Mother’s Day Question — Who Takes Care of Mom?

Mother’s Day is a Hallmark tradition in which mothers are honored and revered, but underneath the cards and flowers lies a rarely talked about conversation that asks; who is taking care of mom? On Mother’s Day we give thanks for all the love and care mothers give, but do we ask; what does mom need and who is mom as a person outside of her mothering role? These questions are not asked because of our steadfast belief in what I call the “Culture of Female Service”. The “Culture of Female Service” is a widespread belief that mothers are here on this earth to selflessly take care of their children and family, and that self-denial, self-neglect, and self-sacrifice are the hallmarks of “good mothering”. We have all grown up believing in this definition of motherhood as if it is a fact. The alternative viewpoint where mothers are treated as people first with lives and needs of their own that are as important as their husbands’ and children’s and elderly parents’ lives and needs is so threatening to our ideals of motherhood, society actively suppresses this viewpoint.

The first time I asked the question; who is taking care of mom, was eleven years ago when my first book “The Silent Female Scream” was published. Back then people’s eyes would glaze over whenever I talked about mothers being people outside of their mothering role and having needs of their own. Today, I see that a shift is happening, and women are starting to question their inherited belief in the “Culture of Female Service”. Daughters are starting to recognize how damaging self-neglect, self-sacrifice, and self-denial is to their own and their mother’s mental and emotional health, their ability to advocate for themselves in their relationships and at work, and their mother-daughter relationships. Daughters are waking up to how selflessness and sacrifice are patriarchal constructs, that are designed to keep mothers silent, invisible, and too exhausted to fight for change. In my private practice I am working with mothers and daughters of all ages who are actively searching for a new paradigm about what it means to be a mother.

I had my first child thirty-three years ago, and I can still remember how angry I felt inside when everyone around me started to treat me as if I didn’t exist. The only thing people asked me about was how my baby was doing. Questions about my work, what I thought, and what I needed for myself disappeared. I remember recognizing that this is what must have happened to my mother and this terrified me. I did not want to live a repeat of my mother’s sacrificial life where she didn’t even feel entitled to read a novel. But holding on to my personhood was extremely difficult in the silence that surrounded me. Back then, no one understood my anger. And I had little option but to silence it because I did not want to be viewed as a selfish, neglectful mother.

It is high-time that the question; who is taking care of mom is asked and that mothers and daughters are given the freedom to voice their needs and identity as people without shame or guilt. Together we must challenge the patriarchal norm that has taught mothers for generations that sacrificial, self-neglecting, selfless behavior is what makes a good mother, because this is entirely untrue. The truth is, keeping mothers afraid to voice what they need plays right into the forces that are afraid of women’s equality and power. Mothers and daughters not knowing how to voice what they need is the single-most universal theme that is causing mother-daughter relationship conflict around the world, which means that “mothers being people first” is the first solution of the “Mother-Daughter Coaching Model” that explains and heals mother-daughter relationship conflict. This is consistent with every other psychological theory or model that suggests that knowing how to voice what you need and having a strong sense of who you are as a person is vital for women’s emotional and mental health and for women’s fight for equal rights.

Mothers do not mother in a cultural vacuum, so this year, when you give your mother a Mother’s Day card, please pause for a moment and ask your mom; who takes care of you? Ask yourself as your mother’s daughter and if you’re a mom yourself; how do I voice what I need? And join up with other mothers and daughters and together break the taboo that has suppressed these vital questions for generations so that we can stop the epidemic of neglect, the role overload and stress, the exhaustion, and the invisibility that mothers have suffered from for generations, and still do today.

Reprinted with permission from my American Counseling Association blog.