Why I Struggle with My Motherhood

“Am I a mother?”

The answer might seem apparent at first. But I have asked this question many times, and I’ve heard other birthmoms ask, too.

The website “Your Dictionary” offers this definition of motherhood: “Motherhood is the state or experience of having and raising a child.”

I think the dictionary definition would be more accurate by amending the last phrase to “having and/OR raising a child,” and I told them so in the comments on the page. This idea of motherhood as summed up by Your Dictionary is one which I find so many fighting to revise.

While I was researching names for this blog, I came across several websites dedicated to women who struggle with their motherhood: stepmothers (“the other mother”), women who lost children prematurely (“invisible mother”), lesbian couples (also “the other mother”).

I grew up thinking a mother was one thing: a woman who bears one or more children and raises them in her home. I thought, women who bear children and do not raise them are terrible mothers, hardly worthy of the title, and women who raise children without having born them are honorable, depending on the situation.

This theory did not hold up long after becoming an adult and I found redefining the term necessary. Given my current motherhood status, I am even embarrassed to admit to such a closed-minded idea of what makes a mother. My revision of the Your Dictionary definition is the closest I feel I have come to putting words to an adequately inclusive definition.

The hurdles to inclusive motherhood differ from situation to situation, person to person. From the perspective of a birthmother, I see self-doubt as the biggest hurdle. This doubt arises not only out of society’s traditional views of motherhood, but also insecurity over a birthmother’s role in her child’s life.

I often wonder, what right do I have to say I am Dominic’s mother? He is my biological child, but I am not with him day-to-day. Does this negate my motherhood? And does this make me a “bad” mother if I say I am his mother while he obviously does not live with me?

Looking at the revised dictionary definition of motherhood, I qualify to call myself a mother. All birthmothers do. But shame clouds my inward dialogue.

Writing in her first book “I Thought It Was Just Me,” shame researcher Brené Brown observes:

Mother shame seems to be a birthright for girls and women. On top of the societal expectation that motherhood defines womanhood, there are some very rigid expectations about what the good mother looks like.”

These “rigid expectations” specifically exclude me as a mother, and therefore, give rise to doubt about my birthmother identity.

As discussed in a previous blog post, Brown recommends speaking shame as a way to dispel it. In my circumstance, I find it necessary to outwardly claim my motherhood as the first step in acknowledging myself as his mother.

When I claim I am Dominic’s mother, I push away my naive ideas about who a mother is. Aloud I say, “Dominic is my son; I am his mother, his birthmother.” I stop caring what someone who hears me might think. Although, I try not to mutter it to myself in public places.

Brown does not address birthmothers in any of her books, but her research identifies motherhood as a common shame trigger for women — to-be mothers, never-to-be mothers, traditional mothers, adoptive mothers, birth mothers, etc. Knowing I am not alone in my doubt gives me a measure of confidence because I know many, if not all, women wrestle with the same doubt in their own way.

Recently, a birthmother friend showed me a quote that is giving me a great deal of comfort, and which encapsulates this complex idea of motherhood in adoption so well.

He is mine in a way that he will never be hers, yet he is hers in a way that he will never be mine, and so together, we are motherhood.” — Desha Woodall

 

 

Has your idea of motherhood changed over the years? If so, how and why? Birthmothers, do you struggle with your motherhood? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.