Facing "Mother's Sin"

The Sins of the Mother

From “Stories from the motherline” by Naomi Lowinsky



Many have hoped to master the parental skills so that our children will grow up to be happy, well adjusted, successful and proud of us. But parental failure is almost inevitable to certain degree. Maybe it is due to generation gap, children always complain of their parents do not understand them; parents often comment the generation changes.

However, the truth is that we are bound to fail our children by our own human limitation. We need to be people as well as children do. We are certain to err on the side of too much or too little control, discipline, love, support, attention, money. We are doomed to fail the ones we love the most.

This is why “the terrible” is part of every mother-child relationship. Mothers and children live in different bodies, are born into different families in different historical contexts and different psychology frame. They are people in different life stages, usually of different temperaments. Even in the best of circumstances, with the conscious choice of pregnancy and child care, mothers are terrible and children insatiable. Disappointment and anger are givens in any parent-child relationship because what our children mean to us is very different from what we meant to them. A child is only a part of her mother’s life, but the mother or caretaking person is the source of essential supplies for the child. This inevitable inequality of power and needs creates a rich soil in which differences and difficulties grow.

Further difficulties arise because we mothers also have great expectations of ourselves. Most of us are determined to differentiate from our own mothers by being better mothers. We raise our children as we wish we had been raised; we bring to them the values of the generation that formed our consciousness. We pour our love and our passion into this work, and therein lies the rub. Our children are not impressed. No child is grateful to her mother for not visiting upon her sins of the mother’s mothers. The young one simple suffers the empty places left unmothered in her own childhood. She sees the fallacies of her parents’ generation. She knows and names the sins of her mother.

It is painful to face the terrible aspects of our own natures. But if we are to understand the experience of our children, to hold a consensual reality with them, we must be able to face the ways in which we failed them. We must release them from our yearning to be affirmed as good mothers and let them be people living in a time we find difficult to comprehend."

One thing to have comfort is to know that God has ordained the special mother-child relationship for every one. We may not have and to be perfect parents, but we need our parents, our children need us. Even our failure is part of life for learning and progressing. Mother, we can always come to the throne of grace for help and wisdom; children, also need divine leading as they are growing to be parents themselves. God-centered family makes all these possible.