True Motherhood

Rebecca de Schweinitz
Volume 23, No. 3

I didn't come to motherhood by accident. We adopted Ben after six years of marriage, minor surgery, hundreds of dollars of infertility treatment, and a whole lot of tears. Suddenly our lives made sense to people. The bishop breathed a sigh of relief. Ward members understood. The unasked questions – "Why didn't we have children? Why was I in graduate school?" – were answered. And they were right: We hadn't had children because we couldn't, and I was getting a Ph.D., at least at that point in my life, largely because I didn't have responsibilities that kept me home. So why did it bother me?

 

My first visiting teaching visit with Sister "M" was unusually painful. Shelly, my companion, (also "married-with-no-children") and I didn't quite know what to say when the questions began: "So, are you girls married?" "Yes." "Children?" "No." She took another look. "Newlyweds." It wasn't a question. "No," I replied, "I've been married for five years." Shelly still didn't say anything. I knew she'd been married about the same amount of time. "Well, you're newlyweds 'til you have kids." I tried my best to smile and replied, "I don't feel like a newlywed." I sometimes wonder if my aunt who was married for fifteen years before having children got the same kind of comments. 

In the fall of 1996, a year after the Church issued the Proclamation on the Family - my second year of grad school and my third month of infertility tests, exams, and drugs – I went for the weekend from Charlottesville to visit Peter in Roanoke, Virginia, where he was doing a medical school rotation. We sat in the back of the chapel listening to general conference. President Hinckley began: ". . . let me say to you sisters that you do not hold a second place in our Father's plan. . . . Most of you are mothers
 . . . You have walked hand in hand with God in the great process of bringing children into the world." I remembered other conference talks by general authorities: "Mothers are partners with the Divine in the great creative act . . . one of woman's greatest privileges, blessings, and opportunities is to be a copartner with God in bringing his spirit children into the world." (N. Eldon Tanner, Oct. 1973) So what about me? I was glad we were visitors and didn't know anyone. I just sat there and cried. 

My mom raised seven kids. After that she tried her hand at a variety of jobs: teaching, social work, and accounting. She's been incredibly supportive of what my six younger brothers and I have wanted to do in life. When I called her after I passed my comprehensive exams, she said, "That's great. Now you can concentrate on being a mother." My heart sank. "What do you think I've been doing for the last year?" I asked her. Is there really just one way to be a "true" mother?

I recently interviewed with my stake president for a temple recommend. Because we were new to the stake, he asked a few extra questions. "How old are you?" "Thirty." "How long have you been married?" "Eight years." "How many children do you have?" "One." He raised his eyebrows. I got the "children are great, aren't they" speech. I could've told him that I'm not the most fertile woman in the world and that Ben is adopted to allay his fears, but I didn't. Should I have to?

At book group, the conversation inevitably turns towards the topic of pregnancy and childbirth. At a recent meeting, I told my friend Michele's horrible "midwife refused to call the OB to do a C-section until it was almost too late" story and then just sat and listened. Finally Laureen turned to me, "Does it bother you when people talk about this stuff." I appreciated her asking. "No," I answered. "It's fine." I was kind of fibbing. It doesn't bother me as it did a few years back when I thought I was pregnant every other month. Or the year I spent denying that I needed to see an infertility specialist. In those days, I avoided large groups of Mormon women. Now there is still something about those conversations. 

"Why do Mormon mothers work?" I asked a group of BYU students a few months ago. "Because they're bored." "For the money." I asked, "Any other reasons?" No answer. "So, why am I here?" Again, silence. They know my husband is a physician, so it can't be for the money. Do they really think I'm in academia just because I'm bored?

At times I'm frustrated, even overwhelmed, by these types of experiences. Before motherhood, many people assumed I was selfish and had the wrong priorities. Even now that I have a son, it's not quite enough. I should have more children; I should spend all my time at home. According to Bruce R. McConkie, I'm not a real mother anyway because it's "the begetting of children" that makes a woman a mother. (Mormon Doctrine, p. 517.) 

Some Church leaders suggest that the angst I feel is a result of the modern women's movement. But articles in the Woman's Exponent and the Young Woman's Journal reveal that Mormon women a century ago expressed some of my same feelings. They wondered about their place in the world and in God's plan, about motherhood, about doing something "really and truly useful," about satisfying their "longings," about "freedom." (YWJ 12 Oct. 1901, p. 459 and Nov. 1901, p. 499.) What does it mean that they had the same questions I do? 

Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of who I am. I realize that I'm doing what I'm doing – mothering, teaching history, writing a dissertation – because this is what, for whatever reason, God wants me to be doing now. When I have this insight, I don't care if my stake president thinks I'm off track. I don't care if people feel the need to use the adjectives working and adoptive to differentiate these women from birth mothers because the word mother doesn't really include all mothers. And I don't care if I don't have any breast-feeding stories. I only care that I have a specific part in God's divine plan and that I know what it is. 

Rebecca de Schweinitz enjoys challenging her students and herself at BYU in Provo, Utah.

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