Does motherhood tend to warp women’s sense of perspective?
My book discussion club recently read “The Haunting of Hill House†by novelist Shirley Jackson (1916-1965). The woman who led the discussion mentioned something I found arresting. Shortly after a book Shirley Jackson wrote received a glowing review in a popular newsmagazine, the author received a letter from her own mother. In that letter, Jackson’s mother did not express pride in her daughter’s accomplishment or congratulate her on the publication and review. Instead, Mom took Shirley to task because her photograph did not look as pretty as the mother thought it could have! At a time when I would have expected a mother to be overjoyed, this mother criticized her daughter’s appearance.
This reminded me strongly of something my own mother had done although in an opposite context. As I related in an earlier essay, “My Brother’s Accident,†my brother Dave was making a turn when he ran right into a young man on a motorcycle. When my mother and father returned home, a small crowd was milling around, the teenager was on the pavement semi-conscious with blood coming out of his head, and Dave appeared frozen in fear. Mom came up to me and asked, “Tina, do you have to wear so much make-up?†I was aghast. “Mom, this is no time to talk about my make-up!†I replied. She said, “This is bad enough without seeing you looking like this.â€
I was also reminded of the classic “Pride and Prejudice,†in which a mother, Mrs. Bennett, learns her daughter Lucy has spent nights with a man sans marriage – something that could spell disgrace and ruin not only for the daughter but the entire family. The Bennetts are hastily trying to get the couple wed. Mrs. Bennett’s dialogue is comic because of the jarring dissonance between her genuine concern for the salvaging of the family from disaster and her concern to make the details of the wedding, such as the bride’s dress, exactly right.
Returning to “The Haunting of Hill House,†it is interesting that the mother of the protagonist, Eleanor Lance, is deceased as the story begins. However, Eleanor is still hindered by her mother’s rules. For example, Eleanor is afraid to wear pantsuits because Mom taught that women should not wear pants. Although the home Eleanor is staying in has a servant, she is reluctant to leave the table without taking the dirty dishes to the sink herself as Mom always instructed.
Could there be something about motherhood that tends to warp women’s sense of perspective? Does the role of mother cause both life-altering triumph and tragedy to recede into the background and matters of make-up and style to become obsessions?
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April 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 am
Not motherhood, Gender…….The female Gender has long been running western culture unopposed.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I dont know if this has to do with motherhood as much as its just an older traditional way of thinking. In the past women would never leave the house if they werent made up properly, now anything goes.
Your mother might have been displacing her feelings about her brother on to you for a number of reasons, or maybe it was such a dire situation she felt she could speak freely about something she normally would hold her tongue at.
In general women do not really need to wear much makeup until they advance in age and hit say 28-30 imo. Young women may wear alot of makeup where just a touch is really needed.
In any case Feminism has done away with the need to be as charming, kind, and beautiful as possible to the outside world.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Nope, female gender.
Male is lying on the ground perhaps dying, her son has hit the guy and mom is worrying about how she’ll per perceived. This is evil and an absolute inability to care about anyone or anything except in the contect of how it will effect her.
When you think of chivalry, you never think of females…way too selfish.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Roger60601 said,
I dont know if this has to do with motherhood as much as its just an older traditional way of thinking. In the past women would never leave the house if they werent made up properly, now anything goes.
Your mother might have been displacing her feelings about her brother on to you for a number of reasons, or maybe it was such a dire situation she felt she could speak freely about something she normally would hold her tongue at.>>
(Denise) I was a very young woman at the time, still in my late teens. Like a lot of young women, I was trying to establish a certain sexual identity as being feminine and went overboard, putting too much make-up on. I was very insecure about my appearance because I’d often been ridiculed as “ugly.” Mom never held her tongue about it but routinely nagged me about it. I was just shocked that she would nag about such a trivial matter when there was the immediate possibility that my brother had killed or permanently disabled someone.
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(Denise) It doesn’t seem to me that there is anything charming or kind about taking a moment of triumph — the publication of a book that receives a good review in a major magazine — and dragging someone down by carping about their appearance.
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I think if you re-phrased the question to: “Does motherhood drastically change women’s attitudes towards life, husbands, work, etc?” you would get a resounding “YES” from most men. Warped? Sure, why not?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I’ve been reading and hearing a lot of information lately about women’s thinking and the developement of their brains as distinguist from men. According to Allison Armstrong of understanding-men.com, women have a “diffuse sense of awareness” as distinguished from men whose sense of awareness is deliberately focused. Your incident with your mother maybe an exadurated example demonstrating how your mother noticed the tragic accident and in the same moment YOUR makeup.
Also, writing in “The Female Brain” Louann Brizendine explains how in the womb men’s brains are developed from the female brain to “pair back” in the areas of the brain involving emotion, memory and communication to develope the larger migdula in men to enhance the male fight or flight and sexual drive. Perhaps this is how you so clearly remmember the incident, your mother’s words and your feelings. I wonder would your brother remmember your mother’s comments about your makeup that day?
As for your mother, if she remmembers that day as a tragedy for your brother, she cannot be warped. As warped is understood as a deviation from any sense of morality or rightness.
All humans learn their sense of morality and keep it as a mental script or fail to be morally aware. This script does not come with a placenta attached.
A thoughtfull piece to write.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:02 am
I would hesitate to ascribe to all women the specific ideosyncracies of a few. There are of course reasonable grounds for generalising when a very large number or substantial proportion of folk behave in this way or that but here we have several items of peculiar and focused behaviour toward offspring. I would be unjust to portray all women as having such a fixation on how their children appear whilst simultaneously ignoring achievement or avoiding family disasters.
But, the question is general. Do women have a different – warped -perspective when they become mothers? Crikey, why pick on mothers? Men’s perspectives change too on becoming fathers. Many become nose-to-the-grindstone types who suddenly discover a reason to be a slave and willingly take the oar and chain. That’s warped, to my mind.
But motherhood usually ( does it still pertain?) does focus attention and usually in a benign and supporrtive fashion, skewed more toward adulation of the offspring than to overt and unwarranted criticism. The adulation can be really warped.
What is described, Denise, is perhaps an older mother’s attitude to grown offspring – or ‘on the way to be grown up’ offspring. And just some women. What is described is an insensitivity and a counterpoint to love, affection, admiration. It may be an expression of enuui or boredom or exhaustion with caring, or even a process of ‘disengagement’ as the offspring prepares to fly from the nest. It may be a reaction to the personality of the ‘child’ who has developed aspects of presentation which lead a parent to despair!
Interestingly two of the three examples are fictional. From the mind of female writers. They invite criticism of the mother. The third, actual incident, is personal and in the context of a traumatic experience (albeit vicarious) when it is unlikely that memory or even immediate appreciation is accurate. Let us, for a moment, ignore the (non)veracity of a fictional character and ask about the authors’ minds. Let us ask about your mind. Are we talking of mothers having a warped perspective, or of adult women having a warped perspective of mothers?
(I recall my ex one night, when a tree fell on our home, totally ignoring the mess of broken brick, pierced ceiling, smashed roof, destroyed pantry/kitchen/laundry rooms, instead picking leaves off the branches in the living roon and shredding them into small pieces. Displacement activity?)
The comments one COULD make, supposing trend or generalising to all mothers, may well be apposite in specific cases. They could focus more on individual difference with more likelihood of accuracy.