Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and as all the world knows, motherhood, along with baseball and apple pie, is a peculiarly American value. For reasons that are unclear, the rest of the world is apparently hostile to motherhood, particularly, as it turns out, the Italians, who are producing fewer mothers than any other country on earth, despite the urgings of the Pope. (Perhaps it’s not a very good idea to talk about the Pope’s urges, so I’ll let that go). But I digress, as it is not my objective to attempt to understand why we in America have this unique regard for motherhood. Rather I write to take notice of the fact that this regard for motherhood appears to be universal in our culture, bridging the gap that divides us on so many fronts-the gap that divides us on the left and, for that matter, in the middle, from those on the right that we are constantly assured have a monopoly on “values”.
Now, given the fact that we left-wingers clearly do not have “values”, it should be safe to assume that we would reject motherhood, that unique American value, along with all the other American values that we scorn, such as torture, corporate rapacity, scientific illiteracy, Biblical fundamentalism, racism, and conviction without trial, to mention just a few. Surprisingly, this is not so.
The fact is, that many of us on the left have an astonishingly relaxed, even supportive, attitude toward motherhood. Take me for example. Like many of my other lefty friends, I have a mother, toward whom I harbor generally good feelings, particularly in her role qua mother. My wife, although not a mother when I met her, became a mother during the course of our marriage, and I not only tolerated, but approved of her change of status, which she, a confirmed lefty herself, assumed with few qualms. These are facts. My children, godless secular humanists both, share my own attitude toward mothers.
But it’s not just relatively obscure lefties that approve of motherhood. Some extremely well known leftists have joined in what many might assume would be left wing heresy. Teddy Kennedy loved his mother. It is rumored that Barack Obama (an honorary leftist, for purposes of this post) had a mother, though it is not known precisely where she achieved that status, as it appears that Obama was born in Kenya while his mother was in Hawaii. This makes her an extraordinary mother indeed. The fact is, it is hard to find a person of the leftwing persuasion that is hostile toward motherhood.
It is difficult to account for this singular fact, but it is nonetheless a fact. Despite our embrace of anti-American values such as equality, universal health care, religious tolerance, the rule of reason, and due process, we still, incomprehensibly, love our own mothers specifically, and have warm and fuzzy feelings toward the idea of motherhood generally. It is a profound and truly unfathomable situation, which would surely be the subject of much debate, were the fact more widely known.
Now, as to apple pie and baseball-well, that’s another story.
Postscript: I actually wrote this post before I assured myself that, indeed, we liberals are presumed to hate motherhood. A little googling was enough to establish that I had not underestimated our right wing friends. Consider, e.g., Another Motherhood-Hating, Traditional Gender Role-Attacking, San Fran Liberal or Phyllis Shlafley’s Feminists Consider Motherhood Oppressive. It’s actually sort of nice to know that you can always count on the right. It’s almost reassuring.
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