Motherhood - Not just a sentimental holiday

Mother's Day some say is an artificial Hallmark Card marketing opportunity rather a more genuine tribute to the role that some women are choosing to play with all the responsibilities it entails.

I am reading Motherhood by Sheila Heti in which she describes the struggles that a 38 year old woman experiences trying to decide if she wants to have a child or not. A woman remarked to me several decades ago "It's interesting that people talk about whether they want to have a child or not, but not whether they want to raise a child or not." So simple but also profound. Having and raising a child are two different things.

The decision by a woman of whether she wants to have and raise a child is life altering.

As you may know the fertility rate in the US is now below replacement levels. Some people might say this is a good thing because the planet Earth is already overpopulated by homo sapiens and may be beyond its carrying capacity. Others worry about what the lack of younger generations means for the older generations and the economic system on which the whole population of homo sapiens depends.

Among US adults under 50 without children, the percentage who say they are not too or not at all likely to ever have children rose from 37% in 2018 to 47% in 2023.

Since the invention of the birth control pill in 1959 societies in first world countries have been radically changed with females entering college at higher and higher rates, and then the professions. With these changes the divorce rate has gone up and the average number of children has gone down. Women are now economically independent and the male roles have changed dramatically from protector and provider to onlooker and simply a source of psychological satisfaction for their female partners.

Along with these social changes the conservative minded in American society have criminalized abortion in an effort to enforce child bearing on females as we see The Handmaid's Tale leave the world of fiction to a real life experience.

On this Mother's Day we psychotherapists would do well to consider what this role of motherhood means for individuals, families, communities, and societies in 2025. The role of motherhood is complicated for both women and men and our society. It is far more than a sentimental holiday.

I would guess that those of us who consider ourselves to be feminist informed therapists might have many ideas about this.