Lent, Days 25-28: Mammas
One day, a dear friend and homeschool buddy started telling me over and over again: “You’re a good mom.” It wasn’t tongue-in-cheek, but it was cheeky: we were laughing together about some of the (most recent) absurdities of parenting, and she was countering my children’s flippant treatment of me with an abundance of affirmation.
It stuck with me. It struck me, soon after, how important those words were to me. They went into my heart like water in parched earth—you know how water hesitates on the surface of painfully dry soil, but once it starts to seep in, it laps it up more and more quickly? I started sheepishly accepting from, and then returning the phrase to, her. I gradually started trying it in the company of other parents; now it has become lavishly and liberally used in my vocabulary.
Mammas are on my heart, so they went on a Lenten Stone. I want to genuinely acknowledge the sacrifice and selflessness of all caregivers, over all gender identities, but I confess that when I write that word, I do specifically mean those who identify as or who were socialized as women.
I speak from my limited experience as a human who is parenting in a Western culture that has been heavily influenced by Evangelical Christianity. I know that’s a lot of caveats, but I only know the waters in which I swim. And let me tell you: in this pool, it’s clear that those who identify as or were socialized as men have a different experience of parental caregiving. It’s impossible to escape, even for those I know who truly wish to practice a different way. The general cultural attitude towards those assigned male at birth (AMAB) is that Parent is a role they are welcome to take up if they so desire. Should they make that choice, they are held in esteem; and if they show up with attentiveness in any capacity, they are often lauded for it (publicly and in the presence of their counterparts).
Not so for those socialized as women or assigned female at birth (AFAB). For us, parenting is nothing short of an obligation and expectation. If that choice is made, it is rarely recognized as a personal sacrifice; and if the choice is declined, we are viewed as selfish and shirking responsibility. Understand that this is the starting point for the grueling work of being a uterus in this world, for this world. Is it any wonder that it gives rise to a dangerously complicated relationship with one's body, and with the bodies for which it gives care?
It became abundantly clear to me, early in my career as a parent, that kids learn how to be functional, constructive humans by pushing boundaries. If they don’t have something to push against, they never find those lines. You get just one guess as to who the primary punching bags are that take hits to prevent/minimize folks at school, soccer practice, church, or the supermarket from getting punched. (Did you guess yet?) It would be so easy to stop holding the line. Easier still to punish a child’s curiosity by either lashing out or disengaging out of self-protection: even if experimental, ignorant, or innocent, a child’s cruelty can be deeply damaging. But many, many parents and many, many, may of them AFABs, choose to dig in despite the pain—to take the hits and redirect them via the unconditional love of habit training for the good of the child’s personhood and the communities they are/will be a part of.
Child caregiving takes a great deal of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual strength and fortitude. It requires showing up when one, more, or all of those tanks are empty, and giving every last fume of energy necessary for the good of those under your care. There is a great need, very often unrecognized or unaddressed, for “refilling the tank” so that the engine doesn’t burn out and “kill the car.” But around this reality of human limit, much more-so around personal limits and individual needs of AFABs, there gathers an inescapable flood of emotions—guilt, shame, embarrassment, loneliness, inadequacy, invisibility, and self-hatred—to contend with, often simultaneously.
Add to these waters the in-flow of constantly shifting and changing hormones; crushing beauty standards; and the “million tiny cuts” of sexism that often require AFABs to work 10x harder than AMABs to reach the same goals. And these issues are merely a bucket-sized pull of water from the ocean of even broader issues that include racism and ableism. Is it any wonder that many such caregivers regularly feel like they are drowning; any wonder that many of them often do?
I was recently processing the complicated life-draining/life-giving work of child-caregiving as an AFAB with a mamma-friend. I wondered aloud: Wouldn’t it make sense for the evil forces of this world to downplay and discourage the things that hold the most power over them? What if that included all our little acts of mothering?
What holds more power over forces that would kill, maim, beat down and destroy than unconditional, unwavering, sacrificial love? Unequivocally and unhesitatingly I answer: nothing.
I’ve been trying to nestle my own work at home within this context. I’m hoping it will help me to rally when I am feeling invisible, unrecognized, and pointless after doing my 1,000th load of laundry this month, or cleaning the kitchen yet again, or carting someone to and from a sports event, or making doctor’s appointments for everyone in the family, making sure everyone’s shoes are the right size, gluing a plastic toy together, breaking up the 7th fight just this morning, or holding a sobbing child because their lego tower fell down. It’s easy in those moments to heed a constant litany of discouragement: “What’s the point of any of this? Does anyone even see me? Do I even matter/exist? Is any of this making a difference? What good is any of this for them/me/my family/community/world? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it…”
If you find yourself treading these same waters, pushed under the surface by that same oppressive hand, I say this to you, as I say it to myself this morning:
The caregiving work you do is pumping oxygen into our world. It’s just one of those elements invisible to the naked eye but very much real, and very much essential. Without your constant, diligent sacrifice—yes, even in those tiny, seemingly inconsequential moments—our world would very literally stop functioning. The forces of evil in this world want you to stop fighting with your love and care because your love is deeply threatening and acutely terrifying.
Furthermore—and I know it doesn’t feel like it—this oxygen you are releasing into the world is also filling your lungs. The work itself is not what is compressing your organs and crushing the life from your bones. It’s easy to think that, I know, and to blame the work, which is the child. It’s not them, and it’s not you—that is another (very effective) lie being pumped into your veins via overwhelming input from the world so that you will redirect your power. Think of the power with which caregivers have actively hated themselves and their children—now consider the outcome of that same force turned outward to wage war against hatred, violence, exploitation, greed.
Rather than being unseen, you have been extremely visible to evil, and so you have been targeted and made to believe you are pointless in order to tamp down your might. Rather than being inconsequential, you are known by evil to be of the utmost consequence, and so you have been singled out and diminished in order to dampen your light.
Today, I recognize myself and other AFAB child-caregivers as a formidable power for change in this world. The weapon we choose to wield every single day is our untiring and unending love. Today I blazon the truth that the tiny acts of love we perform in every moment, though invisible to eyes who refuse to see them, are the very atoms that build the substance of our beautiful world. I see them—my work, and yours. I celebrate what we have built, are building, will build, and declare that we will not be broken down, defeated, or destroyed.
Join me in following my friend’s trailblazing act of love and normalize saying “You are a good parent.” Say it as loudly, as often, and to as many people as you possibly can, regardless of gender. This statement does not need to be earned, proven, quantified, qualified, or justified to be given. If they have shown up, the sentiment belongs to them. If we wait until a parent is flawless, perfect, “notable” (whatever the f- that means) and up to (your or another’s) standards to “deserve” that affirmation, none of us will ever receive or offer it. Make it your mission to claim this statement for yourself every day, many times a day, and wield it like the weapon it is to fight the forces of darkness that crowd around you and your allies in this war.
Maybe you’d like to pray this with me, for me, or on behalf of someone you love: “Creator of this might within us, we declare that darkness cannot have our power to use for its own purposes. We refuse to aim the gun at our own heads. We use our strength not to turn this weapon on someone else, but to bend its substance into tools for cultivating creatures that will fill the world with life-giving oxygen. Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as it is in Heaven, and may our hands make it so.”
