I once asked senior-formers to write a composition on the subject Why does a person need a mother? The thoughts expressed in one of them seemed very interesting and instructive for adults. Here are a few excerpts which impressed me, along with my comments.
"Why does a person need a mother?
"Irrespective of age, every person needs to know that there is someone in the world who loves him selflessly and accepts him as he is. That is the most important quality in a mother."
Note, not just any love, but loving faith, that is, an acceptance of the uniqueness of the growing individual - without pressure or subjugation to the will of the adult.
"The main responsibility of the mother is to understand. A mother who doesn't understand her child is a tragedy.
"In early childhood, the mother is salvation, protection, consolation for the child.
"At an older age, the mother is an advisor, a mentor, the mother is consolation.
In adulthood, the mother is a friend, the mother is consolation.
"There has to be a person on whose breast you can weep at five or 50."
Interesting: the mother is not a judge who determines what is good and what is bad, not an example to be followed. It turns out that children don't look for perfection in us, they crave comforting, compassion, consolation.
"At any age there is an invisible boundary between the mother and child: the superiority of the mother over her children. Perhaps it is experience ..." So, superiority, but not the kind that divides, alienates, humiliates, in other words, the superiority of experience, not simply of age, with its edification and moralizing.
"It seems to me that the attitude to one's mother develops in the course of a lifetime in this manner: admiration - doubts - non-acceptance - condescension - understanding - contrition - worship. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, perhaps it's different in the case of sons and daughters? Perhaps for boys a mother has to be a woman as well, and consequently weak."
It never occurred to me that a child's attitude to its mother could alter so much over the years. And then I remembered that I myself had felt something similar, but had forgotten. But one should remember. Then the negativism displayed by adoles cents, the alienation of teenagers will be seen as part of growing up, not as a crushing blow.
I have sometimes meditated over how often one encounters a distorted sense of motherhood. Here are a few typical examples;
"Coward": she terrorizes the child by her fears for him.
"Victim": everything is for the children, for the sake of any whim of theirs, her own affairs are set aside, her own interests suffer; nothing but self-denial and self-sacrifice. And the inevitable expectation that the "debts be repaid."
"Cry-baby": utterly helpless and full of hurt feelings. Complains about her husband's callousness, about circumstances, about her children. And filled with self-pity, she is so unhappy, so unlucky.
"Mentor": the main method is supervision, the main goal - obedience; orders and instructions from morning till night.
"Cuckoo-bird": she doesn't need the child, her main idea is to foist it off on grandparents, teachers, someone, anyone, just so long as she can breathe freely and concentrate on herself.
A bit of all of that can be found in most of us. It is said that our shortcomings are the continuation of our virtues, an excess of them, so to say. For example, isn't protection of one's child and the willingness to sacrifice everything for his sake the highest expression of maternal love? Certainly. But one should also understand whether this is good for the child or not. The demands made on children should be clearcut, especially at crucial turning points in their lives, this is simply vital. Children suffer a great deal from parental laxity, when what is expected of them is contradictory. The family's basic principles of life must be strict and stable - they are the moral pivot.
Life with children is wonderful when it is a constant quest, a rich field of creativity in which something remarkable is produced - a human being which the Mother gives to the world.
"I gave the world to man and gave the world a man"," That line of poetry read in my youth has remained etched in my mind. Not until I became a mother did I realize how much has to be in vested in a tiny being in order to be able to say, when he grows up, those fine words about yourseff.