In early August, I had charge of four children ages 3 to 8 for three days and two nights while my son and his wife were in the hospital bringing a fifth member of the squad into the world. All went reasonably well on my solitary watch until that second night, when the 7-year-old came downstairs after I’d tucked them into bed.
“Cici’s crying,” she said.
I went back upstairs.
“I want Mommy,” the weeping 5-year-old was saying over and over again while I stood in the shadows of the bedroom, wondering what to do next. “I want Mommy now!”
“Sometimes I want my mom too,” I said at one point, which is true, but I was hoping to distract her.
When that didn’t work, I sank to the carpeted floor at the foot of her bed, worn thin by our busy day together, and just decided to wait it out. After a few minutes, she grew quiet, and her sister startled me by sneaking up behind me and whispering in my ear, “I think she’s asleep. You can go now.” I said a second goodnight and trudged back down the stairs.
Those three days with the grandchildren brought some other moments of stress and fatigue, but the arrival home of Ignatius John, 8 pounds and all of 24 hours in the world, wiped away my weariness. He was, of course, the most handsome baby ever to take a breath of air.
The Everlasting Flame
Just before he dies in the film “Saving Private Ryan,” the medic, Wade, whispers “Mama” several times. A century earlier, the Union soldiers of the Civil War sitting around their campfires sang, “Just before the battle, Mother, I am thinking most of you.“ When I was a kid watching football games on television, the cameras would pan the players’ benches, and invariably one of them would wave, smile, and say, ”Hey, Mom.“ Like many other poets and writers, in ”Sonnets Are Full of Love,“ Christina Rossetti paid tribute to her mother:I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name: In you not fourscore years can dim the flame Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws Of time and change and mortal life and death.Like Cici, everybody wants their mamas at one time or another. Even those adults I’ve known who had terrible mothers—women who berated, cursed, and even beat their children—still longed for the affection, care, and love of a mom.
Motherhood Under Fire
In “The End of Woman,” author Carrie Gress spends much of her book analyzing the feminist movement of the past 200 years. She looks at the pioneers of early feminism, women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, then brings readers up through the 20th century with feminists such as Betty Friedan and Kate Millet. Unlike authors of other such historical surveys, Ms. Gress tears away the curtain so often thrown over the private lives of these women and reveals the roots of their radical ideas, often derived from personal experience—free love, the resentment of men, the demand for abortion, the arguments for a lesbian lifestyle, the attacks on the traditional family.Most significantly, perhaps, Ms. Gress unveils the attacks by some feminists on childbearing. Babies, they contend, become shackles, keeping women from their careers and the freedom to pursue their own interests and pleasures. Birth control advocate and eugenicist Margaret Sanger, for example, long ago defined a mother as “a breeding machine and a drudge—she is not an asset but a liability to her neighborhood, to her class, to society.”
Motherhood in the Shadows
If the family is the foundation of culture, then the destruction of the family, both in its extended and nuclear versions, means the destruction of civilization. In the United States, evidence abounds that the family is ailing and weakened.Now, if the family is that foundation, then surely motherhood is the cornerstone. Since the dawn of the human race, infants and toddlers have needed feeding and protection for extended periods of time. Mothers provided those necessities, while fathers provided protection and sustenance for both. We have long since moved away from that early formula for survival, but as Ms. Gress writes, until quite recently, our culture venerated motherhood and children.
Today’s culture still recognizes the importance of children. Our government and various social agencies offer numerous programs of assistance for children, and we pour vast amounts of money and effort into their education. If nothing else, the battles now raging around the country over what, how, and when children should be taught is indicative of this emphasis on the young.
But what about mothers? Do we still revere them as we once did?
The Most Tender of Bonds
In her book’s final chapter, “Mother,” Ms. Gress reminds readers of the deep-down meaning of the maternal.“Mothering and motherhood are essential pieces of womanhood,” she writes. “This is what keeps the species alive. It is vital and essential, and up until recently, it was recognized as the most tender and natural of relational bonds. It is one of the strongest of human bonds on earth. There are few things that elicit the strength, courage, patience, perseverance, fortitude, and innovation of a mother’s love for her child.”
End-Note to Moms
On Mother’s Day, we celebrate the women who bore and raised us with flowers, luncheons, and presents. Otherwise, moms receive short shrift with regard to status and respect. The millions of mothers who raise strong, intelligent, and virtuous sons and daughters win few accolades other than those bestowed by their children and families.I’m a guy, and so I have scant knowledge of what it means to be a woman or mother. Yet I have eyes and ears, and every day makes me aware of the tasks and responsibilities, some onerous, some delightful, borne by moms. My daughter and the wives of my three sons are all mothers. My younger friends have children. At my church are kids ranging from newborns to wiggling toddlers to teenagers, all brought into this world by mothers and all attended by mothers and fathers. Into the coffee shop where I sometimes write troop moms accompanied by children, women who shepherd the kids through ice cream or drinks, who keep them seated at a table, and who remind them to wipe the chocolate from their lips and chin. Good moms, all.
Long ago, in elementary school, we learned that Mesopotamia was the “cradle of civilization,” but as a parent and grandparent, I know now that the real cradle of civilization is a baby’s crib. And as evidenced by my granddaughter’s tear-stained “I want Mommy!” a mother’s work is the most necessary if we’re going to preserve and build up this old, broken world. You’re needed, moms, probably more than most of you realize.
Thank you for all that you do.
