I’m not trying to say anything, I’m saying it!
I’m kind of stunned by how harshly many daughters treat their mothers these days. This is gratingly anti-feminist, a self-perpetuating cycle of self-hatred, whereby these girls in turn will be scorned by their daughters. It is a sign of disunity, just when we need unity.
The devaluing of motherhood, though, is essential to patriarchy. Our society neglects mothers (practically and emotionally) and even the notion of motherhood. Freud has been exploited as another excuse to distrust mothers. This all serves misogyny extremely well.
Not all women are mothers, luckily – what is the point of bearing children, after all, in such a world? What is the point of adding to consumption when what we need to do is pull back? But contempt for motherhood surges up from a well of disparagement of women in general, and the whole history of womanhood, a disparagement of life itself.
I don’t like overpopulation, but I have infinite respect for motherhood as a fact, an astounding fact throughout human history and the natural world. It’s hard not to believe that the perspective of mothers is more rational and more considerate than many other perspectives.
I agree with Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who said only nursing mothers should have control over nuclear bombs. If it had been up to mothers, though, bombs would never have been created. – Lucy Ellmann