Mothers & Mothering 

Quotations on Mothers & Mothering

1. Having a baby is one thing; being a mother is a much longer, and harder, labour of love  (Anon)

2. A sweater is a garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly (Ambrose Bierce) 

3. All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does. That's his  (Oscar Wilde)

4. A mother never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along  (Margaret Culkin Banning)

5. If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?  (Milton Berle)

6. Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own  (Aristotle)

7. A mum forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don't even have  (Robert Brault)

8. Our first mirror is our mother’s face  (DW Winnicott)

9. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my Mother  (Abraham Lincoln)

10. Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother  (Moorish Proverb)

11. God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers  (Jewish Proverb)

12. A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest  (Irish Proverb)

13. No matter how middle-aged her children, a mother still watches for signs of improvement  (Florida Scott-Maxwell)

We wonder what you made of these quotes? Did any make you nod knowingly, growl in irritation, perhaps smile, or even wince, in recognition? Hopefully, they might have prompted you to ponder the undisputable and indispensable fact of human life, that we all started out as a speck of vulnerable raw potential inside a mother’s body. Despite mankind’s ability to launch rockets deep into space, invent the internet, split the atom, the greatest wonder of all is the journey of conception, pregnancy, and birth that brings a new human being into the world.

But of course a mother is far more than a womb and a birth canal. In most cases mothers still play by far the biggest part in the care and rearing of infants and children, even in an age when many men take a more active part in child-care than was the case a generation or two ago. And yet, it is arguably, those first nine months of the closest proximity possible in any human relationship, where one grows inside the other, nourished by her juices, protected by her womb, culminating in the painful, wondrous ordeal of birth, that make the mother-child relationship so psychologically and emotionally powerful.

In many ways we are right to place such a high value on mothering and mothers, and yet that also places a huge burden of responsibility and expectation on mothers to ‘get it right’. Society seems to cast a far more judgemental and disapproving eye on mothers who leave their children, rather than fathers who walk out on theirs. The huge expectation on women, not only to be a good mother, but to take to it like a duck to water, can feel like an extra burden making the whole business even harder.

Some mother’s enjoy the sense of power and responsibility that comes with being pregnant and caring for a vulnerable, dependent infant. For some mothers, however, that responsibility can feel quite overwhelming. For some, being pregnant feels like an invasion; their bodies, taken over from the inside out, react with fierce morning sickness and much physical discomfort. And, if the birth itself was a tearing, painful, complicated ordeal, it should not be surprising that some women find their mother-love doesn’t turn on automatically like a tap once the newborn infant that ‘caused’ all this upheaval is laid in her arms. It is not easy for a woman to admit to less-than-wonderful feelings about the whole process of becoming a mother, but if that’s what it was like for you, take heart, you are not alone, and just because something is more difficult and challenging than we imagine, doesn’t mean we can’t overcome those initial difficulties and become that prized thing, that term coined by DW Winnicott, the ‘good enough mother’.

Of course, not all mothering is done by birth mothers. Mothering, like fathering, comes in all manner of shapes, sizes and persons, as grandmothers, aunts, older sisters, adoptive and foster parents, are mother to children in their care. Perhaps we should remember that Mother’s Day (as we now tend to call it) was originally called Mothering Sunday, and treat it as a day to celebrate the joys and pleasures, but also to appreciate the pain and sacrifices, of mothering, whoever our ‘mother’ happens to be.