How To Be a Better Mother ($)

The mothers to which we're most attached are failing us.

“The ‘mother myths’—that all women are nurturing, that mothering is instinctual, that maternal love is always unconditional—stand guard in front of the cultural cupboard where taboos and secrets are kept.”
― Peg Streep (Streep, 2021)

“Motherhood is the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.”
― Barbara Kingsolver (1993), author

To know a parent requires knowing their children. The grandparents are also important as they molded the current family, but the parents' relationship to their dependent children has a greater effect on the future. I have deep knowledge of a dozen parents and their children, and these relationships are laboratories where personalities are formed.

This piece is less about mothers per se, and more about their effect, and how attitudes are passed between generations. We talk about nature versus nurture, and by this we mean the difference between what’s genetically inherited and what’s learned by experience. There is a third effect. It’s the learning that happens in the interaction between them: what develops from our biological aptitudes and inclinations. The cross-pollination between nature and nurture is another mechanism of change.

We don't understand or present other people correctly. People are neither independent of each other nor dependent on each other, and the mother-child relationship is the clearest example of this. I have had more fruitful conversations with my mother now that she's been dead for ten years than I ever had or could have had when she was alive. You may claim that I'm not really talking to her, and I'm only talking to my image of her, but that is the only person I ever spoke to!

Mothers and Children Forever

I’ve been thinking of my mother all my life, and I’m sure I will think of her for what remains. This isn’t an obsession, it’s a puzzle. My mother was especially puzzling because she was a visual artist and did not express herself directly. As I review other mother-child relationships, I find they are puzzling too. What they all share is a lack of awareness, and that’s not for lack of trying on the part of the children. Most mothers are guilty of a lack of reflection.

Adults are generally unreflective. We might ask whether the property of insight diminishing with age is genetic or cultural. I think it’s cultural, as I’ve known many elders who are reflective, and they tend to be less culturally bound people. I am attracted to wise elders, but they are a minority. They have reflective, childlike qualities that are largely absent from other adults.

Being childlike requires of measure of irresponsibility, not in a bad sense, but in the sense of being curious and exploratory. You can appreciate that most adults are not curious or exploratory because they have too many responsibilities. To be playful means being unrestrained.

We think of the traditional father as being the provider. This is sexist, but it’s an attitude that can prevail even when both parents are working. What I find more disturbing than the sexism is the implication that external resources are more important than internal ones; that the provider's role is more critical. This over-appreciation of materialism and under-appreciation of development has a pernicious effect on families.