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Part
2: I Don't Want To Think About It
It
In Part 1 we introduced our series of articles on "Bad
Mothers." Just saying the phrase "bad mother"
makes most of us shudder. Why does the topic of bad mothers
make us so uncomfortable?
Why is it still a taboo in our culture to discuss a mother who
does not take care of her children? And why is it so important
that we deal with this subject.
In my book "Always Wear Clean Underwear" in the last
story entitled "At the Airport" I relate the
feelings I had as I prepared for my parent's return from a
missionary trip around the world. They had been gone most of a
summer and I didn't think much about their absence until the
time of their return. While waiting for their plane to arrive,
I had a severe sense of panic and desperately needed to see
and touch and hug my mother.
I was in my late teens at the time. But studies show that this
deep need to be able to get to our mothers stays with us for
all of our lives. Why is this so and why is this pull so
strong?
The Biological Connection
The most basic mother-child connection is the physical one.
This bond begins forming long before the child is born.
As babies, we can't consciously remember our experiences
during conception and after birth. But we can get a sense of
how strong our bond to our mother is by looking at the
experience through the eyes of the mother.
I will never forget the first time my obstetrician put the
stethoscope up to my ears so I could hear my baby's heartbeat.
I started crying and could not understand why. I had known for
some time that I was pregnant, but I was completely unprepared
for the emotions evoked by hearing that tiny heartbeat. Many
women are moved to tears the first time that baby moves inside
their body.
Another huge surprise was waiting for me on my daughter's
first evening. I was safely ensconced in my hospital bed with
my newborn down the hall in the nursery. (Lots of things have
changed there, haven't they?) I had been hearing babies cry
off and on for a couple of hours.
Then I heard a baby cry, and I recognized it. It wasn't just
any baby, it was MY baby. It was Karen. My heart squeezed in
my chest and I had this overwhelming urge to get to her and
make sure she was okay. It was all I could do to stay in that
bed. I fretted until they finally brought her to me. The
biological bond between a mother and a child is, to me, one of
God's miracles.
And we now know, in just the same way, that babies recognize
their mothers: her voice, her smell, her taste. When a baby is
near its mother during those first formative moments of life,
almost all of the sensory impressions registering in the
baby's brain are coming directly from its mother.
In some of my reading in this area, the mother-child bond has
been described as "primal." Some of the definitions
for that word include "original, primitive or
fundamental." Having a mother is a fundamental need for
all of us and it does border on the primitive. Our very
survival in the world depends on us having a mother or
mother-substitute to care for us. While some species can get
by on their own, almost from birth, God made people to need
other people for several years.
And the bond that begins well before birth continues
throughout the child's entire life.
The Perfect Mother
We celebrate our mothers and we are right to do so. But in the
process, we put motherhood on a pedestal of sainthood. Our
culture glorifies motherhood with a "Norman
Rockwell" illusion that no human can sustain.
In a rash of sentimentality, we say that "God couldn't be
everywhere so He made mothers." That's a sweet thought
but it's not true. God is everywhere. And mothers cannot do
God's work.
Consider the pressure on mothers to live up to such an image.
And consider the anguish brought on daughters with bad mothers
or with absent mothers when they see a picture of this
perfection that's assumed to be the way everybody else's
mother really is. This daughter thinks "not only is my
mother bad or gone, everybody else has a perfect mother."
Everybody else. And the pain of the broken connection is even
more intense than it would otherwise be.
Almost Everybody Loses Their Mother
And that's why this problem is stronger and more pervasive
than we like to admit. One of our deepest fears is abandonment
and being left alone. Do you remember being lost in the store
as a child? Adults still tremble at those long-ago memories.
There is little difference in that feeling and the fear of
being left alone at any time in our lives. Mother could help
us and we would not be left alone. But she isn't here anymore.
It doesn't matter if someone's mother is absent, drunk,
unstable or dead. We don't like to hear about it. We don't
like to talk about it. We don't want to even acknowledge it.
Because if it could happen to them, it could happen to us. And
we can't bear to think about that. And that's why anything but
a "Norman Rockwell" picture of mother is
unacceptable for us to think about.
When Contact Is Broken
It's easy to see that there is a tremendous biological bond
between a mother and a child. And loosing that biological
connection, for any reason, and at any time in the child's
life is going to be painful.
I have a dear friend who lost her mother when she was only an
infant. For two weeks they searched for a wet nurse for her
and had difficulty feeding her. She is a grandmother now, a
successful and beautiful woman. But she can still struggle
with the idea that her mother died when she was so young and
needed her so desperately. It just hurts.
As we noted last week, many of the emotional responses
encountered by abused and abandoned daughters are the same as
those experienced by women whose mothers died when the
daughters were very young. To the young daughter, the only
relevant fact is that "mother is gone" and it really
doesn't matter why.
And this speaks to the matter of degree. It means that neglect
and abandonment are in the heart of the daughter like beauty
is in the eye of the beholder. A mother's favoritism to a
sibling can be as damaging as protracted neglect to one
daughter. On the other extreme, the 11-year old child we
mentioned last week was convinced that she had a good mother
because "she checks on me once a week."
Of course each of us has some problem to deal with and much of
the quality of our lives is dependent on how well we deal with
that problem. But the intensity of this mother-child bond
makes problems with mother that much harder to handle.
In our next article in this series, we will begin to look at
ways to help us deal with the loss of our mothers or with her
neglect. But first, we had to be honest with ourselves and
admit that our mother was less than perfect; that we have been
disappointed or hurt. As mentioned earlier, we can't begin to
deal with a problem until we've identified it. So now we can
move on and begin the process of healing.
I hope this article will help you to understand why your
feelings in this area are so intense and sometimes so fierce.
Or why these feelings can be overwhelming or devastating. As
we continue this series of articles, I pray that we will touch
on a thought that helps you understand something that you
struggle with. Or perhaps will enhance an awareness or insight
that you already possess.
With all my heart,
Lillian
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