What Do You Want… from Your Mother?
Happy Mother's Day. A few thoughts about mothers and their impact on our lives.
It’s Mother’s Day and, hopefully, everyone is celebrating the person who either gave birth to them or has been most present in their upbringing and care. This got me to thinking about the many mothers I know and how their mothering characteristics vary and yet built on a very consistent foundation of love and true devotion.
Having never experienced motherhood, I have no basis on which to evaluate how mothering feels, so everything I talk about here is purely based on observation.
At the Core
For biological mothers, the core of their relationship with their child and, I suppose, the core of their feelings about that child are rooted in the fact that that child was physically a part of them and emerged from their body. Even as I write those words, I’m filled with wonder at what that experience must be like. No relationship could possibly be closer or more intimate. And men are completely shortchanged by having no opportunity to experience it. Truly the miracle of life.
While birth is at the core of a mother’s relationship with their child, it is not mandatory for that relationship to grow. Adoptive mothers replace that core thoroughly with their own love. In most cases, an adopted child feels every bit as much for their mother as a biological offspring. Many point out that they are the child their adoptive mother chose.
Some have suggested that gender has an impact on the mother/child relationship. There’s a popular saying that goes, “A son is your son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is your daughter for the rest of her life.” I disagree with that, and I’ll explain why.
My Own Experience
I’ve experienced perhaps the full range of mother/child relationships in the course of my life.
My own mother had already helped her older sister raise three children when she gave birth to me. In many ways this made me her fourth and youngest child. As I grew to be a precocious brat, she often defended my three cousins when I clashed with them. From an early age I felt a sense of betrayal that defined the course of our relationship. My mother suffered from the results of an early childhood illness that left her simple. She really didn’t understand some of the dynamics of relationships and it was only later in my life that I came to understand and appreciate that. As a result, we were never close and I think I missed out on something that I can only define in contrast to what I’ve seen with my own children.
My wife is truly one of those “daughter for the rest of her life” women. She continues to deeply love her own mother who passed several years ago. Frequently, she’ll comment about how she learned something she was doing from her mother. While her mother was a difficult, bitter, disappointed woman, my wife focuses her memory on the good her mother brought to her. As she has grown, her understanding of her mother’s difficulties has grown and I think she ends up with a very balanced appreciation without feeling the need to emulate and recreate those difficulties.
That appreciation has enabled my wife to go beyond being a great mother to her own children. My son, for example, adores and is totally devoted to his mother. Contrary to that popular saying, taking a wife did not remove him from his relationship with his mother. Instead, it created a new relationship between her and his wife in which that daughter-in-law became more like the daughter she never had, and a best friend. It was a magical relationship that has lasted beyond our daughter-in-law’s untimely passing just over a year ago.
He has found a new love and that woman, who actively resents her own mother’s behaviors, has also become fast friends with my wife. This flies in the face of that popular old saying and demonstrates that gender is not really a defining factor.
To complete this proof, our other son has basically abandoned his relationship with his mother to preserve and perpetuate his relationship with his wife. The relationship is not defined by gender, but rather by the experiences and the other relationships that enter our lives. Essentially, it is the result of a series of choices we each make.
What We Want From our Mother
Loyalty. The lack of loyalty from my own mother very likely colors my immediate thoughts about the answer to this question. I suspect that most people expect their own mother to be the last person that would ever betray them, that would always be loyal and supportive to them. The one person they could always depend upon when all else fails.
It’s not always true, and when it isn’t it can be among the most damaging disappointments a person ever experiences. It colors every relationship for the rest of your life.
Beyond loyalty, learning. From infancy we look to our mothers to teach us everything we’ll need to know to be successful human beings. How to eat, how to dress, how to cleanse ourselves, how to use the bathroom and other fundamentals. But also, how to read, how to learn, how to encounter other people, how to behave in various situations. Later, how to earn the respect of others.
How to live a life of service to others.
When Your Mother Gives You More Than You Wanted
This is something I’ve learned purely from watching my wife in her interactions with our son and all the people around him. When you give your child everything they wanted and then some, the results can be magical and far-reaching.
My son and his late wife introduced my wife to many of their friends and family members. Many of those people gave birth to children around the same time my grandson was born. As those children grew to become toddlers and children we realized that literally dozens of them referred to my wife as “Grammy Karrie.”
The smile that spreads across her face when they call her that is worth everything. You can feel the great joy radiating from her. Her mothering of my son and his wife has expanded to bring her the love of dozens of “grandchildren” even though only two are biologically hers.
Palpable Results of Great Mothering
While my sons have had quite opposite responses to her, there are some results of her mothering that can be observed in their lives.
For example, both of them are outstandingly successful in their careers. They are both leaders, executives, and managers of people. I credit much of that to their mother’s teaching them how to treat people well. It’s likely she never thought about it, just innately passed along her own devotion to people to both of them.
Her generosity has also been passed along to them. I’ve witnessed both of them demonstrating remarkable kindness to many people.
Having missed all this in my own experience, these are the values I think most people want most from their mothers.
What do YOU want from your mother?