Dakota Beacon

Tomorrow people in some 40 nations around the world will honor and remember their mothers.  Those fortunate enough to still have their mothers living will possibly have sent a note or card, maybe some flowers or other token of acknowledgement.  If they are still luckier they might be able to get together with her and enjoy dinner or tea or something special.  

As a musician, I have worked most Mothers’ Days, but I have always enjoyed working that particular day - it is always nice to see how most of the ladies in whose honor families were out celebrating, enjoying that rare attention appreciate it.  It’s sweet.  

I’d like to take this opportunity to get back on my soapbox and say a few words about motherhood.  It has become a kind of social step-child in our era.  It’s been this way for quite some time now.  As a young mother, my husband a university professor, I spent a couple of hours most Fridays at the faculty club.  It was mostly kind of fun - a time to relax and visit with some interesting people I didn’t see every day.  I particularly enjoyed talking about their work - it was all different - and about things coming up like concerts, etc.  But there was a current there that was distinctly disparaging of motherhood.  A woman was sized up by her “career” instead of her interest in society and her family.  Most of these women were professors or, in some cases, doctors or attorneys, and those who weren’t were retired professors, doctors or attorneys (and a few semi-retired business professionals like real estate brokers, etc.)  I do not recall any of them who, like me, were primarily concerned with their children and the world their children would inherit.  If they had known then that in time I would homeschool them and eventually become a tea party activist and write about issues vital to their freedom, their disdain might well have turned to contempt, perhaps even loathing.  It is certain that they would not understand any of it.  

It has been said that the family is the core of society.  It is at least the bedrock of any free society.  It is a fact that when authoritarians seize power, one of their first and most formidable obstacles is the family unit.  A normal man or woman will judge events or policies in light of how it affects his/her family and children, perhaps how it will affect parents and siblings.  A normal person is more interested in and dedicated to what is best for his family’s life, not what is most efficient for the “state”.  

When the Bolsheviks gained control in Russia, one of their policies grew to separating family members and getting women into the workplace outside the home.  Children were brought up indoctrinated from early childhood by the state to become ants in their colony.  The child was trained to believe his first duty and greatest loyalty was to the state.  It worked fairly well in terms of consolidating power in the state.  It worked wonders in terms of discouraging people from discussing politics and current events openly.  Grannies, instead of reading stories to their grandchildren or baking an Easter kulich, were pressed into service as tattlers, stationed where they could keep an eye on the everyday activities of the man on the street or the kids in the hallways.  

The contribution of women in industry was important also.  It was “best” for everyone to be contributing to the state in Russia.  If the human being were to be marginalized and become no more than a part of a machine, there could be no real family life.  It also went that  religion needed to be suppressed - anything which challenged the power and be-all of the state needed to be tamped down.

Hitler discovered this in Germany.  His camps for children, in which they were indoctrinated to become mere elements of the Nazi state, taught them to spy on and report on the ideas expressed by their parents or friends or neighbors.  We know why and we know the result.  (Many of us recall the kid in The Sound of Music, whose loyalty remained with the Nazi state, even when he was smitten by Liesl.He had been totally co-opted by the State and he had lost his soul) In fact, if one looks at any totalitarian dictatorship he will find a marginalizing and discouraging of family life and values.  

If we look at our own history, in most aspects of life we were better off before mothers were expected to dump the kids at a daycare and punch a timeclock.  This is not to say that at times the “drudgery” of everyday tasks is not 100% satisfying to everyone.  Women are like all other humans - they have aptitudes and capabilities, artistic abilities, are as fully as men capable of thought.  The idea that these abilities and talents are “wasted” on their own children is absurd.  Why is that talent more important when it hangs in a local art gallery and is contemplated by a stranger or perhaps bought for a couple of hundred dollars?  Why is that skill with numbers more valuable when applied to a real estate career than to inspiring one’s own children to learn?  Why is that boss whose timeclock a woman punches or whose coffee she makes (in those un-enlightened offices where it’s now his job) more important, at the end of the day - at the end of life - than her children?  

Of course now there are those who think women are “liberated” by a “right” to abort a baby and why would anyone want to waste their time or limit their career choices by becoming a mother in the first place? This type of attitude is the delight of power-mad authoritarians.  The complete victory of the state or an artificial kind of society over nature and the family.  When killing children becomes a coveted “right” we know we are nearing the end of the human story.  

But back to our current version of “motherhood”.  A woman who was once a friend of mine had been married for many years.  She and her husband would have fit the millennial mode very well. They were more like co-married people than like a “husband” and “wife”.  It seemed to work for them.  All of a sudden and unexpectedly, she became pregnant.  As they went through “their” pregnancy it became obvious that life could not go on in the same way they’d been living for a decade or so.  She was beside herself with excitement when she told me she had found a daycare that would take her child on at six weeks of age.  Done and done.  He was, by the way, to be an only child.  Over the years we kept in touch.  The little boy was kind of a bully - our kids avoided him when possible.  Their experience was quite the opposite of his - he spent his days in institutionalized daycare, got his three square meals and a snack per day.  His parents cared about him in the detached way they knew.   At one point the mother lost her job.  Suddenly she had to take the boy out of his daycare - they felt they couldn’t afford it - for all but a couple of days per week.  She showed up one day in tears.  She didn’t know what to do - she had cleaned her house, had reorganized her linen closets and drawers, she’d read the newspapers, she’d run out of material.  I said, “Doesn’t little Algie keep you busy?”  More tears.  She took him to the story hour at the library.  They’d gone over the grocery sale ads there.  She couldn’t think of a thing to do with him.  I was amazed.  There wasn’t enough time in any day for me to do all the things I wanted to do with my kids.  But, then, she was accustomed to that work schedule.  It becomes a disability - inability to function without someone else’s schedule.

All this rambling is to arrive at this point:  a society which disables the “family” function is not going to hobble along very far.  We have read and heard a lot about the “upside-down” family tree and the demographics of societal suicide.   That’s when, as Mark Steyn has pointed out, four grandparents have two children who have one child.  If that.  Our birth rate in the industrialized world is dropping like a rock.  It can’t go too much farther down that road.  Russia all of a sudden realized that its birth rate was falling drastically.  No wonder, after 100 years of Soviet-style industrialized society and the discouragement of family life.  Women were thought to contribute more in man-hours worked than in raising a family.  The state could do a better job of that, thank you very much.  So now there is encouragement to promote having children again.  It’s not that easy to get people to go back to thinking “traditionally” once you have spent a century indoctrinating them in the idea that their first duty is to get on the assembly line or in the lab or the office or wherever and family is some sort of “luxury” they should be ashamed of.  In a whimsical effort to gin up interest in creating a mood to encourage having children, Vladimir Putin actually brought BoyzIIMen into Russia for some inspiration (!) as well as cash payments.  Well, whatever works in Russia, I guess.  Other nations like Hungary are very proactive in promoting families through their tax codes.

The bottom line is this:  the family is the absolute bedrock of a free society.  It is the economic mainstay, the thing which tethers people to their cultural values and promotes a healthy set of priorities.  At the center of the family is the mother.  Fathers are very important - there is plenty of evidence for that.  But it is important that children have their mother.  

The mother reads to them the stories which help to open their windows to the world, the mother sets an example of responsibility, in demonstrating priorities and a work ethic.  The mother is there to nurture the child, to feed and clothe him, to kiss away his hurts, to hold him to some kind of appropriate standard, to encourage him to learn, to explore, to question.  The child is not just metaphorically but in fact, the future of our civilization.  The mother’s first “job” is to nurture and protect that child - to nurture and protect the future of our civilization.  Is that slightly more important than updating the files, getting to those appointments, driving that bus or operating that forklift or giving that lecture?  You tell me.  

In the meantime, let’s honor both the institution of motherhood and our own mothers, grandmothers, aunts, daughters.  Mothers’ Day (and Motherhood) might seem a little “commercialized” for some.  It doesn’t have to be.  Most moms still treasure the little hand-made cards their toddlers made for them and the withered, dried-up dandelions more than anything, and the memories.  It’s not the expensive presents or the lavish brunch, or the quaint corsage (I actually wish this would be revived a bit more - it’s kinda sweet and special) but in terms of Mothers’ Day it really is the thought that counts and the loving memory of those who are no longer with us in person but in spirit.  

Happy Mothers’ Day!  

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