What does “mother” really mean?
I’m a parent, and a female one, but I don’t identify with the word.
By Joanna Eng
Ed. note: Unlike some other pieces in the Naysayers collection, this essay doesn’t make an outright case to “just say no” to something. Instead, writer Joanna Eng examines some of the premises and stereotypes that form the foundation for a certain widely-celebrated upcoming holiday. Joanna (who, full disclosure, is also my Dandelions co-founder), shares generously from her own personal experience and suggests that we challenge ourselves to think about Mother’s Day, and “traditional” parenting roles, in ever more complex ways. — JS
I’m a parent, and a female one, but I don’t identify with the word mother.
I didn’t give birth to my child, nor am I genetically related to her — my wife was the one with the “Mom To Be” sash draped over her hardworking uterus at our baby shower two years ago. She was the one who committed to being physically attached to either our baby or a breast pump for several hours every single day for an entire year. But now, as the stay-at-home parent, I wipe up slimy blobs after most of my toddler’s meals, perform the physical and emotional maneuvers required to get her into a clothed and diapered state, and say “put your shoes on” at least 50 times a day.
Since becoming a nonbio parent, I’ve noticed the words mother and motherhood popping out from every corner of my life (books, magazines, podcasts, TV, social media, classes, events, and everyday conversation), even when it’s not Mother’s Day, and it puzzles me. And it’s not that I feel left out — I’m too secure in my role in our family to really mind about the fact that society hasn’t caught up with the language yet. As a multiracial queer person, I’m used to not fitting into boxes.
It’s more that I’m constantly shaking my head in disbelief that only people of a certain gender or people who give birth are expected to take primary responsibility for the labor that goes into caring for a young child. Does having a separate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day just perpetuate this nonsensical divide?
Beyond the binary of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, there are so many times when people use the word mother, mom, or mommy when they could just as well use parent or even caregiver.
Some of the worst offenders, in my mind, are the “Mommy and Me” classes — it’s as if the organizers of these events are actively trying to discourage male parents from being fully responsible parents, while simultaneously diminishing female parents into a caricature, not to mention erasing the importance of other caregivers.
Our child technically “has two moms,” which I’m sure people will note throughout her life. But I find this to be a completely unremarkable and irrelevant observation. Like a lot of kids, she has one parent who gave birth to her and breastfed her, and one who didn’t. There is nothing I am doing that a father can’t or shouldn’t do. So what even makes me a “mom”?
I happen to sort of resemble my child — or other people tend to think so, at least. I think it’s mostly due to us both looking part Asian, so we fit into the same category in people’s brains. That fact, plus my presenting as a more-or-less typical female (albeit one who doesn’t know how to blow dry her hair, put on makeup, or casually wear a dress) lends me a kind of mother invisibility cloak — by which I mean that when I’m out with my child, I’m assumed to be her mother so I don’t turn any heads.
But what does mother even mean?
Does it mean the person whose ovaries and uterus played a major role? (What about adoption, surrogacy, egg donors, and reciprocal IVF? What about queer, trans, and nonbinary parents?) Does it mean the person who does most of the childcare work? (What about nannies, daycare workers, super-grandparents, and stay-at-home and single dads?) Does it mean the person a young child cries for when they get hurt? Whoever provides the most emotional support is probably that person — and females might be more likely to have built up the emotional skills or to simply spend enough time with the child to become that person, but perhaps only because they are expected to (while males aren’t).
My point is that mother clearly means more than just “female parent” in American society — just as Mother’s Day has more cultural weight than Father’s Day — because of the magical properties (or unfair expectations, depending on how you look at it) placed on most of those 4 million people who give birth each year. Mothers are supposed to “naturally” know what’s best at every stage of a child’s life, even though most of parenting is not instinct but is taught through culture and achieved through really, really, really hard work. Hard work that a lot of women deserve a lot more credit for — we’re so used to seeing moms, grandmas, aunts, and nannies doing the constant work that we’ve come to assume it’s something natural and essential and even (when we think we’re being generous) magical. There are plenty of magical moments of childrearing, but the way I see it, they have little to do with gender and everything to do with love and the wonders of human development.
It’s telling that this is when I feel most like a “mom”: I tend to think about what our child should eat for lunch and what clothes she should wear even if I’m not home with her that day. And my wife voluntarily takes the lead on changing diapers, tending to toddler emotions, and cleaning up after meals when we’re both home, since I do it during most weekdays. I wonder if we would do this kind of thing (at least without lots of reminders or “retraining” from each other) if we were raised the way most of our male peers were. Perhaps this is what people are really getting at when they say my kid has two moms.
Sure, in this day and age, dads should be doing equal childcare work when possible. But are they? Most men have not been trained to take full responsibility for household and childcare tasks, so it’s often hard for male/female couples to achieve a genuinely equal balance, even when it’s what both parties theoretically want and even when both parties spend the same amount of time at home.
So let’s think about what we’re celebrating this Mother’s Day.
Are we simply acknowledging the physical, emotional, and mental labor that women have been doing all year, and all of our lives? Or are we also working towards changing this gender dynamic?
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Joanna Eng is a writer and editor based in New York. She is the co-creator of Dandelions, a newsletter rooting for empathetic, brave, social justice-hearted families. Her last piece for this collection was called NO FUN.
