As Mother’s Day sails around again this weekend, we all carry an idea of the perfect mother fed by the weight of history, culture and Elastigirl from The Incredibles.
The perfect mother is all-nurturing, ever-loving, high achieving, super flexible, A-list gorgeous and someone who always makes the best ice-cream and blueberry waffles in the world.
Of course, my mother was all those things, which is why I’m such a well-balanced boomer approaching old age with a confident beard and a healthy respect for strong, elastic women.
We all want our mothers to be the perfect mothers, but unfortunately, the world is not a greeting card or a bunch of flowers.
Mothers and motherhood are more complicated than that, and women know it. Since the Virgin Mary arrived, living up to the ideal has always been a challenge, but it seems that in the 21st century, mothers’ elasticity is being stretched to snapping point.
My mum was a stay-at-home mother whose vocation was to feed, wash and clothe her kids, keep the house tidy, ensure clean shirts for her husband and look nice while doing it with a smile. As far as I knew, she did all this with an inner grace, or at least the reconciliation of acceptance.
But there were times I remember, at the end of the day, when she would sit down by the fire after washing the dishes and emptying my father’s ashtray and handing him a cup of tea that she would let out a groan as she folded her body into an armchair.
She always blamed her “lumbago” for the groan. But looking back, I think there was more to it than a sore back. The groan held within it a deep exhalation of all the things yet to be done. The carpets are to be cleaned, the windows are to be washed, the nurturing is to be completed and the demands are to be met.
Today’s mothers, I suspect, feel the same but with the added pressure of full-time work and Instagram comparisons.
Many fathers are stepping up to be supporting partners in the daily round of chores and challenges. But many others are drifting and carrying on where their fathers left off — chasing possessions, victories and respect, all the time being content to be fed and dressed by their wives as they were by their mothers. They leave the hard work of running a home and family to the mother in their life.
A small, hardcore of men are doing far worse than drifting on this polluted sea. They are actively preventing the women in their lives from being complete human beings by monitoring, gaslighting and controlling their existence. In the worst of cases, this leads to physical assault and murder. The driving forces of this toxic behaviour are deep. At some point, they will have to be addressed with more than immediate solutions to deal with the visible wreckage. As difficult and stormy as it may be, we will eventually have to sail upstream to see exactly how and where this behaviour starts.
Meanwhile, this Sunday is a day to raise the flag of respect and salute our mothers for all their fierce love and for hoping they never flinch in the face of those changes that need to be made.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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