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Undervaluing and Overvaluing our mothers.

Did anyone else notice the report of the 63 year old woman in California who gave birth to her first child? I thought that once Susan and I have passed the big 4 0 mark, we would no longer be asked if we were going to have children. I guess I'll have to wait another twenty years.

After the first couple of times this question was asked of me I figured out a really good way to respond. I used to tell people that we had decided to be child free, and that whenever we had second thoughts we would borrow my sisters children for a while, and the experience would invariably bolster our resolve. Now that Joni and Kirk are so much fun to be around, I can't use that excuse anymore. So now I tell people that by the time we were ready to have children we were old enough to know better.

Fortunately I can also give a strait answer when this topic arises. Having our own children just wasn't as important to us as it is for many other people.

So now that you are aware of what I don't know about, let's find out what your fund of knowledge includes by having you make a few important acknowledgments:

By a raise of hands,

How many of you are mothers?

How many of you have children still at home with you?

How many of you still live in a household that includes a mother?

How many of you have lost your mother?

How many of you have witnessed the process of childbirth?

OK, now lets' all stretch: How many of you now have or have ever had a mother?

I can see that there are no clones or space alien's among us this morning.

We all have been touched by motherhood. We all know it is important. Yet there are many ways in which we overvalue and undervalue motherhood.

The earliest Mother's Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, thought to be the Mother of the Gods. During the 1600's, England celebrated a day called "Mothering Sunday" on the 4th Sunday of Lent during which time the servants for the wealthy were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers.

In the United States Mother's Day was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe as a day dedicated to peace. Ms. Howe would hold organized Mother's Day meetings in Boston every year. In 1907 Ana Jarvis, from Philadelphia, began a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. Ms. Jarvis persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the 2nd Sunday of May. By the next year Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia. Ms. Jarvis and her supporters began to write to ministers, businessman, and politicians in their quest to establish a national Mother's Day. By 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson, made it official.

So what are we celebrating?

Consider the story of the nameless woman and Elisha. "She had no son and her husband was old."

I would love to say that Elisha gave her a lecture on self actualization and the fact that having children is not necessary to live a meaningful life, but that was not the case. What the Biblical record tells us is that Elisha facilitated a miracle. He made this woman from Shunam a mother. She became pregnant and had a son. But that is not the end of the story. Her son became ill and he died. Elisha recognized the importance this child had to this woman and again, the text reports, that Elisha caused another miracle: he raised this child from the dead.

In Biblical times, as is the case in many traditional societies now, the value of a woman is in her offspring. I think it is fair to say that the only value attributed to women in such cultures is her ability to produce offspring. It is a very limited role, one that in my view overvalues the importance of motherhood and undervalues the importance of the mother.

There are lots of examples of such under and over valuing still today in our culture. To find good examples all I had to do was go on the Internet.

My search turned up things related to mothers in both real and symbolic ways. Among them: Mothers milk for breast feeding mothers, Mothers against drunk driving, mothers against violence, a brand name car wax called Mothers, greeting card companies, a photography book about mothers and daughters, Frank Zappa's Mother's of Invention.. This is just a small sample of the list I read. I imagine if I would actually have read the whole list I might have found mothers who collect Beanie Babies and mothers against the Internet as well.

Something else that I found that confirmed an inaccurate valuation of motherhood was a whole bunch of hyperbole and sentimentalism dedicated to mothers day and the memory of some mythical mothers.

"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother." -- Abraham Lincoln

"God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers." -- Jewish proverb

"My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother." George Washington

There was also poetry. I will read only one:

WONDERFUL MOTHER
By Pat O'Reilly
God made a wonderful mother,
A mother who never grows old;
He made her smile of the sunshine,
And He molded her heart of pure gold;
In her eyes He placed bright shining stars,
In her cheeks fair roses you see;
God made a wonderful mother,
And He gave that dear mother to me

Are these descriptions overreaching? Are they overvaluing?

We need go no further then the economic statistics to find a bit of very clear undervaluing of mothers. Did you know that the group single mothers' is the most impoverished of all Americans? Did you know that after leaving a marriage in which there are children most men go on to greater economic achievement while their children and the mothers of their children often descend the economic ladder, sometimes dramatically?

It would not take much of a twist of logic to see that mothers now occupy the bottom of the economic totem poll. Even child free women are better off in real economic terms then mothers. This switch from "traditional" cultures is poignant. No longer are women without children called "childless" and "barren", with pity or even scorn. Now in our advanced society women who have not burdened themselves with the rearing of children often do very well indeed. How soon will we be forced to follow the examples of the Russians and declare women who bear over a certain number of children to be "Hero mother's" entitled to medals and special privileges?

When placed side by side these sentiments and these facts make a striking juxtaposition. How much do we really value mothers in this culture?

How much did we ever value mothers? It was Simone de' Bouvoire, I believe, who first noticed that putting women on a pedestal was a great disservice to them, this public overvaluation and worshipful attitude hid, even supported the real powerlessness that women had in society. Because women were so overvalued it became acceptable to treat them as objects, objects to worship, objects to conquer, objects to possess, ultimately objects to use and abuse.

Once possessed, women became something else. They became wives and mothers. And in so doing, they drift off the pedestal and fade into the ground behind the figure. They make new objects, male ones, by whom they are valued, and new female ones to again ascend upon the pedestal to enjoy a brief, perhaps glorious, moment of great value in the eyes of those who defined value in the world.

When I read several of the sentimental poems to Dottie the other day, she made my point for me. The saccharin idealization of mothers supports "The unrecognized servant that all women need to be." The economic reality points to the truth of the matter. Both the "overvaluing" or sentimentalizing of mothers and the economic realities point to the same fact: Mothers are not just overvalued, not just undervalued, mothers are wrongly valued.

Because what really is motherhood? Is it this stylized, pedestalized, sweetened, romantic love affair with the one woman who bore you? No, it is not. Motherhood is started in the midst of the most taboo topic in the Victorian world. It is culminated in a painful, bloody mess that leads inevitably to years and years of playing a role to little people who really do not understand that behind the wish fulfilling fantasy of the all giving mother, the projections of their needs, and their idealizations is a person who made a decision to bear them for reasons that will not be fathomable to them for years and years, if ever.

Henrik Ibson, in "A Doll's House" (1879) had his characters speak the following words:

Helier: First and foremost, you are a wife and mother.

Nora: That I don't believe any more. I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are.

"It has taken the time since your death to discover you are as human as I am . . . From To Mother, by Robert Traill Spence Lowell

There was an interesting survey on the web that pointed to the real women behind the myths of motherhood. It was titled "The Mommie Wars." It was hardly a scientific survey, not random, not that well designed, only about 3-4 hundred women answered the questions. But it was very telling about the real women who get briefly lauded on this one little day:

The "Mommie Wars" are the real or imagined battles between working mothers and stay at home mothers. Of the people who took this survey, 26% believe they don't exist or aren't sure, 41% believe they exist, but have not personally experienced them. 22.2 percent say they have experienced hostility or lack of respect from moms who work outside the home. 23.5% say they have experienced hostility or lack of respect from stay-at-home moms. These numbers are indicative of societies battles. They are also a reflection of the internal battles fought by individual mothers.

Mothers who work outside the home feel many things: Guilty for not spending enough time with their kids, forced to work because of economics, that it would be stressful or unfulfilling to be at home with kids full-time -- there were many more items endorsed. Interestingly, only .6% said that stay-at-home mothers have made the wrong decision.

Stay-at-home mothers also feel many different things, among them: That they're lucky to stay at home, guilty for not contributing economically to the family, that working mothers get more respect or prestige than stay-at-home mothers, that their kids are worth sacrificing their career for, and that they've made the right choice for both themselves and their family.

In taking this survey and interacting with the construct of the Mommie Wars, these mothers are participating in a conversation that is at once brand new and very old. It is a conversation that reflects the many changes in roles that mothers play today, and in this way it is very new. But it is also a very old interaction within each individual, an interaction that establishes one's sense of value as a person.

It is this same interaction with ones own self and one's own sense of value that drove the unnamed Shunemite in the Biblical story I chose for this morning.

2KI 4:8 One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. [9] She said to her husband, "I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. [10] Let's make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us."

This Shunimite woman, while without a son, still played an active role in her world, choosing to do something that she felt made a contribution, that had value. In response Elisha gave her a gift of something that she, a daughter of her time and culture, valued even more highly -- a son. With another miracle, Elisha made certain that she was able to keep that son. It is not for us to judge whether she or her culture had their values strait. These were her values. From them we learn how God interacted with the people of her time. To express pleasure in this woman's recognition of the holy man Elisha, God gave her something that she valued highly.

I hope that it is not too far a stretch to say that this Shunimite woman experienced the birth and saving of her son as a gift. That she had far less choice in the matter then we do today, should not change this basic observation about this mother and by extension, about motherhood. Motherhood is a gift. But that is not to say it is the only gift to which women are entitled. It is not necessarily the defining gift of a woman's life, though for some it can be. If it is the defining gift, it is a gift of great value. If it is but one of many, then there is more reason for rejoicing.

Yet the gift does not define the one who receives it, that is to say, that just because one is a mother does not mean that one is only a mother, just as the gift does not define the giver, that is to say, just because God gives mothers children does not mean that children are the only gift God values. A mother is first of all a person who is interacting with her own drive to discover and establish her value in the complicated world of family, society and her own imagination.. If we see a mother as only a mother, then we do her a great injustice because her world is so much more then that. The role of mother is important. It is essential to life. It is worthy of honor and celebration. It is of great value to each and every one of us. Yet it is not defining. It is a role.

Eugene O'Neill in Strange Interlude, wrote: "God is a Mother."

Pope John Paul I, on Sept. 17, 1978 said "... God is Mother..."

There is great hostility to this idea from some circles, unwarranted, I believe, and clearly demonstrating the degree to which motherhood is devalued. God is a Mother. She carried creation in her womb, gave birth to it, nurtured it, watched as it grew and changed. Loved it. Loved us. Yet God is more then mother. Mother is but one face of God. One role that God plays. Yet we do many of the same things to God that we do to mothers. We put God up on a pedestal, a pedestal of ritual, of distant homage, we relate to the images of God, rather then to God herself. We allow God to have a brief moment in the sunshine, and then return her to the ground behind the figure of our limited lives. We overvalue and we undervalue what God means.

I heard a minister, trained in the Baptist tradition, once start a prayer declaring that God created us for his pleasure. I don't think I have ever heard a Mennonite minister declare this in such a fashion. Nevertheless, it sounded very right to me. We are here for God's pleasure. God loves us. Like a hen brooding over her chicks. And God plays a role to we little people who really do not understand that behind the wish fulfilling fantasy of the all giving deity, the projections of our needs, and our conflicting idealizations is a being who made a decision to create us for reasons that will not be fathomable to us for years and years, if ever.

God gets pleasure from creation. I'm not sure I understand how that is the case, but I believe it to be true. Just as God's love is beyond our capacity to understand, so, I believe, is God's pleasure.

So we should permit, even encourage, pleasure in our own creativity and we should certainly celebrate the pleasures of motherhood for the mothers among us. They chose a role. It is a role that they achieved with much pain and anguish. They usually value it very highly, and so should we all. On mothers day, we should celebrate the role of Mother, for which we all have reason to be grateful. We should honor the individual women who chose to accept this role in life. But we should be careful not to limit these individuals to this role alone, nor to over or under value the very real contribution they make as mothers and as people.

I'm reminded of the young lad, on the first occasion when he is allowed to chose a gift for Mommy on mothers day. "What do you want to get Mommy?" he is asked. "Transformer's!" he announced. He had a bit of a lesson when he was told, "But Mommy doesn't like transformer's."

I'd like to extend this lesson to all of you today, by giving you some homework. Ask yourself an impossible question. Who is that woman who gave birth to you? What does she really want? How can you as an individual relate to her or her memory not as a mother, but as an individual, just as much as you are.

Almighty God,
We gathered today to celebrate you and your gifts to us.
Today we particularly celebrate the gift of mothers.
Thank You for this role,
Thank You for this creative ability,
and Thank You for the women who have bravely accepted this gift and responsibility.
We pray in Jesus Name.
Amen

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