Mother’s Day as a Feminist Killjoy

Growing up in Ottawa, May was an exciting month full of activity – the snow finally melted (or at least stopped falling), the temperatures shot up to 20 degrees over the course of two weeks and the May long weekend meant the opening of everyone's cottages. Overall, it was a pretty good month for a person such as me who loves the warmth of summer. But along with all of these things, there was also the celebration of Mother’s Day (Cue ominous music.)
 
I wonder how many people stop and think about the minefield they are walking into when they throw in a Mother’s Day greeting in Church.

The history of Mother’s Day is in many ways an interesting snapshot of the way our society celebrates and honours women, or doesn't. Mother’s Day in its North American form was founded twice: once by Julia Ward Howe, a social activist who hoped to unite mothers as a force for abolition, pacifism and women’s suffrage and later it was championed by Anna Jarvis, who campaigned to have it established as an official holiday in honour of her own mother. Jarvis became critical of the commercialization of the holiday and spent much of her later years investing in efforts to prevent various industries from profiting from Mother’s Day because she felt this detracted from the original sentimental meaning of the celebration. She ultimately ended up in a sanatorium for her efforts and while many others profited from sales of flowers, greeting cards and other consumer goods, she was left with few resources to support herself in her old age, in part due to the fact that she had no children of her own.

We still live in a society that expects and in many cases pressures women to have children and to be their primary caregivers. For centuries in the Church, we have held up the image of the Virgin Mary as the best way to be a faithful woman – one who doesn’t have sex, but does have babies – and women are still judged by these standards. Women’s reproductive rights, the right to determine when, how, and whether or not they will become mothers are still limited, all over the world. So how does our celebration of Mother’s Day honour those women who are mothers but don’t want to be? Women’s access to reproductive health services that would ensure their health during maternity and that of their infant children are also limited such that maternal and infant mortality rates are alarmingly high in many parts of the world. Like Canada. While the maternal mortality rate in Canada is low, it is nearly twice as high for aboriginal women than the Canadian average. How do we work that into our celebration of Mother’s Day? In addition, we still have no national childcare program, despite the solid evidence that it would contribute significantly to the growth of the Canadian economy and in particular would allow women (who do more of the unpaid care work) more career and economic opportunities. Is saying ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ an adequate way of honouring the incredible amount of unpaid work that mothers do in an economic system which is stacked against them?
 
My mother is a feminist. She is a physician and when she graduated from McGill medical school in the 70s, she was one of only 20 women in her graduating class of 160; after she graduated, my Nana asked her if she could still be a nurse. (Families are complicated.) My mother grew up Roman Catholic and one of the reasons that she became Anglican was that at the time the Anglican Church had begun ordaining women. So feminism and faith have always been connected for her, and now for me.
 
Since Mother’s Day always falls on a Sunday, I have spent part of every Mother’s Day I can remember in Church. In my experience, Churches honour Mother’s Day in a number of ways and as a feminist who is a woman, who has chosen not to have children, who has 4 parents all with unique parenting roles and skills that are not necessarily tied to their gender, I often leave these services frustrated and disappointed. Sometimes churches make the decision to honour all the women who are mothers in the prayers or with flowers at the end – a move I find insensitive to step-mothers, adoptive mothers, those who have miscarried or whose children have died and those who are childless not by choice. Sometimes Churches celebrate all women on Mother’s Day, whether they are mothers or not, for the ‘mothering they do’– I don’t like what that says about our understanding of women’s roles in society (Oh and incidentally, there is already a day for celebrating all women, International Women’s Day which is March 8th. This year it was a Sunday – I wonder how many Churches marked it liturgically?) Incidentally, why aren’t we celebrating the ‘mothering’ men are doing? If women who don't have children are 'mothering' than why can't men? And don’t get me started on what ‘mothering’ means – it is usually a journey through the list of feminine behavioural stereotypes, at times with an addendum that admits that now that we have ‘achieved gender equality’ mothers can do anything or everything now (but usually we still like it best when they hug us and cook us food). And this is where I usually roll my eyes so forcefully I swear it is audible to those around me.
 

Nana and me

I am not raising all of these questions about Mother’s Day because I don’t value the sentiments of thanksgiving and celebration that this holiday represents. Mother’s Day was always important to my Nana, possibly because as a widowed mother of four in small town Québec in the 1960s and 70s, providing for her children was no easy task – or maybe because she lost two children when they were infants – or possibly because she just didn’t like to celebrate her birthday very much. In any case, it was a holiday that my own Mother always kept for the sake of my Nana and I keep it now for her sake as well. But I will not let Mother’s Day be an occasion for simple, one-sided and uncritical praise of a stereotypical view of motherhood or femininity. My feminist mother wouldn’t stand for it and I won’t either. Mother’s Day should actually give us the opportunity to ask questions about the expectations we place on women around motherhood and how we as a Church have been complicit in creating a stereotype that has limited human flourishing. We might also ask how our gendered stereotype of motherhood affects the way we teach Sunday School and who we expect will teach it. This is the prayer I offer for Mother's Day this year, in honour of the whole wonderful and trying mess of motherhood.
 
“O Womb of all life, you gave birth to a new creation in the resurrection of Christ the Word. We give you thanks today for the complicated blessings of motherhood, the joys and challenges that mothering brings. Grant all parents quiet strength and patient wisdom as they nurture children in all that is good, true, just and pure. Empower all the people you have created in your mothering image that we like Mary, might choose to be bearers of God in all that we do. We ask this in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all. Amen”