Motherhood and Mothering - Essay Example

My interviewee was friend of mine, 23 years old, major in telecommunication. She is a Christian Korean, with a quiet character. She is very responsible about her work and everything she does. The interview took place at my house. I asked her questions, she answered and I did my notes.There exist a number of false scripts on motherhood in the Western society. The truth is that the society has moved the accent on a child and a baby’s life is treated as the one that matters more than a mother’s one.

For several centuries already the society has underlined that the sense of women’s lives is to give birth to children. A woman cannot feel herself fully realized if she is not a mother – the message is. As time passes and all your friends get married and start having children, you cannot help feeling pressure and feeling a kind of outcast. Everybody persuades you that being a mother is the greatest happiness in a woman’s life and that if you do not have children you cannot consider yourself a real woman.

At that most of women give birth to their children just because it is prescribed by the society. There are certain scripts as to the number of children to be born, and to the age of becoming a mother. These scripts are transferred in families from generation to generation. Certainly, women usually do not realize that it is not quite their desire but merely the scenario imposed on them, believing that it is high time for them to have children. Many women give birth to children because they cannot find their way and mission in life.

Children provide an opportunity to occupy one’s life-time with seemingly important things. As a result many mothers give no freedom to their children, interfering with their lives and imposing own worldviews and beliefs, not realizing that their children are quite different people, who came into this world to have their own experience and follow their own path. My interviewee is a usual representative of her time. Her understanding of motherhood reflects the common approach. She is not absorbed wholly with the idea of becoming a mother, but it is only because she is very young.

It is clear from her utterances that she is simply waiting for the time when she will be ready to deny her freedom in favor of her children. My friend does realize that being a mother is a hard work, as she puts it “you have to work more than full-time employment.” Yet she starts thinking of children already dreaming of the reward in a form of children’s happy faces and mutual trust. The question is how deeply she understands the essence of being a mother. My friend dreams of ideal relationships with ideal children.

She does want to create a warm home for her future children, a place her children will like to return to. She wants to provide her children with shelter and warmth and immense support. She wants to become her children’s closest friend and be associated with “a peace of mind”. She wants to be their role model. This means that she like most of women hopes that her children will share her interests and beliefs and will certainly follow her example in everything. Do many of us really share the values of our parents as we grow up?

Most of people have secret lives of their own, playing certain roles in front of their parents, the roles that they feel their parents are comfortable with. As time passes many children adopt these roles as their own selves and the society gets members with the same fears and restrictions, prejudices and problems the previous generation had. That is why I think women are to be very careful about their desires of finding their reflection in their children. Instead, parents should learn from their children new lessons and adopt new habits from the following generations.

As far as one can judge from my friend’s utterances she is gong to entirely dedicate herself to her children. This becomes a mistake of many women. Feeling totally responsible for their children, many mothers stop living lives of their own. Instead of helping children to choose their own way in life, women start deciding everything for them, and children often feel guilty not to obey their dearest mothers. Instead, a woman should continue developing and creating space of love with the men of hers.

Then children will strive for the warmth and light produced by their happy parents. When a woman sacrifices her life for the sake of her children, the world often gets new unhappy individuals in the face of the mother and her children. Being a mother does mean care of children. Yet if a woman dedicates her life to children 24/7, she risks losing herself and her personality. My friend is very young indeed. She doesn’t feel any social pressure yet and her notion of motherhood is rather superficial.

She realizes that she will have less time for herself and speaks of buying food for children, forgetting about hundreds of other things to be done routinely. She cannot describe precisely what it is to be a mother. She feels comfortable about it because she has good relations with her own mother (we didn’t touch upon any misunderstandings existing between the generations). Finally, it is possible to notice that my friend speaks of children without mentioning their father. It is also prescribed by the society.

Nobody teaches girls that they are to be happy and in love. Girls are only taught that they are to have children, even if they have to raise them alone. A usual extremity is when a mother takes all the male functions being a head of the family and forming wrong notions in her children. The eternal truth is that we were not created men and women for nothing. Each of the genders has its own roles and functions. If a child grows in a family where gender roles are mixed, where relationships between parents are distorted or are built on lie and misunderstanding, the society gets a new problematic member who has difficulties in building his relationships and communication with God.