by Miki Kashtan

In contemporary, patriarchal societies, mothering often leads to mothers giving up on their own needs, because of the lack of a communal context of togetherness and support. One of the results of this is that, as children, we don’t learn about the needs of others as an organic limit we bump up against and within which we weave the unfolding of life. Instead, we encounter an either/or way of being, one of many around which patriarchal societies are organized. We either find no evidence of our mother’s needs at all, as the giving becomes sacrifice and the mother as a human being with her own life and flow, or there is an assertion of adults’ needs that shows up through arbitrary rules and imposed limits. In the former case, we end up lost in an existence where we are, artificially, the center of attention. In the latter case, we learn to be afraid of punishment rather than to grasp the impacts we all have on each other through navigating all our needs.

In the few families I am aware of where parenting is dialogical, children learn differently. Dialogue is central to life in such families. Needs, everyone’s needs – adults and children, are put on the table. Decisions are made together, even with very young children, where most adults would believe it impossible. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, as I know firsthand from the example of my nephew. You can get a tiny taste of it by watching me interview him when he was twelve. In those families, the needs of mothers gradually and organically become part of the mix, as capacity shifts and grows.

Even such families, though, the ones that I know of, are largely within the modern, patriarchal form of a nuclear family even when, as was the case in my late sister Inbal’s family, there are two adult women rather than a man and a woman who are raising the children. Inbal frequently expressed anguish at not being part of a community. Since reading Humberto Maturana Romesin and Gerda Verden-Zöller’s The Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love, and being exposed to the literature on matriarchal societies, I am now well aware that having two, or few, adults in a household with one or more children is not our evolutionary legacy. We are meant to come into a world in which there is a range of strategies to care for us from day one. As Maturana and Verden-Zöller suggest: “A baby is born in the operational trust that there is a world ready to satisfy in love and care all that he or she may require for his or her living, and is therefore not helpless.” This cannot happen in the world of scarcity in which we live, with the intensity of dyadic relationships that we mostly emerge from.

I am fortunate to have been invited to be part of a remarkable group of women who have come together around the courageous and meticulous work started by Heide Goettner-Abendroth in what she calls modern matriarchal studies. I often turn to this group with difficult questions, and so when the question first came about how children would learn about others’ needs, including and especially those of their own mothers, I approached them as teachers and colleagues. My question was simple: does mothering within matriarchal societies have dialogue built into relationships with children or does the flow unfold differently?

As the responses started coming in, I went through a literal leap in my understanding. I saw that my question was already making assumptions that only make sense within the context of certain kinds of relationships – between adults and children, between adults and adults, and between children and children – that only exist within the modern structure of nuclear families.

What I learned was so inspiring and shocking that I decided to share it more widely, to spark a conversation, to provoke deeper reflection in all of us who want to create pathways into a livable future. There is no way we can get there, I now believe, unless we shift the focus from the dyadic relationships of modern patriarchal societies (father-child, man-woman, mother-child) to the fluid, communal ways of living with mothering at the center, where all collaborate in the service of caring for everyone’s needs.

Summary of responses

I am grateful, in particular, to responses from Annie R.C. Finch, Erella Shadmi, Genevieve Vaughan, Irene Tazi-Preve, and Vajra Ma. Although I aimed to remain true to the spirit of what they said, these are my words and my interpretations of what they said, organizing it in ways that don’t necessarily reflect their views.

Also, the below is based on the more extreme forms of modern nuclear families which exist only in some places. It’s more of an abstraction than a description of any particular society. For example, Israeli society, more so in the past than now, was much more communal, oriented towards extended families and networks of neighbors filling in for the absence of true communities, where many gifts are shared within and between families. I still find it fruitful to make the stark comparison because it shows, I believe, some deep themes that would require active and conscious choice to counter them in order to shift rather than get more entrenched in patterns that pass on deep negative impacts from generation to generation.

To counter this a bit, I add in each line some possible strategies that families can bring in to consciously stand up to the social forces that pull us apart, individualize us, and make the lives of children and all of us more and more tenuous.

As I write this, and with great anguish, I am thinking about millions and millions of people who likely know that life isn’t working for them, and that life can’t work for their children. I imagine with agony that even though they wish they could give their children something else, something truly loving and open and honoring of the children’s needs as they children feel them, fully – they can’t, they just can’t, and they know that, too. Even if only in their cells, they know that life isn’t what it is meant to be, and there is nothing they can do to change that. I imagine how painful it would be to read all these thoughts below and feel the individual helplessness in the face of overwhelming systems that make changes of the kind I describe literally impossible. I also think of the many other millions of people around the world who live in the many places where the assault of modern, neoliberal capitalism is active, and who are part of communities still trying to resist and losing ground. I mourn how likely it is they know the impacts on their children from losing ground, how much they would know, precisely, the very losses described below, and still can’t give their children what they would wish to give them. There is great mourning in me as I write this piece.

Conclusion

What I am concluding from this deep dive into these questions is that the only reason children would need to learn about others’ needs is because life is structured in ways that make needs, everyone’s needs, invisible and discounted, including the child’s needs, the mother’s needs, and everyone else’s. When mothers are in a sacrificial rather than simply giving role, when they have to choose between engaging with other adults and contributing to the whole on the one hand, and being with their children on the other hand, and can’t do both, everyone suffers. When mothers and all adults can’t engage in meaningful activities with other adults and have children engage with them and learn organically, there is a separation of needs that gets imprinted, along with the exchange mindset that makes giving and receiving difficult to master.

While I provided some ideas about little steps families can take to counter these difficult trends, they require immense strength and capacity, both within the family and in relationship with the world outside the family. If any family chooses to shift along the lines I envision here, it will require examining every last habit and assumption; reaching out to find support, companionship, and creative solutions; and being willing to stand up to the likely backlash from others. While such heroic efforts do yield amazing results, they are not a possible solution for the mass of humanity. Most of us carry too much trauma from patriarchal conditioning and its intensification through gender socialization, racialized divisions, class injuries, and more and more variations as we carry it from generation to generation. Most of humanity, also, faces survival challenges that would make any of the steps I point to above an impossibility. I mourn the horror of all this, the horror of all the children who are born expecting, naturally, what every baby anticipates, and being, instead, thrown into what we now have. I call out to life to show us the way to come together to shake off that legacy. I call out to those of us with enough resources and clarity to give our lives in service to this restoration. Our future, if we have any, can only happen if we have children who experience, again, living in love and community. Let’s learn again. For the children.

PHOTO CREDIT

Baby boy child – courtesy of pixabay

Circle – Photo: Conor Ashleigh for AusAID on Flickr

White and black bird on brown nest – Marty Southwell on Unsplash

COMMENTS

The first time you comment on the site it will alert us to approve you manually. After that, your comments will be approved automatically, unless you include a link, which will require manual approval. We hope you will comment freely!

This is a space for discussing tough subjects: both personal experiences and the massive challenges in the wider world. The culture of this blog is one of looking for the possibility of forward movement through loving engagement, even, and especially, in times of disagreement. Please practice nonviolence in your comments by combining truth and courage with care for me and others you’re in dialogue with.