Happy Mothers' Day?

Right now, in Ireland, women are in the spotlight - women, mothers, and the work they do in the home.

Ah yes, I hear you say, International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day are both coming up so of course women and mothers are centre stage!

No, that’s not it. They’re in the spotlight now because we want to remove them from sight. Apparently, these things (women, mothers, work, care, home) and the words that describe them are sexist and outdated.

Our Constitution mentions them - it says that mothers and women and the work they do in the home is important and should be protected, that we should be able to stay home and mind our babies and children if we wish and not be forced into paid work in order to get by.

Apparently, if we take those sexist words out of our Constitution, we’ll be on equal footing with the men and fathers, no longer inclined or obliged to do more than our share, interchangeable. Care will be gender-neutral and we’ll all be happy.

Vote yes to remove that sexist language!

Vote yes to be the same. Don’t think too much about it, just vote. Almost every politician and all of the NGOs are telling you to vote yes. There’s nothing special about mothers after all. Equality means we’re all the same, doesn’t it?

Don’t think about birth or breastfeeding or the toll that takes on women’s bodies. Don’t think about the hormones that course through women’s bodies post-childbirth and during breastfeeding, and how they prime mothers to nurture their babies at all costs. Don’t think about that special bond between mother and baby, about the instinct that mothers have for when something is just not right, or that makes them wake up a split second before their baby wakes to feed.

Don’t think about how when you were small and feeling unwell, or maybe not so small, you just wanted your mother. Don’t think about how you just know, that even if you committed the most atrocious crime, your mum would probably visit you in prison.

Don’t think about the fact that a survey in Ireland a few years ago asked children how they felt about childcare and 99% of them said they wanted to be minded at home by a parent. Don’t. Think. Mothers, fathers, childcare, it’s all the same, isn’t it?

Don’t think about the fact that 69% of mothers say they’d choose to stay home with their children if it were financially possible, that the Constitution as it stands obliges the State to support them in this, and that voting as the government wants you to vote (yes) will remove that obligation.

Don’t bother your little head about the fact that over 90% of the work of caring is done by women, and changing the words of the Constitution won’t change that. It will allow us to pretend that we live in a gender-neutral utopia.

There’s nothing special about mothers, after all.

I’m a mother. I’m the very woman in the home that our Constitution refers to. I’m not the same as my son’s father, or anyone else. To my son, I am irreplaceable. Nobody could do the job I do.

I gave up my job many years ago to look after my baby. When my maternity leave was up, I couldn’t bear to leave him in the care of someone else. He was still breastfeeding. We were a symbiotic duo and remaining in close proximity felt like a biological imperative to me.

Before giving birth, I had no idea how this relationship would change everything about me. It’s impossible to anticipate the magnitude of it. It’s physically, emotionally, spiritually transformative.

I felt like I was doing the most important work of my life, and our Constitution said it was work without which the common good cannot be achieved.

And isn’t it? Mothers really matter. The mother-baby dyad really matters. Attachment really matters. The work of caring for children really, really matters. We must support this work if we want a healthy society made up of well-adjusted adults.

When my beloved grandmother died in her seventies she cried out for her mother. Years and years beyond her mother’s embrace, the person she wanted in her most vulnerable moment was still her mother.

When I was labouring with my son, in pain and stripped down to my most primal self, I only wanted my mother. I knew in my bones that she would do everything in her power to keep me safe. I still know it.

Her mother, my other grandmother, had a short-lived motherhood, dying suddenly in her twenties and leaving two baby girls behind. She wrote about motherhood -

“I cannot coax my eyes from little May,

So soft and sweet and still, just born today.

Oh, joy of joys! Oh, ecstasy sublime!

I clasp her tiny velvet hand in mine

As if through it to her my great love flows,

This enigmatic love a mother knows.”

She wrote, too, about the empty nest she would never experience in years to come, about how hard it would be to see her little birds leave but how grateful she would be that they could fly. She shared the joys and fears of every mother before and after her.

The terror of a similar fate, of leaving babies who need mothers with every fibre of their being, haunted my mother and me both during our early mothering years. The impact of one lost mother has been felt widely and deeply down through generations.

I love what I do and I’m proud to be a stay-at-home mother, but I’ll be embarrassed and ashamed this weekend if Ireland votes to remove the recognition of the work I do from our Constitution. I’ll be worried about what it says about our country, that rather than create policy that would help families and thus society in general, we’ll allow our government to spend millions of euro on an empty virtue-signalling gesture that will make life better for nobody.

How can we, in all seriousness, celebrate Mothers’ Day on Sunday if we vote yes to removing all mention of mothers from our Constitution on Friday?

My Mothers’ Day wish, for myself and my mother, and all the mothers I know, is to remain in the Constitution. I’ll be voting a hard NO!

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