To mother doesn’t mean you have offspring. Mothering also doesn’t require that one possess eggs and Fallopian tubes. The act of mothering does not necessitate a particular biological make up.
And by mother, I mean it’s tough.
Mothering, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is: The process of nurturing, caring for, and protecting a child by a mother or maternal figure. 1
It’s also defined as: Nurturing or protective behaviour reminiscent of that performed by a literal mother. 2
A third definition offers that mothering is: Relating to or characteristic of a mother, especially in being caring, protective, and kind. 3
Trying to work out how to relate to and look after one another…
Figuring out how to be nurtured and what it means to nurture others with absent or distant parents, family, and/or community…
Attending to a new generation or an older generation of humans in our care…
Seeking to do and receive day-to-day kindnesses…
Attempting to create a culture of togetherness and true interconnection…
It’s difficult. The care and nurture of life — our own or others — isn’t easy in dominant US culture. Mothering is generative and continuous. There’s a quality to the nourishing of life that is about honoring another’s humanity — about making space for increase, for mistakes, for change in personhood and relationship, and for learning. About the acknowledgment that growth and development can and is occurring.
I’ll add my own spin to the idea of mothering. I see the most genuine and virtuous form of mothering as being one who generously generates and sustains life — making space for others, birthing newness into being, and guiding life into purpose. Mothering conjures ideas of gentleness, of concern for safety and well-being, and providing fierce and loving protection. I don’t think it would hurt us if we could all have a bit more of this sort of mothering in our lives. Experiencing more generous care, nourishment, and protection could probably do us all good.
As I parent my own young mixed race kids, nurture and care for my black spouse, work out how to graciously and openly challenge whiteness with white loved ones, and attempt to tend to my own white soul, I know I need it. I’m a white woman and when it comes to race, I don’t have a legacy of this sort of care and concern with race to learn from and lean on. I don’t really know how to merge this idea of mothering and whiteness.
I seem to have an opposite legacy and example available to follow. One where my people overwhelmingly choose whiteness over the care and nurturance of the collective, of ourselves, of white others, and of those we view as outside of whiteness. Whiteness is about disparity, separation, scarcity, and cruelty (see a piece I wrote about the cruelty and disgusting lack of care of one of our white politicians here). I long for a kind, nurturing, and caring community — one that is able to offer lavish safe-keeping, shared humanness, and sincere concern across socially defined difference.
I don’t know if this is possible. All I know is that I have to keep hoping it is and working to create it. As a white person who is looking to leave a different racial legacy for those who come after me, I don’t seem to have another choice.
APA definition found here: https://dictionary.apa.org/mothering
Mothering definition found here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mothering
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