Forget flowers and breakfast in bed – the only ‘thank you’ mothers need is to be taken seriously

Ellen Coyne

'Irish mothers work hard, but the supports around us are hardly working'

March 16 2023 06:00 AM

I remember the first time I felt the might of a mother’s worry crush my heart. A 20-week scan interrupted by a dreaded silence, the detection of an anomaly. They needed a second opinion, two seemingly endless days later, in a particular ward of a maternity hospital where so many sad things happen. My nails dug into the midwife’s hand when they told me that this was okay, it was going to be fine. The relief had me speechless. I didn’t dare open my mouth because I knew the emotion swelling in the back of my throat couldn’t be contained if I le t even a little bit of it out.

Outside the hospital, on the street, I buckled and reached for a wall. So this was what mothers talked about. The oppressive weight of the worry I had felt for someone else had consumed and constricted me more than any feeling, any desire I had ever felt for myself. Because the worry you feel for your own child is not a feeling, it’s a superhuman force.

I had the very strong sense that the universe had just ruptured and forked — in one direction, toward a hospital appointment where things had gone very wrong; in the other, the scenario I had just lived, where things were alright. I felt like a thief who had somehow stolen this utopian parallel universe for myself. But, at the same time, a very different life realised itself ahead of me.

This had just been the first time, and there would be many. The sound of worry, the screaming din that had marauded my mind, was turned down after the appointment, but not turned off. That was a frequency that I’d be tuned into forever. I was going to be a mother. I would never know the peace of not worrying again.

Loving someone else to that degree reconditions yourself. Your own needs start to feel more like desires. Things that used to be necessities start to seem like superfluous indulgences. Sometimes I wonder if people think that a mother’s love makes us feeble, or ultra compliant. I don’t mind making myself lesser for the sake of my own child, I’ll do that for them gladly. But I won’t do it for anyone else.

I think the loyalty women feel toward the vocation of motherhood has been exploited. Irish mothers work hard, but the supports around us are hardly working.

As for mothers who do it all on their own, as lone parents, I can only stand back in astounded ignorance. I literally do not know how they do it

On one hand, we have mothers forced into the workforce by an economic structure that often makes households which can survive on a single income a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthy. On the other hand, we have mothers forced out of the workforce by stratospheric childcare costs that make their own earnings negligible. As for mothers who do it all on their own, as lone parents, I can only stand back in astounded ignorance. I literally do not know how they do it.

The cost of living and the housing crisis are having a direct impact on family planning — many women cannot afford to have children when they want to, and are forced to risk leaving it later in a country where fertility treatment is largely still the preserve of commercialised private clinics. The housing crisis can also make motherhood harder and more isolating, as it is now just a lucky minority that are able to afford to buy close to their family and support networks.

Anyone who is currently parenting a toddler has done so in extraordinary circumstances, having endured the cold seclusion of pandemic pregnancies and the overnight withdrawal of many crucial supports.

The shambles of health and social care services for children — particularly disabled children — not only denies many women the opportunity to be a working mother, it steals from many the luxury of just getting to be a mother. Many find themselves instead being full-time carers, full-time advocates, lobbying, pleading and begging for help.

We have boring, boring, boring corporate feminism that goes on and on about the perceived threat of the gender pay gap for people with fancy laptop jobs, never properly interrogating the statistics which show that it is actually a motherhood gap that is the greatest threat to women’s economic equality in the workforce. And on the other side of things, we over-analyse statistics which show mothers are more likely to work part-time, but never analyse sentiment. Has anyone asked these mothers if there is a reason why they’re working part-time? If that’s all they can cope with? If it’s their choice?

Every issue I’ve just mentioned has a respective government minister who is in some way responsible. Mothers could be such a powerful force for themselves, if mothers could get past the deep aversion they have to ever putting themselves first. I think that, in Ireland, we have long since passed the time for motherhood to become a political identity, and a major electoral threat to any politician who takes us for granted.

This Sunday, zealous but chaotic little chefs will wreak havoc in kitchens as they craft stodgy breakfasts which they’ll then clumsily deliver to their mother’s bed. Partners will peruse spa brochures, negotiate with florists for last-minute bouquets. All very sweet, but truly unnecessary. Mothering is a vocation, one which many of us are more than grateful to have.

What Irish mothers need are not ‘thank yous’, but to be taken seriously.