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bossymarmalade) wrote2008-02-06 07:10 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote2008-02-06 07:10 pm
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your flesh mother used to bring me pudding
[ 14 Valentines - Day Six: Motherhood ]
First of all -- motherhood? Is a very restrictive, tangled concept. It's vague but narrow, it's sacrosanct yet devalued. It's horribly skewed as a social construct in relation to race, age, education, and class.
So! I would like to say that 'motherhood' to me is not a solitary occupation, held only by the biological mother (and occasional saintly adoptive mother) and nobody else.
If we take motherhood at its most inclusive definition, it's the grandmother you lived with when you were a kid. It's looking after your nieces and nephews every day before your sister gets home from her job. It's working as a domestic in a different country and sending money back home to your children. It's the foster mom, the family friend, the pair of moms, the women in your community. It's not necessarily a nuclear family or even a single-parent family; it's a state of mind and a state of being.
With that multiplicity in mind, take a look at this presentation on Devi, the Hindu 'Mother Goddess'. Putting aside the irony of the made possible by list for now, it's a really well put-together explanation of the concept of 'mother' within Hindu philosophy and includes cosmic powers, fearsome warriors, crone saints, and childless fertility goddesses!
First of all -- motherhood? Is a very restrictive, tangled concept. It's vague but narrow, it's sacrosanct yet devalued. It's horribly skewed as a social construct in relation to race, age, education, and class.
So! I would like to say that 'motherhood' to me is not a solitary occupation, held only by the biological mother (and occasional saintly adoptive mother) and nobody else.
If we take motherhood at its most inclusive definition, it's the grandmother you lived with when you were a kid. It's looking after your nieces and nephews every day before your sister gets home from her job. It's working as a domestic in a different country and sending money back home to your children. It's the foster mom, the family friend, the pair of moms, the women in your community. It's not necessarily a nuclear family or even a single-parent family; it's a state of mind and a state of being.
With that multiplicity in mind, take a look at this presentation on Devi, the Hindu 'Mother Goddess'. Putting aside the irony of the made possible by list for now, it's a really well put-together explanation of the concept of 'mother' within Hindu philosophy and includes cosmic powers, fearsome warriors, crone saints, and childless fertility goddesses!