No woman is born a mother.
There is a common view that motherhood comes to a woman with pregnancy and childbirth, and that a sense of responsibility and love is natural. However, when women and motherhood are tied together, another thing is also tied up – all sorts of strict rules about "how to be a mother."
As a result, being a mother is no longer a private business, but is classified as a public affair.
"Good Mom" under Social Norms
Being a mom is not a private business,
It has always been thoroughly regarded as a public affair.
This society tells women every day that they have such a motherly vocation because of their instinctive nature. But at the same time, this society determines how they should establish relationships with their children in order to become what people call "good women" and "good mothers".
The universal template declares that the mother should be child-centered and time-consuming in nurturing, while the mother is described as self-sacrificing by nature, constantly improving herself, having endless patience and dedication to caring for others in various ways, almost requiring her to forget her own personality and needs.
As children grow up to be separated from their mothers, their identity is also changing. They start with the mother holding the child's head, then the mother pushing the stroller, then the mother waving her hand, then the mother who reaches out and waits to be held, but they are always the mother. Their development is vertical, while children develop "horizontally" away from them.
In addition, society once demanded that the "good mother" be like the Virgin, symbolizing the holy, pure, and asexual personality. Since the 1980s, society has demanded this mother's personality as an object of sexiness and desire, just like the following words: "I want to be a mother", "delicious mother", "sexy hot mom". These new statements about mothers do not mean that society really thinks their bodies are attractive, but that they are becoming more and more attractive as objects of sexual fantasy, and that society is giving the image of mothers the extra mythical fantasy that "should have everything."
In today's view, a woman should not be "just" a mother, and if she wants to get approval, she should have a career, going to kindergarten or school in her meagre leisure time; even if she is tired to death, she should show sexiness. "I am a bitch and a good lover; I am a child and a good mother; I am a sinner and a saint." Singer-songwriter Meredith Brooks' lyrics illustrate these contradictions succinctly.
In this case, the strict standard today is that a woman's body—when pregnant, just after giving birth, and for many years afterwards—must meet the same heterosexual standards of beauty and temperament. Not a moment is their bodies free, from maintaining beauty to showing some degree of sexiness that may be different from their own definition of a "sexy woman." That is, mothers are so demanded because they are beneficial to others, not for their own sake, even though mothers themselves may have sexual desires and needs.
Society not only regulates women's appearance and behavior, but also regulates their emotions. That is to say, there is a set of emotional rules for "what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for this social environment", and society will reward "good women" and "good mothers", such as honor, respect and acceptance.
So while mothers are not emotionally aroused by their children, and their feelings change over time, time, space, and availability, society expects them that if mothers want to be seen as "good mothers," their feelings must be consistent. Society demands that "good mothers" love their children unconditionally and unreservedly (otherwise it is immoral); society demands that women be like the Virgin Mary, if they cannot become virgins immediately after the birth of their children, at least a few years later; if the path to motherhood is not full of flowers, then the mother must carry these pains, enjoy these sufferings, and regard these sufferings as a necessary and inevitable process in life.
Here's what a man wrote to a woman who regrets being a mom, illustrating how this society demands how a mother should feel:
"Stop complaining, it's better not to complain like a child and try to be grateful for your motherhood and enjoy it, is it hard?" Go get a babysitter or find an old lady to help you, and you never know how useful it will be for you. Enjoy your life, don't let your little prince control your life, or you'll keep complaining and screw up the child's life, and he will grow into a spoiled child like you. "Also, you can wait and see how happy you are going to be next, and when you forget how hard it is like everyone else, it's time for you to have a second child."
Or as another response to a woman who regrets being a mother:
"Well, at least they've bravely become mothers, and they're worthy of respect for that." Of course, a mom can be tired and depressed – because it's not easy, but it will pass, and they will be proud when they look back on their lives later. Our generation hardly knows how to get ourselves through the lows and endure it, and then get from it the joy and satisfaction that others don't have. ”
Society determines how these mothers should feel, and also prescribes things that they must remember and forget: the above two paragraphs are reassuring these mothers, if they can put aside the feelings of this moment, over time, they will be able to gain joy in the future.
But in fact, these sounds like societies, in order to maintain the tradition of reproducing offspring, need to ensure that women in general, especially so-called "good mothers", erase painful moments from their current lives and memories so that they can "keep working hard". Therefore, only by keeping the suffering mother silent and not "making a fuss" can we maintain this illusion of peace and make it all look so beautiful.
A performance of "Good Mom"
It is not enough to have children,
She has to act like the "right" mom.
These norms of motherhood's emotional feelings do not come only from the outside, but are also internalized by women as part of themselves. We can learn the extent of this internalization from these testimonies that resemble "how mothers should feel" and "how mothers should express their emotions":
Tyrsa (with two children between the ages of thirty and forty, she has become a grandmother):
"I'll do what I have to do. I would call and express my concerns and, of course, my concerns; I would make the appearance of interest, I would visit them, I would invite them on vacation, I would do everything that needed to be done, like acting – but it was really, really not what I wanted. I would visit my grandchildren who were related to me by blood, but I wasn't actually interested in that, and that was really not what I wanted. When I do my duty, I think, 'When is this going to end, let me go back and get some sleep or read a book, watch a good movie or listen to a radio show?' I'm more interested in these things, and these are more suitable for me. I love working in the garden, rake the leaves in the yard... These were more like what I wanted to do, and they still do to this day.
Skye (has three children, two between the ages of fifteen and twenty and one between the ages of twenty and twenty-
"When my daughter tried to come to me, she called me and came to visit, and I always responded to her enthusiastically: 'Wow! That's great! I want to kill you, I can't wait to see you! But it's not... It's some form of performance. I couldn't even lie to myself. ”
Naomi (has two children between the ages of forty and fifty, and she has become a grandmother):
"I do those routines—let's say they come to me every week, and then I cook dinner; I prepare gifts for their birthdays; I look at them every once in a while. I did these socially standard things to meet social standards, and if that's what all grandmothers would do, then I would do it. I don't feel like I want to do these things, and for me, being socially normed is more important than being a good grandmother or a good mom. ”
The use of words such as "acting", "acting", "acting", "making a show", and "cheating" may mean that in order to be regarded as a "good mother", these women show "the feelings and emotional behaviors that a mother should have", and behave like a mother expected by society. They show standardized maternal feelings and behavior patterns out of responsibility, but their actual feelings and the image of the grandmother and mother that the society expects are 18,000 miles apart.
Many accounts fail to mention these strategies for behaving as "good mothers" because most people believe that motherhood comes from nature and that motherhood is part of feminine nature. But it turns out that for a mother, it is not enough to have children: she must appear to be the "right" mother and do her best to complete the motherhood.
The mothers who participated in the study used words to show that they tried to fake "correct" maternal feelings and emotional behaviors in order to conform themselves to the stereotypical maternal models that demanded it. As Barry put it:
Barry (who has a child between the ages of one and five):
"People ask me 'how much do you enjoy being a mom?' I can only force a smile on this, otherwise how can I respond? Say I'm miserable? Or is it tough? Or do I miss my mom so much? ”
Maya (has two children, one between the ages of one and five and one between the ages of five and ten, and was pregnant at the time of the interview):
"I remember after my daughter was born, all the relatives and friends who were already parents talked to me about the difficulties and challenges I was going to face next, and they said, 'But it's really fun, right?'" All I could say was: 'Uh... yes...... It's incredible... It's amazing...' Nobody knows what I'm really thinking. Maybe I'm not a praiseworthy mother, but I take good care of my children, raise them and love them, and I don't let my children suffer from emotional neglect. So, no one can know what I really think, and if no one can detect what I really think, then of course we can't detect what other people are really thinking. ”
These emotional laws have become part of the strict demands on mothers, while also faithfully maintaining the "right" image of "good mothers". Such a "good mom" image is still in everyone's imagination, and people don't want to risk shocking others.
The construction of the "bad mother" image
When mothers don't go according to social norms,
They will soon be labeled from the inside out.
In addition to the image of "good mother" expected by society, society has also outlined the outline of "bad mother", and classified women with such an image of "good mother" and "bad mother".
When mothers don't follow the moral codes set forth in this model—either voluntarily or involuntarily, under the weight of their living circumstances. They are quickly labeled from the inside out, and they are considered "bad moms" with problematic abilities, rebels with moral and emotional problems.
Mothers are perceived as not "loving" when they return to work "too quickly" or "too late" after giving birth, or never return to work again; when they do not breastfeed or breastfeed for too long and too "openly" when breastfeeding; when they "homeschool" their children, or when some mothers (whether single-parent or not) need to work away from home for a long time and are accused of neglecting their care. In addition, single mothers, socially handicapped mothers, new immigrant mothers, and lesbian mothers (whose identities often overlap) tend to be examined more closely.
Therefore, society labels these women as "bad mothers", not just because of what they do or don't do, but because of the conditions under which they become mothers, and because of their identity. If they are poor and/or uneducated and/or uncaucasian and/or unhealthy (whether mentally or physically), the public will doubt their ability to have children and criticize their decisions as potentially harmful to children and society as a whole.
In many countries, we can see in advertisements for baby food or diapers what kind of people people think are "good mothers". These ads don't just market products, they also concretize so-called "good moms" and tell people what kind of people have the ability to raise their children in a way that "best meets health needs."
Society constructs the image of a "bad mother," not only regulating the mother's behavior or identity, but also extending into the mother's emotional world. Women who feel pain, anger, disappointment, and frustration and express those feelings are seen as having problems with their abilities and unable to fulfill their "true mission."
Even today, when we see more nuanced portrayals of motherhood, more mothers than ever before who are able to express their hardships and sufferings more regularly, so we are freer to study and have open discussions, but motherhood is still trapped in the collective imagination.
Over the past two centuries, society has expected more and more mothers, and countless mothers have expected more and more of themselves, and they have fallen into a shadowy world of feelings, guilt, self-analysis and ambivalence. Under this contradiction – and despite all our relationships – society seems to have tolerating mothers to throw out one answer: "I love the identity of my mother."
This article is excerpted from "The Choice of Becoming a Mother"