Raising a child in the United States has been a mind blowing, exhausting experience that often leaves me reeling in confusion laced rage. Any time I leave my home and venture among the masses, including and even with other mothers, I am appalled and abashed by the lack of compassion and understanding for children and other beings, creatures, left vulnerable.
When was the last time you put yourself in the mind and body of a child? The bravery and fortitude they muster each day when they awaken, and from the most important moment of birth, is beyond an adult's comprehension - almost. The understanding, the knowing, can slip through the proverbial hand if not allowed to be felt. For most it's easy to turn their back, their spirit, on the crying child in the shopping cart or the toddler screaming "Mommy gave me a boo boo." Unbelievable.
I never planned to have children. Having lived a traumatic, dysfunctional childhood mixed with parental alcoholism and step-parent abuse that led to a three year descent into domestic violence in my early twenties, I didn't and still don't feel equipped to parent. The irony begins here, in my weakness. It is because I allow myself to remember my fear, anger, and terror that I am able to relate and open my heart to children who rely on adults for fulfilling their every need.
The most brutal and unforgivable communication that takes place between parent and child is spanking in any form. To physically hurt another person who has less power and is not able to defend their pain is abuse. There is no rationalization or justification for using violence as a method of correction or expression. Violence never has and never will solve any crisis, balm any wound. The trick is in realizing that violence, like thoughtlessness, once released cannot be controlled and takes a life of its own. Violence becomes a living entity that requires great, if not superhuman or supernatural, ability to contain.
The United States and its founding father, Christianity, hide behind the excuse of paradox as though by accepting more propaganda and fighting more wars one will gain entry into a secret club that provides answers and understanding about how the paradigm of individuality can survive the demoralizing impact of mass education and religion. Forced from birth to sleep, eat and think on a patterned schedule derived to fit the mainstream work, school, worship and shopping hours, the individual, the Self, is sublimated for group morays. Illusion predominates within all spheres of proported choice including but not limited to politics and the media.
Compassionate mothering today suffers the same scrutiny and judgment that thinkers and artists have withstood for centuries. Often ostracized and rejected, sensitive mothers struggle to live within a culture that rewards aggression, mediocrity and glamour rather than kindness, substance and beauty. Having to separate themselves from society in order to perform the heroic drives and creative impulses bubbling in their psyche and souls, empathic women are creating authentic lives for themselves and their families, despite the pressures of society to conform.
Homeschooling, attachment parenting, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, natural birth and spaced pregnancy are grass roots, primal, even tribal, urges pushing to resurface within Western collective consciousness. Passing muster with the corporate, scientific lens and finding a voice within popular marketing, humane living is slowly eeking its way back into the populace. Courageous, intelligent mothers are demanding respect for their children's needs and wants. Women are sacrificing career status in the now for the eternal, everlasting importance of mothering. Creeping across the harried faces of post partum madonnas is a knowing smile.
If you are lucky enough to see a mother hugging her child, speaking to her preschooler with respect and kindness or receiving the onslaught of an exhaustive tantrum with patience and grace, say a silent prayer of thanks and well wishing for her. She is sacrificing much to gain everything for us all. She is putting the humane back in humanity.
© Copyright Paula Vaughan
Not to be reprinted without permission.
Resources for further study
If you are lucky enough to see a mother hugging her child, speaking to her preschooler
with respect and kindness or receiving the onslaught of an exhaustive tantrum with
patience and grace, say a silent prayer of thanks and well wishing for her.
- Paula Vaughan