‘Motherhood’ and ‘mother’ are comfortable notions, almost inevitably associated with women. They draw on ideas of care and nurture, scoldings and love, protection and understanding. The everyday mother could be thought to be capable of becoming like the great mothers of literature — the mother in Maxim Gorky’s Mother or Maurya in J.M. Synge’s Riders to The Sea. People tend to think they can appeal to the essential ‘motherliness’ in women. In art, the mother-and-child image in the West and the East all contribute to the deeply-embedded association in the mind of society of mothers always being women holding their children in their protective arms. These symbolise the strength of the tradition.
This tradition was challenged in a discussion between a mental health rights activist and a psychologist whose main message was that motherhood is a role, not a gender identity. The appearance of a gender identity is forged by the family and the society and is confirmed by their expectations. According to the discussants, the notion of mother is linked to a married woman and a relationship, but anyone can take up the role of mother, or refuse to take it up. This implied, on the one hand, a blindness induced by society in the face of the growing number of single mothers and, on the other hand, a denial that being a mother is somehow the ‘essence’ of a woman. It is a role that can be enacted for a friend’s children, for example, but transiently. The role can then be given up. Men looking after children are not such an oddity nowadays; they, too, are ‘mothers’, sometimes single, feeding children or changing nappies. There is often an economic necessity when there is distribution of childcare — both parents must work. Besides, more women need to or want to go out to work; that is their right. In such a situation, housework and childcare have to be shared while parents must ensure that the children are in a safe place while they are away — that is also ‘mothering’.
The discussants also laid much of the change of ideas at the door of the queer movement. This movement projects the fluidity of gender identities and emphasises non-binary roles. This naturally challenges the notion of mother as a woman or motherhood as the fulfilment of womanhood. A non-binary person may be excellent at ‘mothering’ or taking care of a child — it does not make that individual less of a mother for not being identified as a woman. In parallel, a woman may not want to be a mother or economic circumstances may make it difficult for a couple to rear a child. This does not mean that a woman is ‘unsexed’ or that she has not been fulfilled in her life. Society may be resistant to a change of ideas but it is everyday life that records the change.