As soon as I started writing this article, something interesting happened.  When I wrote down the word mother in the heading, the auto-correct function immediately kicked in and underlined the word.  When I checked to see what the error was, I was surprised to find that auto-correct didn’t want me to capitalize the word mother.  Apparently, it’s supposed to be in small letters, even in the heading.  The same rule doesn’t apply to the word father, I was surprised to note.  So, it’s okay to capitalize the word father but not the word mother.  That alone tells me exactly how mothers are regarded on this planet.  They are less.  They don’t even deserve the honour of being capitalized in an article in which they are the main topic.  Need I say more, or should I just rest my case on this bleak note?

The coronavirus pandemic brought into sharp focus the agony of being a mother on this planet.  Suddenly, what has always been known but denied or simply ignored was pushed into the public consciousness in a way that was impossible to ignore.  We’ve always known what a raw deal it is to be a mother on this planet but it’s almost as if the universe had had enough of this state of affairs and was trying to tell us look, people!  There’s a serious problem here!  Sort it out! 

How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery.  When the pandemic started, mothers were expected to quietly take on additional roles while still working full-time from home or at the workplace for those who couldn’t work from home.  We were expected to become teachers to our children while gladly taking on the extra duties, not to mention the expense, that comes with having the family home all day.  All this while being shamed for wanting schools to reopen faster.  You don’t love your kids!  You’re spoilt!  You don’t want to take care of your children; you’d rather ship them off to school for someone else to care of.  It’s about time you experienced what it’s like to take care of your kids.  That was the narrative at the time.  If you wanted schools to reopen, it was because you couldn’t stand to be with your kids. 

How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery. 

Well, we all know how that turned out.  After a few months out of school, girls started getting pregnant, some of them after being defiled by relatives.  Some were married off as they were no longer in the protective environment provided by the school.  Children who used to get a meal in school were no longer getting that much-needed meal, which was a problem in both the developed and developing world, from America to India to Africa.  In some parts of the world, girls were circumcised, a practice that being in school protects them from.  Education systems that had been steadily progressing over decades were set back to levels last seen ages ago.  Will this decline be reversed?  What about the lives that were ruined, the children who will never go back to school once the pandemic is over, who cares about them?  What about what is happening in countries like Uganda where the education system came to a standstill, who cares about that?  But when mothers were crying for their children to go back to school, we were mocked and made to feel that we were being spoilt.  What a cruel, uncaring world we live in.

It’s ironic if you think about it, the pressure women experience to become mothers, almost as if it’s the most wonderful thing one could ever experience.  Before you become a mother, motherhood is packaged as something desirable, something to look forward to, a role you have been preparing for since you were born.  Any delays in starting to bear children once you reach marriageable and childbearing age is regarded with disapproval and outright hostility.  Why aren’t you having children yet, the world snarls at you?  Is there something wrong with you?  What are you still waiting for?  Your biological clock is ticking, get on with it.  And we comply, most of us do.   We joyfully and eagerly become mothers, little suspecting what awaits us on the other side.  Once we have children, the same world that passive-aggressively urged us to do so suddenly changes tact and starts sending subtle, unspoken messages about who we are now that we are mothers.  We are no longer desirable.  We are no longer attractive.  We are no longer marketable.  We are no longer competent.  We are no longer people but unpeople who should exist behind the scenes, seen but not heard.  We no longer deserve to take care of ourselves, dress well or spend money on ourselves but all our energy, attention and resources should now go to our children, our families.  We should fade into the background, disappear, accept that we no longer play a meaningful role in society as we have fulfilled our primary reason for existing which is to bear children.  We have done our duty and we are now dismissed.  

Anyone who is a mother knows what I’m talking about.  You know how you lose your identity and become mama so and so.  You know how you become unseen.  You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone.  Why don’t you just get your act together?  Do you know what your priorities are?  Do you want to work or are you just playing around with your job?  Did you really take your child to the hospital or did you just want to give yourself a day off?  Did you need to spend the whole day with your sick child or could you have come to work after taking them to the hospital?  Oh, you want to be leaving work early to pick your kids from school?  Are you serious?  Oh, you want flexi-time that will allow you to come to work late so that you spend more time with your children?  Why don’t you just go ahead and say what you really want?  You don’t want to work, do you?  You want to be a stay-at-home mum, doing nothing all day, you lazy thing.  Oh, and you want a promotion!  You want more money!  Is that some sick joke? 

You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone. 

The thing we need to ask ourselves is why the role of mothers isn’t acknowledged or appreciated.  What if in future no one wants to be a mother because our consciousness is raised to the point that we begin to ask ourselves, what I’m I doing this for?  Why do I need to give up my body as a conduit for the survival of the species only to be despised once I do so?  Why do I need this?  One day, women are just going to stop and ask themselves, who said I have to be a mother?  I don’t need this.  There is no support for me from the state, from society or anyone else for that matter.  And when no one wants to have babies anymore, maybe we will wake up to the important role mothers play and start treating them better.  Look at what’s happening in many European countries.  Nobody wants to give birth.  And why should they?  Look at China.  They spent decades making it a crime to be a mother, punishable by forced abortion.  Now suddenly they realize that their population won’t sustain itself and they turn around and want women to give birth.  They are still under the illusion that motherhood is a switch you can turn on and off at will, but it is proving to be much more complicated than they imagined.  How long before this becomes a planet-wide problem where nobody wants to give birth?  How short-sighted, to despise the very people upon which the survival of the species depends.

When you become a mother, you quickly realize that you’re on your own.  The state doesn’t care about you.  There is no help for you.  Woe unto you if you are poor and struggle to feed your children.  It’s your fault.  There is no acknowledgement that what you have just accomplished is an essential service to the country, to the planet.   How many women are abandoned by their partners to raise children on their own?  In the developed world, at least you have laws that force someone to support their child even if they are not married to the mother, but what about here in the undeveloped world?  How many fathers abandon their children with impunity especially when the mothers are too poor or uneducated to know what to do about it?  And beyond that, when are we ever as a species going to get to a point where raising children is the responsibility of the state and not the parents?  I believe this is the next step we need to take where motherhood is recognized as the essential service it is and thus something the state needs to be responsible for.  By this, I mean in terms of providing free education, free child care and a stipend for feeding, clothing and housing the children.  This is not an impossible or unreasonable dream.  Some of course will scream that this is an impossibility, but it is only because they are not able to see motherhood as a service to the planet that no one should have to be punished for. 

Many of us are starting to crack, so heavy has the burden of motherhood become.  We can’t do it anymore.  We can’t pretend to be superwomen anymore.  Many of us are leaving our jobs, not because we don’t need the income but because we can’t hack it anymore.  The weight that has been placed on us by an uncaring planet has become too much to bear and we are finally throwing up our hands and giving ourselves up to the universe to do with us as she wants.  Let the mothers now be mothered by someone else.