by MM
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have a preoccupation with motherhood. With concepts like “Every woman is a mother” and “Mother in Heaven” and celebrations of Mother’s Day happening in United States-based congregations every year, motherhood is clearly an important topic for members of the church.
Well, I’m tired of it. I recognize that people may be uncomfortable with me saying this. Many women have made difficult choices and sacrifices to become mothers and many feel so fulfilled by this. I’m not suggesting that women cannot find joy and purpose in motherhood. What I am saying, though, is that I’m exhausted by pretending every woman is a mother and that motherhood is the universal female experience.
To be clear, this is not just something touted by the mainstream church organization. Even more nuanced spaces often talk about how women’s spirituality is different than men’s because women understand sacrifice more because they are mothers. Society overall has an obsession with women as mothers. But people of Mormon backgrounds seem particularly focused on motherhood.
I do not have children. Right now, that is my choice. I don’t feel ready to be a mother yet. Because I am actively choosing to not be a mother, I am tired of that label being put on me. I’m not a mother. I do not know what it is like to comfort a toddler sobbing in the night. I do not know what it’s like to give birth and lactate and suffer from post-partum depression. It does a disservice to the women who do experience those things to suggest that I understand those experiences, just because I am a woman. I don’t.
I can barely scratch the surface of the topic of infertility. It is a complicated subject with many women having deep, painful feelings. I personally think the “every woman is a mother” just encourages people to avoid having empathy for those struggling with infertility. Instead of sitting with women in those difficult feelings, they can just say, “Well, you’re still a mother!” and move on.
Furthermore, as a woman who is currently childless by choice, I am tired of people assuming that I am infertile! I guess I’m glad that people are willing to hold space for those who struggle with fertility. But is there no space for someone waiting until God tells her the time is right to have children? Numerous times, I have had people apologize that I cannot have children, when I have never said that is the case! But in our church, we tend to think that no woman would choose to not have children. After all, women are nurturers by nature … right?!
I feel infantilized at church, particularly in Relief Society. When we act like motherhood is the universal female experience, birth becomes a rite of passage and women cannot be grown women until they have experienced it. Sometimes I feel that we separate women at church into two categories:
- Mothers
- Women who are not yet mothers.
As a woman in the second category, I often feel treated like I’m still barely out of Young Women’s. Relief Society discussions focus on how to raise our children and teach them.
In fact, I have even found the easiest way to broach difficult topics at church is to say, “If I have children, how do I teach them _____?” People light up. They love it. It’s handled way better than me saying, “I don’t know how to sit with ______.” In fact, the times I have framed something as my own difficulty, I have been bombarded with older members of the ward telling me I would understand more when I got older and had children of my own. So now, I just frame my questions as a dutiful “future mother” trying to prepare to teach her children.
But sometimes, I don’t want to make changes for my future, currently non-existent children. So many women who fight for change in the church do it for their daughters and granddaughters, which is certainly noble and inspiring. I just want it for me, though. I don’t have a daughter yet, and I may never have a daughter. I want things to be better for me. I don’t want to have to wait until my granddaughters are grown for the culture to change. I want to be fed and nourished and to serve with everything I have. I want to believe I have value outside of my mothering. I want my opinions and thoughts to matter today.
But framing it as wanting change for me sounds selfish, and you know who isn’t selfish? Mothers. Mothers are arguably some of the most selfless people on earth, and that is glorified with phrases like “angel mothers.” Perhaps that’s another reason people default to motherhood being equal to womanhood. Otherwise, they have to deal with “selfish” women.
I even find myself trying to prove that I have maternal instincts now. I teach music lessons, and when a student feels comfortable enough to try something new, I often find myself saying “See. I can do this ‘mom’ thing. I can nurture.” When I play with my nieces, I feel myself wanting to get it right so I can look like a good non-mother. When really, I want to have fun with my nieces because I love them and they’re awesome! I help my students grow because I’m a good teacher! I believe God helps me, but not because it’s my “motherhood training.”
I want to be myself. Maybe that is selfish. Maybe that’s why I try so hard to prove I have that nurturing gene. But at the end of the day, I am tired of being labeled as a mother or even as a non-mother. Labeling me by my motherhood status just defines me by one tiny part of my life. I am an individual person, today, now, without my children. I want women to be treated as individuals after they have children. Women have dreams and hopes and plans and aspirations and personalities. I desperately want women to be seen for those things, regardless of their motherhood status.
Even the feminine divine is defined by her relationship to motherhood, not her individuality. She is “Heavenly Mother” or “Mother in Heaven,” not “Goddess.”
So, please, can we stop talking about motherhood? Or at the very least stop treating it like the universal female experience. I am a grown, individual woman. I don’t have to nurture to prove it. I don’t have to give birth or adopt to prove it. I shouldn’t have to do those things to have my voice heard and respected.
MM is a passionate opera singer living in the Pacific Northwest.
(Note: Meme made by myself!)
15 Responses
Unfortunately I feel the answer to the question is a resounding NOO!!! And not because I don’t have the exact same desire as the author despite having children. A gig I learned too late was not actually the only way for women to be happy: No, I say that because if the church stops talking about mothers then the only women left to speak of are the harlots. There are no other roles, women in scripture or women figures in the church outside womanhood/future mothers/mother like nurturers. And then the church would be forced to reconcile the fact that women are in fact only valued as vessels to get men to the celestial kingdom and bear children for them to rule over. Then they would be forced to acknowledge that the church only needs women to be followers and keep children and men in the pews, not because they are actually necessary for operating the organization or any religious rites or ordinances.
Yes. You are so right. I want women to be valued for who they are as individuals, but I’m not always sure the Church knows what that would even look like!
I loved this post..I am an “old” 78 yo woman, mother grandmother and great grandmother but am so thankful that I had a career and was able to define myself as a person as well as all the above. It has made the many transitions and changes in life so much easier and fulfilling and helped my daughter and sons to value women as equals/partners too.
That’s amazing! I’m glad for you and your family that you found multiple ways to define yourself!
I was blessed to have a grandmother who had an extraordinary love of children. She never tried of caring for or being around them and our family benefited tremendously from her love. However I did not inherit her “mother” gene. At age 11 I began babysitting cousins. I took care of younger siblings. I’ve changed countless diapers, cleaned up countless barf and spent evenings rocking screaming babies. By my early twenties I had no desire to care for a child. I was told I’d feel different when a child was my own. My sister, whose experience was similar to mine, had a child and told me it was not different and that she was struggling. I lived w a secret shame that I was a LDS woman and did not want to become a mother. I put off dating and listened to countless lectures about “when you become a mother” with dread. I’m now 53 and I’m not a mother. Sometimes I feel guilty but I’m not sorry. I honestly do not believe I would have been a good mother. I love to read early Christian history, where being single and childless allowed one to become a “holy person” who had more time to devote to study, prayer and God. We are not all meant to live the same lives. I’m tired of womanhood equals motherhood.. I’m a woman. I’m not a mother. And I’m fine with that.
I love the idea of becoming a holy person with more time to study! That’s beautiful! My mother and grandmother are shining examples of motherhood and I love them so much, but it’s not my dream, and I want them to matter for more than the caretaking they’ve done (because they’re amazing women)
Thank you! Choosing not to have children yet, and that not being accepted as a valid choice, is one of the reasons I’ve been lackluster about church attendance since my marriage. I want children—just not yet. But calling me a mother is laughable at best since I only interact with kids a few times a year when I see my nieces and nephews. Children just aren’t part of my life as a young adult with a corporate career. I wish leaders and other members recognized en masse how alienating it is to be assigned a role that in no way reflects my reality!
I’m in the same boat as you! It’s so hard.
What a great post and discussion! I want to be treated as an independent, equal, developing adult with interests and roles outside of family at church. This is indeed the only role we really acknowledge or value there, and ironically this becomes dehumanizing.
Amen!
I am a grandmother and blah blah blah, but motherhood was not the ONLY thing I was. The church ignored ME to celebrate my motherhood. Yuck. Can’t I be human first and my roll as a mother be secondary, kind of like fatherhood is for men. “Father” is a role in the church, and at a man’s work place. But motherhood is our sole identity at church. Bishop or priesthood holder are roles men play and being a father is also a role men play in the church. But women only exist through the roles we play of wife and mother, sister, aunt, or whatever as far as the church is concerned. I want to be a daughter of God, but in the temple, back when I went through, I was nothing but wife to my husband. I came out of my temple wedding (1971) feeling like now that I was married, I was nothing to God anymore except a beloved son’s wife. I was now God’s daughter in law and not his child. I felt betrayed and abandoned by God. After I had children, I was only a mother of young children and the fact that I needed a break from small children and needed adult women and adult interaction was unimportant. I was a mother of young children so they put me in primary, giving me nothing in my world except very young children. What about my needs as a human? Nope, I was a mother so of course I wanted MORE young children in my life instead of a much needed break from young children. My humanity was starved and my mother role was way over loaded, but yes, put me in primary.
Wow. That line about being a daughter in law not a child is so powerful.
And unfortunately, it’s so hard in a culture steeped in “women are mothers” to stop talking about motherhood. It’s almost inescapable.
And we all know how the daughter in law relationship usually looks in the church… not exactly a role anyone is thrilled about many times. I definitely felt this when I was pregnant with my first child and told not to lift a suitcase by my husband’s parent. When I pointed out I was still lifting 90 pound bales of hay and the doctor was fine with it, said in-law put a finger in my face and angrily said, “that’s my grand baby!” Before demanding their spouse carry my twenty pound (at most) suitcase. I knew at that moment that despite anything else that was ever said, I was now just the womb carrying a more important person. – a person they shared blood with.
I’d love to stop talking about motherhood so that I had a chance at being viewed as “a concerned parent [1 of 2]” instead.
I’ve dealt with some stuff for my kids that involves collaborating with 3-4 different agency representatives. At random intervals and in reports, “mom said this” and “this was important to X’s mom” as my observations are included and repeated. Sometimes it’s just a shortcut to illustrate why I should be being listened to. Other times, it’s a PC way for the agent to let the others know indirectly through implication that I am being potentially hysterical and need to be talked down.
In these situations of talking about what the parents said, it’s “X’s Father” – never “Dad”.
NOTE: I know that these individuals mean well and they are excellent at their jobs and probably aren’t even aware of what they are doing. For some representatives, I have requested being called by my name in those circumstances (gasp!) with a decent reception of the idea – but their training (on-the-job or otherwise) reverts me back to my role at random intervals still.
What I really wanted to say was that for my children – I am a source of information about my children because I am their “parent” first and being a “woman” secondly when in those meetings about my children.