Mothers Day family traditions; Are you your mothers daughter?

Motherhood is celebrated throughout the world, almost as if it is the pinnacle of female achievement. This has always made me feel uneasy, mainly because unless you have medical problem, it isn't that hard to bring children into the world. Plus, I know for a fact, that no matter how much time, effort, blood sweat and tears you put into bringing the little darlings up, they will eventually inform you that your mothering skills are rubbish and that you have systematicly ruined their life. O.K. they will probably be saying this at the age of 15, as you ground them for going out with a 42 year old fast food operative. But it won't stop that nasty, annoying little alarm from going off in the back of your brain though. Because as a mother, you will almost certainly be in the wrong, most of the time. I know my mother was. Nothing emphasised this more than Mothers Day as I was forced into a shop to find the definitive 'I love you Mom' card for a woman I was almost certain, did not love me. Mothers Day is just loaded with imagery and emotions associated with being a woman and is as complex as its long history.

In the UK, having a specific feast day for celebrating Motherhood is a long standing tradition going back to the 16th century. Mothering Sunday as it has become known, is held on the 4th Sunday of Lent. This day marks the Feeding of the Five thousand and the celebration of Motherhood has inexplicably, been tagged on to it.  In days gone by, this festival would have been a welcome break from formal Lent fasting.  Traditionally, child servants were given this particular Sunday off as their one and only holiday of the year, in order to visit their mothers and were given out of season flowers from the hot houses, along with eggs and cakes to take as gifts to celebrate the day.  It is important to note that this celebration of fertility focuses on the mother rather than the child.  This is particularly surprising for a Christian religious festival which normally has the Christ figure as its central theme and therefore, it has been argued that the festival is rooted in a far older belief system.

However, Mothers Day in the US is an altogether different affair.  It did not become a nationally celebrated holiday until 1914.  A strangely contradicting celebration, the American Mothers Day began to honour mothers of the fallen soldiers of the 1st World War. Its focus has remained with death with the tradition of wearing a red or white carnation to denote wether a mother is alive or departed, and so still in some ways focuses on the child and death.  Although this would appear to be in conflict with the older traditions of its UK cousin, it could be argued that it is a valuable component of a far more ancient cult concerning the ultimate symbol of Motherhood; the Great Goddess.

Cybele, the Roman Mother Goddess had her feast day in the Northern hemisphere around about the time of the spring equinox and it is no coincidence that the early Christian church co-opted her feast day into their own celebrations. It has been argued that they did this with all their important festivals, such as Easter and Christmas. Of course, the Great Goddess is depicted in many forms, Cybele being just one of them. Traditionally, the form of the Great Goddess is three fold; the single woman, the mother and the crone, representing the cycle of the seasons, reproduction and life itself.  It is this cycle that has such a resonance as I age, because I think I now have some insight into the enigma that was my mother as well as empathy for my own daughter, who is in the throws of motherhood herself.  With some horror, I realise that I am fast approaching the crone stage of my development.  Hopefully, wisdom will compensate for gravitys' unforgiving pull on my more wobbly bits.  Because being a mother is about looking back as well as forward. 

I remember my mothers last words to me, as she lay desperately small in her hospital bed. Remember them because they were a typically blunt criticism. " You always did wear weird clothes, you ought to draw less attention to yourself at your age." she declared with an air of exasperation. I kissed her goodbye and drove the 200 miles back home and the next time I saw her, she was lying in her decidedly weird wicker basket coffin. To say we had never got on, would be a bit of an understatement. I spent all of my childhood and a considerable part of my adult life in a horrible limbo between love and hate. Your not meant to hate your mother are you? And she's not supposed to hate you! Yet, this was exactly the state of our relationship. Because life is not always the way it is scripted in a parenting manual.

From an early age, I remember my mother telling people that I was not a planned child. In fact, to begin with, her doctor thought she had ovarian cancer. She would laugh at this point of the story and say what a blow it was when they gave her the all clear and found out she was pregnant with me instead. For years I resented this story. In fact, for a long time I thought that I was actually my sisters' child and that my parents were my grandparents and passing me off as their child. Wishful thinking as it turned out but it didn't stop the stab of disappointment when I gained possession of my birth certificate and saw it there in black and white; I was my mothers daughter. Our mutual dislike of each other grew as I hit puberty, until I finally slipped the parental leash and moved out. When I had children of my own, I vowed I would never be like my mother, never be cold, judgemental or hard. I would be understanding.

Then, once I was a mother, I found out that my mother had rejected me at birth.  Convinced that I had Downs Syndrome, she refused to feed or even hold me.  My father and my sister took care of me for my first year of life.  Which explains my attachment to my sister.  My mothers reason for rejecting me needs further explanation though.  Nowadays, we would recognise that my mother was suffering from Post Natal depression.  She would be given treatment and sympathy.  Her family would be given support.  But in those days, her behaviour was inexplicable.  She was told to pull herself together.  Eventually, a more understanding doctor prescribed large quantities of brewers yeast.  She gradually got better but the damage to our relationship ran too deep and was never properly addressed.  Now so far, this sounds like a 'poor me', misery story. That's not my intention, its just part of the story.  My mother also had problems loving me because I wasn't very loveable!

As little girls went, I was neither pretty or sweet tempered. I locked my Mother out of the house every time she went into the garden to hang out washing or talk to a neighbour. I threatened my sister with a knife because I thought she was interfering with a Play-do sculpture I was making. I was 5 years old at the time. Family friends claimed they were frightened to be left alone with me, citing the film 'The village of the Dammed' as their excuse.  (For those of you who are too young to understand this reference, its a film about alien children who are placed in a village and spend most of their time killing and maiming the local inhabitants, especially their birth mothers.)  Photo's from my childhood depict a scowling kid, not the kind of child you would bounce on your knee. So, it was hardly surprising that my Mother found me somewhat unapproachable. But I was not always this bad. I was surprised when watching a grainy old Cine-film to see myself at 18 months hugging my sister and smiling into the camera. The point of this little trip down memory lane is to point out that the past is complex and confusing. Its difficult to identify the truth in all of this. The point is; there are many truths and they are all valid. Mum wasn't a great mum. I wasn't a great daughter. Mum had been ill. I had suffered a lack of attachment. I was pre-disposed to look on the dark side and most importantly so was my Mum. And it goes back even further than that.

My Grandmother Helen, a historical figure in a series of hand-coloured photographs, was by all accounts a hard woman, with 13 children and not a motherly bone in her body. When several of her sons' died in one week from scarlet fever, she is quoted as saying that they would only have grown up to be cannon fodder anyway. This dragon like creature, the daughter of a charwoman, was brought up in one of the poorest parts of the East-End of London. Being pregnant was an occupational hazard for poor, married women and Helen was horribly fertile. She might not have cuddled the regiment of offspring that squashed into her squalid two up, two down terraced house but she did clothe and feed them, no mean feat by any-one's standards of the day. Helen was a sober, hardworking woman who lived under the shadow of the workhouse for most of her life.  Being locked up in an institution for the crime of poverty was a reality for several of Helens' ancestor's, whose main mistake, it would appear, was being a helpless child or an abandoned wife.  Helen might not have shown affection to her brood but she kept most of them alive and out of the clutches of the local authority until adulthood.  Ironically, she lost a son in the 2nd World War so maybe her prediction about canon fodder was right.  I would argue that the most important aspects of mothering varies depending on opportunity and that Helen did a brilliant job, given her situation.No amount of cuddles would have made up for being starved and ultimately ending up on the street.  Judgement of parenting skills really do need an historical context.

Which brings me to my mothering skills. My children were brought into the world in the hedonistic 80's. They wanted for nothing materially, were cuddled, encouraged and given every opportunity to fulfill their aspirations. Their childhood, idyllic by even modern standards, came at a price. A price I paid for, both literally and metaphorically. I launched myself into motherhood with a frightening enthusiasm which had me breast feeding them as infants, structuring their toddler days for maximum development and battling on their behalf through the Alice in Wonderland maze that is the UK education system. There were family dinners every day, outings every weekend and 'quality time' shoehorned into their lives at every available opportunity. I loved them so much, I nearly smothered them! So, when I let them go, to get on with their life in which ever way they saw fit, they were naturally aggrieved. At one stage, I imagined them coming to me as I languished in a state old peoples' home, on the cadge for any spare money I might have stashed away, such was their dependency. I had done every thing within my power to be a good mother and had turned out to be every bit as bad as my ancestors.

The trouble with reflecting on mothers and mothering skills is that it is easy to focus on the negative. By focusing on the mother, what we are ultimately doing, is letting the kids off the hook. 'Ooh I'm a bad person because my mother didn't love me', is only a fraction of the tale. For, as those of you who believe in Free Will will know, the only person who truly deserves any blame for how you turned out is you. So where does this leave mothers and our celebration of them? Well, I would argue that just like the old deity; The Great Goddess, there is a dark side to motherhood and that its meant to be there. The natural order of things is; the creation of life, death and continuation of life. You may inherit your grandmothers eyes or maybe something a little less tangible. I will be remembering my mother with a little more compassion this year and hoping that my daughter will be doing the same. What my adorable little granddaughter will make of all of it in years to come, is anybody's guess.

If you have been affected by any of the issues touched on in this hub, the following websites may be of use;

Cruise Bereavement Care -helpline@cruse.org.uk 

NSPCC.org.uk - family support nspcc.org.uk/whatwedo/servicesforchildrenandfamilies.

Trace your ancestors for free at Ancestry.com