The #1 Reason We Need To Support Mothers

I recently watched a documentary on dolphins with my kids. It was 90 minutes honoring the persistence, patience and laser focus of mama dolphin whose raison d’etre in that phase of life was to teach her easily distracted, happy-go-lucky baby how to fish. That is, how to survive. That’s the story throughout the animal kingdom right? Once an animal becomes a mother, her entire world is devoted to protecting her cub and teaching it how to be self-sufficient under literally do-or-die circumstances. And hell hath no fury like a mama whose babies are under threat.

Over here amongst us ‘higher’ animals, the motherhood role appears to focus less on survival skills, but rather on keeping children comfortable, well-mannered and well-groomed. My cubs would not last long on their own.

Fortunately, our children don’t face the same threats animals in the wild do. However, there is a critical skill human children need in order to survive in their own environments and and that is the ability to nurture and to take care of themselves.

Turns out that kids that don’t receive adequate and consistent attention and guidance specifically from their mothers tend to lack this quality and end up in all sorts of damaging patterns in relationships and have all sorts of complexes regarding their body image and place in the world.

— Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy

For the first five years or so of a child’s life they learn from their mothers how to soothe, love and nurture themselves. And the idea that they should.

If you’re like me, in your forties, you grew up at in a time in which women just ‘sucked it up’. The stories were always about keeping the peace, protecting the unit, saving the face, or some combination thereof.

How can a mother who is struggling, fighting or otherwise unfulfilled raise a competent, confident, well-adjusted child?

Well, turns out, she can’t.

Studies show without doubt that mothers who are depressed or mentally ill struggle to bond properly with their infant children. The pattern continues as the kids age, with unwell mothers being either too intrusive or too withdrawn or both and the inconsistency does much harm to the children.

It gets worse. Studies cannot seem to prove that if the mother is treated and cured for depression, that the children’s behavior improves. That means that there are some structural changes that occur in the brain related to early caregiving.

You get the drift. Unwell mothers raise unwell kids.

The point here is not to put more fear or guilt on mothers. Far from it. I can already see posts in online mother’s groups about having a bad day and worrying about the long-term psychological impact on their toddlers.

The point is that we’ve created a culture in which we can’t tell mothers to take care of themselves, for themselves.

A lethal combination of patriarchy, capitalism, of a grave disconnect from our bodies and an even more serious detachment from nature means that motherhood has been stripped of its rightful place as primary, sacred and honored. So we have to step up and honor it ourselves.

This is not by the way, a message you will get from your own mother, or from your boss or even your friends because mothers are supposed to be.. what’s that word I’ve learned to despise in this context..? Selfless. Motherhood as the well-being of the family as paramount we can live with. Motherhood as literal “loss of self”, which is the way we currently play the role, serves no one.

How many of us have sat in therapy saying we didn’t want to be miserable like our mothers?

More than would care to admit.

So how do mothers get well?

The research states that social support is a key factor in the health of mothers.

Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us. For our physiology to calm down, heal and grow, we need a visceral feeling of safety.

— Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps Score

Asians tend to have more family support and Europeans more institutional protection. I had my first child in Australia where a midwife was provided for free in your neighborhood for the first year of your baby’s life simply so mum knew she was supported. It was downright luxurious. From all the countries I’ve lived in I believe American women have it the worst, with no paid leave from companies, no resources from the government and prohibitive costs of domestic help. Layer on nuclear families and you’ve got a winning combination of overwrought and under-nurtured mothers.

So how are you supposed to do it all? You can’t. And I promise you, you will die trying. Struggling to “make it work” in this system doesn’t change the system. Succeeding in it reinforces it.

So you have to demand more — of your partner, of your workplace, of your friends, of your family, of your society. And you have to care less about what people think of your choices and make damn sure you don’t sit in judgment of anyone else’s.

People who feel they are lacking care to comment on other people’s abundance. Work hard to ensure you’re not lacking in the things that really matter to you.

And if you can’t muster up the strength to stand up for your own wellbeing, which should be reason enough, mama, at least do it for your kids.