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Will The Real Mothers Please Stand Up?

By Kim Hamer

A real mother knows Mother’s Day is every day. 

Every darn day…rain, shine, monsoon, flood, hopeful or hopeless. 

We should be revered and honored, every day, for our strength, courage, flexibility, and toughness. 

But alas. We make do with what we are tossed. 

If being a mother is the “most important job in the world,” if raising the future dwellers of this planet is such a big deal, why on earth are we not paid for it?

Why is the expectation that we do it with love from our hearts and no money in our wallets?  Why can they not offer us say…I don’t know, a 50% matching 401K plan?  Or why can’t we have a universal daycare system that raises the ratio of the number of care givers needed per child, respects the day care providers by paying them a real living wage and that values the children who use it?  

Oprah does her job with the love of her heart and is paid millions.  Juanita Jordan did her job with the love from her heart and was paid roughly $150 million after divorcing Michael.  (Notice though how it was news that she got so much!)

Out of 168 countries in the world, 163 offer paid leave for mothers.  We, the United States, do not.  We share the dubious honor of not caring with Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.

Why aren’t we demanding more?  As young girls, we were taught that it’s ugly to make demands and asking for what we need is not lady-like. How convenient that is for this country.  A New York Times article from April 6, 2008, “Women Repeat This: Don’t Ask, Don’t Get” brings this to a sharp point.  In the article Linda Babock notices how women, including herself, accept the status quo.

“About three years later, I held my boss’s job. While hiring two people
with similar credentials, a woman and a man, I made each the same salary offer. The woman accepted the offer without negotiating. The man bargained hard, and I had to raise his offer by about 10 percent before he would agree to it.

And the thing is…she’s right!  I’ve done it more times than I’ve said “don’t hit your brother.”

As this Mother’s Day approaches I realize it’s a holiday to pacify us. To make us feel better.  Good mothers love this day, bad mothers are ungrateful. 

Put me in the ungrateful category.  I don’t want my kids honoring me with projects forced on them by well-meaning teachers. Their spontaneous I-made-this-for-you art is much more valuable.  If my husband buys me diamonds on this day, I will sell them and get what I really want, a four day trip to a Mexican resort that doesn’t allow kids under 16!  What I want him to do, and yes, ladies, I have told him this, is to put himself in my

high-heel wearing,

health keeping,

cool looking,

errand doing,

get up with kids

shoes

and

be in awe of all that I accomplish in a day. 

What I’m looking for is the kind of awe people have when they say “Look!  It’s Superman!”

We work 24 hours a day. We work in our sleep, listening for the cough, or the stomp of little feet, thinking about the project that needs to be finished at work, wondering what’s the matter with our friend and remembering to call the dentist.  We work outside of our homes, and we work with the guilt and angst about not doing something right and ruining our kids’ futures. 

And we are paying a price for it – as a country our health is failing. Never mind breast cancer: heart attacks are the number one killer of women. We can be proud! We are closing the numbers gap with men quickly.     

I’m not buying it any more.  I’m not letting one more person tell me my job as a mother is the most important job in the world, ‘cause the proof is in the puddin’ and the puddin’ is watered down.   

So now what?  All riled up and no place to go!  I mean do we even have time to make a stink?  If we don’t, who will?  As Elasti-Girl from the movie The Incredibles put it: “Leave saving the world to the men?  Ladies, I don’t think so!” 

But we are a tired group, are we not? 

Well here are three women who were just as tired and didn’t have the conveniences that make our lives easier.  Yet they shook up the establishment, doing it under great threat to themselves and their children.  They are not heroes.  They are you and me.  They are woman who took one extra step and ended up changing the world.  If they can do it, why can’t we?

Fanny Lou Hamer  ---  Risking the Lives of Herself and Her Children

During the Civil Rights Movement, activists (which, have you noticed, is like a dirty word now a days?) daily risked their lives to register black voters.  They were frequently arrested on trumped up charges, jailed, often beaten, sometimes killed. If they were women, rape was usually included in the violence.   

Fanny Lou Hamer (the writer regrets there is no connection) was one of those Civil Rights Activists.  She registered black voters.  The place where she lived with her children was fire bombed. She was arrested and severely beaten – suffering from the effects of that beating till she died in 1977.

She felt that registering 1,000 black people was enough of a reason to risk her life and the lives of her children.  Would you risk your life or the lives of your children for a movement that would change thousands of people?  Why or why not?

Mother Jones --- Lost Her Children, Protected Others

Mary Harris to her friends, was an activist (there goes that word again) who led a children’s march from Kensington, PA to New York to protest child labor in 1903.  She was one of the founding members of Industrial Workers of the World, a labor union.   She lost her four children and husband to yellow fever.  What would motivate you to keep going under those circumstances?

Mother Theresa  -- Mother to Hundreds of Thousands

No explanation needed.  Although, not a real mother, she mothered hundreds and thousands of people in her life time. She changed the lives of millions.  What traits do YOU have in common with her? (Bragging is demanded!)

The reality is NO one is going to do it for us. Is it better to ask for flowers and get them, or not have any flowers cause he should have “known!”  We will have to get over ourselves and remake the image of what a good mother looks like.

I hereby declare that the new mother looks like you and me. She is tough as nails, has the psychological strength of 400 men. She asks for and gets what she needs and wants. Her true strength often lies dormant, until something “happens” and it rises.  This new mother doesn’t need a Mother’s Day (although she uses it to get together with other mothers to celebrate themselves).  This new mother knows how to drop a rock in the pond and watch it ripple, understanding that it affects people beyond her imagination.   

This new mother knows Mother’s Day is not for her.  She knows how wonderful she is and she doesn’t buy into what the fashion magazines or television commercials say she is.  She remembers, on a cellular level, that she is magnificent.  She lives in the body that births humanity. 

We know that EVERY day is Mother’s Day. 

And now, will we pledge to make sure that the rest of this country knows it too?  If we do, some day a person will say, with awe, “Look! There’s a mother!” 

If you want to drop a big rock in the pond, you can start by contacting Mothers Rising.  www.mothersrising.com  

    Kim Hamer lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three kids, all of whom give her endless opportunities to write about motherhood, womanhood, selfhood and ways to find the sanity in the madness. She enjoyed a following on Sane Madness: Motherhood Tales from the Trenches until Fall 2006 when her husband fell ill.

She is founder of www.GetIntoPrivateSchool.com: Products and Services Offering Sound Advice for The Private Elementary School Admissions Process. She started the company in order to insure all parents had access to information regarding the private elementary school search.

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