Alice Walker
From the beginning of time, the concept of "mother" has been central to life itself. We live on "Mother Earth." In the Bible, Eve is credited as being the "Mother of All the Living." The Assam of Africa don't call themselves families; they call themselves "maharis" or "motherhoods." Chinese family names are often formed (begin) with a sign that means "mother" as a way to honor mothers long past.
A mother is defined in many ways. Dictionaries generally define the word as "a woman who has borne a child; a stepmother, an adoptive mother, a mother-in-law; that which gives birth to something, is the origin or source of something, or nurtures in the manner of a mother; a woman having the responsibility and authority of a mother; an elderly woman, used as a title of affectionate respect; of, like, or like that of a mother; to look after or care for as a mother does."
Though many segments of society might view mothers in the limited sense of those who have given birth or raised children, a broader definition of mother can include any woman with a caring nature or who cares for others (think of Mother Teresa). We can all, male and female, "mother" to some extent. In honoring her mother, Anna Jarvis, the "mother" of Mother's Day, knew that she was honoring all women who have contributed to humanity in general and not just to a specific child. Anna Jarvis herself remained unmarried and childless. Yet, she did much to see that those who care for their children, for their families, and for us all as the human family, are honored.
A Sampling of Perspectives on
Mothers and Motherhood
Mothers and mothering is a topic everyone has experience with and therefore has opinions about. Here are some of those opinions for thought and discussion.
On Becoming a Mother...
Only mothers can think of the future -- because they give birth to it in their children.
Maxim Gorky
"You are the caretaker of the generations, you are the birth giver," the sun told the woman. "You will be the carrier of this universe."
Brule Sioux, Sun Creation Myth
Mothers hold a very special place [in the holy book of Islam, the Qur'an]... Mothers are the ones who give us life, carrying us for nine months, enduring great pain to bring us into the world. They are our first teachers, giving us the lessons and values we will carry for the rest of our lives. A mother's greatest gift to her society is a righteous son or daughter. Our prophet said, "Heaven lies at the feet of mothers."
Jehan Sadat
This was an initiation, through which I experienced a profound kinship with all women throughout history who had ever gone through this ordeal and transformation. There was nothing that distinguished me from any woman who had ever given birth to a baby.
Jean Shinoda Bolen
Becoming a mother humbled my ego and stretched my soul. It awakened me to eternity. It made me know my own humanity, my own mortality, my own limits. It gave me whatever crumbs of wisdom I possess today.
Erica Jong
Making the decision to have a child -- it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
Elizabeth Stone
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. You are connected to your child and to all those who touch your lives. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
Sophia Loren
There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.
Agatha Christie
A baby's mother also needs a mother.
Erica Jong
On Being a Mother...
Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
As is the Mother, so is her Daughter.
Ezekiel 1:44
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde (from The Importance of Being Ernest)
My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
George Washington
There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness... The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way.
Andrew Jackson
My mother made a brilliant impression upon my childhood life. She shone for me like the evening star -- I loved her dearly.
Winston Churchill
As for mother, her very name stands for loving unselfishness and self-abnegation and in any society fit to exist, it is fraught with associations which render it holy.
Theodore Roosevelt
My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart -- a heart so large that everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.
Mark Twain
In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.
Booker T. Washington
One fine day... as my mother was putting the bread in the oven, I went up to her and taking her by her flour-smeared elbow I said to her, "Mama... I want to be a painter."... My mother's love for me was so great that I have worked hard to justify it.
Marc Chagall
My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
It seems to me that my mother was the most splendid woman I ever knew... I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her.
Charlie Chaplin
With a mother of different mental caliber I would probably have turned out badly.
Thomas Alva Edison
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.
Maya Angelou
On Motherhood...
Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.
Betty Rollin
Choose to have a career early and a family late or choose, like I did, to have a family early and a career late. Plan a long life.
Janet Davison Rowley, American physician who
broke ground in the field of cancer genetics
Young women, especially, have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realize you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.
Fay Weldon
The ideal mother, like the ideal marriage, is a fiction.
Milton R. Sapirstein
Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.
Pearl S. Buck
Don't get so involved in the duties of your life and your children that you forget the pleasure. Remember why you had children.
Lois Wyse
No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Motherhood in America is a paradox -- sentimentalized and devalued at once.
Barbara Katz Rothman
The myth that men are the economic providers and women, mainly, are mothers and caregivers in the family has now been thoroughly refuted. This family pattern has never been the norm, except in a narrow middle-class segment.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway
I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring it.
Rose Kennedy
And the life of a working mother who lives without the constant presence and support of the father of her children is three times harder than that of any man I have ever met.
Golda Meir
Women today often combine breadwinning and caregiving, albeit with great difficulty and strain. A postindustrial welfare state must ensure that men do the same, while redesigning institutions so as to eliminate the difficulty and strain. We might call this vision Universal Caregiver.
Nancy Fraser
What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work, and willingly give time and attention to their children.
Margaret Mead
Some Famous, Historical, and Noteworthy Mothers
There are all kinds of mothers. Here's a quick look at a variety of noteworthy mothers:
Barbara Bush (traditional mother of President George W. Bush, former American First Lady)
Virginia Cassidy Clinton (colorful mother of President Bill Clinton)
Rose Kennedy (strong mother of President John F. Kennedy)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (mother, lawyer, former American First Lady, US Senator)
Indira Gandhi (mother, first woman Prime Minister of India)
Margaret Thatcher (mother, first woman Prime Minister of Britain)
Carol Brady (fictional, ideal mom and stepmom)
Marion Cunningham (fictional, traditional mother)
Murphy Brown (fictional, controversial single mom)
Marge Simpson (cartoon mom)
Reese Witherspoon (young mom, movie star)
Geena Davis (older mom, movie star)
Madonna (hip mom, singer, actor)
Cher (outrageous mom, singer, Academy Award-winning actor)
Celine Dion ("test tube" mom, music star)
Barbra Streisand (mother, singer, actor, director, producer)
Marie Osmond (biological and adoptive mother of 7, singer)
Bobbi McCaughey (mother of sextuplets)
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (mother of 6, writer, wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh)
Whoopi Goldberg (mother, grandmother, actor, comedian)
Rosie O'Donnell (gay, adoptive mom, talk show host, comedian)
Marlo Thomas (stepmother to Phil Donahue's children, actor)
Calista Flockhart (single, adoptive mom, actor)
Jodie Foster (single, biological mother, Academy Award-winning actor)
Barbara Walters (adoptive mother, TV journalist)
Faith Popcorn (adoptive mom, futurist)
Lucille Ball (funny mom, TV star and business woman)
Chris Evert (athlete mom, three-time Wimbledon champ)
Florence Griffith Joyner (athlete mom, triple Olympic gold medallist)
Cindy Crawford (supermodel mom)
Marie Curie (mother, Nobel Prize-winning scientist)
Mother Teresa (caring "mother" to thousands, Nobel Peace Prize recipient)
Queen Mother (royal mother of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II)
Rosa Parks (the "Mother of Montgomery" who launched the civil rights movement)
Toni Morrison (mother, writer, first African American to win the Nobel Prize in literature)
Sandra Day O'Connor (mother, first woman appointed to the Supreme Court)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (mother, Supreme Court Justice)
Victoria Woodhull (mother, first woman to run for American President)
Wilma Mankiller (mother, first woman Chief of the Cherokee Nation)
Marian Wright Edelman (mother, lawyer, writer, and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund)
Mary Kay Ash (mother, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics)
"Mother" (Mary Harris) Jones (mother, labor leader)
Emma Willard (mother, pioneer in education who campaigned for higher education for women in math, science, and social studies)
Clara Barton (founder of the Red Cross and "mother" to thousands of wounded soldiers)
"Mother" (Clara McBride) Hale (mother, started Hale House in Harlem to care for infants born to drug-addicted mothers)
Candy Lightner (after her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver, she founded MADD -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving)
Joan Ganz Cooney (the "mother" of Sesame Street)
Grandma Moses (mother and grandmother, and a famous painter who started painting in her 70s)
Whistler's Mother (famous painting)
Your Mother (after all, where would you be without her?)
Mothers as Women
Here are some resources you can explore for research, discussion, and enjoyment.
Books for adults about mothers, grandmothers, family, the challenges and joys of motherhood and of being a woman in today's world: First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents by Bonnie Angelo; How to Build the Grandma Connection by Susan V. Bosak; Generations of Women: In Their Own Words by Mariana Cook; The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families by Stephanie Coontz; The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued by Ann Crittenden; Mother of My Mother: The Intricate Bond Between Generations by Hope Edelman; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours by Marian Wright Edelman; Mother O' Mine and Words for Mothers to Live By by Mary Engelbreit; Women of Hope: African Americans Who Made a Difference by Joyce Hansen; For She is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers by Valerie Kack-Brice; Seasons of Life: The Dramatic Journey from Birth to Death by John Kotre and Elizabeth Hall; Grandmothers Are Like Snowflakes... No Two Are Alike by Janet Lanese; Under A Wing: A Memoir and No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh by Reeve Lindbergh; The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Everything and Why We Pretend It Doesn't by Susan Maushart; Family: A Celebration of Humanity by James McBride; Mothers: A Loving Celebration by Tara Ann McFadden; Legends: Women Who Have Changed the World, Through the Eyes of Great Women Writers by John Miller; Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love, and Life in a Half-Changed World by Peggy Orenstein; Not Your Mother's Life: Changing the Rules of Work, Love, and Family by Joan Peters; The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families by Mary Pipher; Mother Power: Discover the Difference That Women Have Made All Over the World by Jacqueline Hornor Plumez; Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World by Kathleen Ragan; On Women Turning 30: Making Choices, On Women Turning 40: Coming Into Our Fullness, On Women Turning 50: Celebrating Mid-Life Discoveries, On Women Turning 60: The Age of Fulfillment, and On Women Turning 70: Honoring the Voices of Wisdom all by Cathleen Rountree.
Some books especially for mothers and daughters: What I Wish You Knew: Letters from Our Daughters' Lives, and Expert Advice on Staying Connected by American Girl magazine; The Mother-Daughter Book Club: How Ten Busy Mothers and Daughters Came Together to Talk, Laugh and Learn Through Their Love of Reading by Shireen Dodson; Our Mothers: Portraits by 72 Women Photographers by Viviane Esders; Mothers & Daughters by Madeleine L'Engle and Maria Rooney; Making Memories: Celebrating Mothers and Daughters Through Traditions, Crafts, and Lore by Joyce Marlow; A Time to Blossom: Mothers, Daughters, and Flowers by Tovah Martin and Richard W. Brown; Mothers & Daughters by Carol Saline and Sharon Wohlmuth; A Mother's Heart, A Daughter's Love: Poems for Us to Share by Joyce Carol Thomas; From Daughters to Mothers, I've Always Meant to Tell You: An Anthology of Letters by Constance Warlow; The Story of Mothers & Daughters by Susan Wels.
Books for children about women and their achievements: 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the E.R.A. by Tonya Bolden; Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women by Cheryl Harness; Seven Brave Women by Betsy Gould Hearne; The New York Public Library Amazing Women in American History: A Book of Answers for Kids by Sue Heinemann; Scholastic Encyclopedia of Women in the United States by Sheila Keenan; More Spice Than Sugar: Poems About Feisty Females by Lillian Morrison; Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women and The Sky's the Limit: Stories of Discovery by Women and Girls by Catherine Thimmesh.
Additional storybooks for children about mothers are listed in the Meaningful Mother's Day Gifts and More section of this kit.
Websites you can use to research mothers and women: www.biography.com/features/mother (biographies of 100 mothers, from celeb moms to political moms to supermoms); www.distinguishedwomen.com (biographical information on women who have contributed to all fields of human endeavor); www.greatwomen.org (website of the National Women's Hall of Fame that includes an alphabetical listing of the Women of the Hall with a photo and short biography on each); www.pbs.org/kcet/agelessheroes (explores the spirit, vitality, and potential of men and women who have achieved success and continue to do so beyond the age of 65).
