjamin has what I consider to be the most important theory of
both the origins of maternal ideology and the way to combat it.
She states that what the myth of the omniscient mother leaves out
is that it “has failed to conceptualize the mother as a separate
subject outside the child” (133). Because mother and child
are assumed to be locked in a impermeable dyad, mothers, their children
and society at large are unable to conceive of “separation
without destruction”(143).
The perfect mother of
fantasy is the one who is always there, ready to sacrifice herself—and
the child is not conscious of how strongly such a fantasy mother
makes him or her feel controlled, guilty, envious or unable to go
away. The child simply remains terrified of her leaving or of destroying
her by becoming separate. In turn, the mother feels terrified of
destroying her child with her own separation (142).
Benjamin’s proposition
is simple, and radical. The image of the perfect mother, and the
complete-in-itself mother/child bond, harms everyone. We must all
of us—mothers, children, society, experts—realize that
our image of the perfect mother, however we create her, is a fantasy.
We need to mourn her loss on an individual level—my mother
will never love me right, I will never love my child without ambivalence
and awareness of my own self—and then move beyond our desire
for “perfect reparation” between mother and child, whichever
(or both) side of the equation we fall on. To simplify Benjamin’s
message, it is only through achieving and valuing separation between
mother and child—the mother leaving, the child having his
or her tantrum, both feeling horrible and both surviving it, that
space for individuality between mother and child will develop, and
space for a new maternal/child ideology will occur. We need to do
this as individuals, within our own families and we need as a culture
to separate from our collective image of the fantasy mother.
We need to stop thinking
of mothers as Mother. We—those of us who mother, those of
us who have mothers—need to think of mothers as Women Who
Mother. That is, as individuals first, people with our own needs,
desires, ambitions. It is, after all, real women who mother, not
a collective ideal. The language of popular culture acts as if it
supports this notion—talk of choices, options, following our
own paths. But in reality, our society is as subscribed to the notion
of the idealized mother as any other in history. And the women who
cannot live up to this standard must say so loudly, with assurance—those
of us who work or stay home, who supervise all aspects of our children’s
development or who put them in front of a video every day, who attachment
parent or create some separation, bottle or breast feed—that
is to say, all women who mother, for no woman, anywhere, can achieve
every standard set for us. We must say that we are people first,
even while our babies are clinging to our bodies and sleep deprivation
is clouding our minds. Above all, we must end the isolation that
pits mother against mother, causing us to judge and feel judged
and to turn to the experts for guidelines on how we should feel
and behave.
One expert, anyway,
was right. We do know more than we think we do, all of us, separately
and together, if only we would believe—and speak—the
truth of our own experiences.
mmo : december 2003 |
