Mother’s Day

Today, on Mother’s Day, we honour mothers: biological mothers, adoptive mothers, stepmothers, queer parents, single parents, co-parents, and people who mother without fitting traditional definitions. It is a cliché to say that every day ought to be “Mother’s Day” because of all that every mother has done for every living human being. Motherhood in the 21st century is less a single social role and more a constantly negotiated identity shaped by work, technology, economics, culture, and personal choice. While in many societies, including Guyana, becoming a mother is no longer treated as an automatic life stage, the traditional biological foundations of motherhood still place constraints on women.
Those constraints were given sociological significance in terms of defining the “woman’s role” in every society throughout history. Who would stay home and “mind baby”? In the last century, there were many proposals to rectify that situation of “biology as destiny”, such as the communes of the sixties imitating earlier efforts in the 19th century. While they died on the vine, with the increasing number of women in the workforce seen as an inevitable outcome of modern economic development, there is renewed interest in reformulating the “childcare” role of “mother”.
In China, which is leading the former Third World countries into this brave new world, a facility to care for children is part and parcel of every new factory constructed. Interestingly, such facilities called “crèches” had been introduced during indentureship on every plantation to facilitate the “bound women” working. As Guyana continues on its accelerated development path with our oil revenues, these are issues that we should ponder over and not, as usual, wait for them to ambush us. Back to the future with crèches?
But even as women are offered some respite from “minding baby”, modern parenting culture still ultimately places on mothers not only the responsibility of raising children safely but also of optimising them emotionally, socially, academically, and psychologically. Childhood itself has become highly managed and supervised, which can make motherhood feel less communal and more individualised. We have the paradox of mothers today having more choices and visibility than previous generations, yet often facing more scrutiny and psychological pressure.
In the meantime, apart from the gifts of chocolate, flowers, or a dinner that we, especially the men in our society, may offer our mothers today, we can also rethink our conception of motherhood so that our mothers, and all other mothers present and future, can live happier, more satisfying lives. Today in Guyana, violence against females – the majority of them being mothers – has taken on epidemic proportions, and it does not appear that the official sanctions enforced by the forces of law and order are changing the status quo.
To a large extent, this is a legacy from our history of slavery and indentureship on the psyches of our people as they passed through the “total institution” that was the plantation. Extreme violence was the tool used by the planters to resolve any variation from the norms they created for their purposes to extract labour. What replaced those norms was the use of interpersonal violence by the labourers as a salutary device to elicit compliance with their social roles. With society patterned on the hierarchical and patriarchal relationships of the plantation, it is not surprising that violence, especially against women and other weaker groups in society, such as children, remains stubbornly entrenched.
It is a greater tragedy that Mothers’ Day is celebrated today, when the entrenched attitude of viewing women as lesser beings still dominates among many of those presenting their gifts. The mothers and their children are being socialised into believing that this single act of propitiation, on this single day, excuses and erases the other three hundred sixty-four days of neglect, abuse, and even violence. The point we are making is that if women in general, and mothers in particular, are to be given their due honour, we must revise our conception of “motherhood”.
Happy Mother’s Day!