Mothers' Day Rant (written by a father)

Why Mothers' Day at Church Sucks

There's nothing like a pulpit on Mothers' Day for mansplaining. 

At church, we heard from man after man, spewing platitude after platitude: “I could never do what my wife does,” “We need to honor mothers like we honor Mary,” “Most of you are here because your mother wouldn't stop dragging you to church as a kid.”  We had the wonderful opportunity of listening to a twenty-first century male of European heritage tell us all about the emotions running through a first-century Jewish woman's heart as she gazed up at her executed son.  We had a male pastor try valiantly to not exclude anyone who lacked a penis from the wonders of motherhood.  (Naturally, he failed.)

But you know who we didn't hear from?

Mothers.

It wasn't because there were any shortage of them.  I saw lots of mothers from my seat in the back.  There were mothers on every row.  Mothers here, mothers there.  Generations of mothers, mothers sitting next to each other.  Some rows were even composed of nothing but mothers.

But every one of them was silent in church on a day that is ostensibly specifically designed to honor them.  The troubling part was that it didn't really seem to bother them.  In fact, they positively basked in all this misdirected masculine officialdom, lapping up the spectacle of men paying tribute to them as if the latter were Acadamy Award winning actors thanking their high school drama teachers.  Cute, but essentially meaningless.  I swear there was an “Aw, shucks” on every delicately rose-tinted lip.

But not one said anything beyond a quiet little chuckle to her neighbor.

You know what might honor mothers?  Maybe we should let mothers talk about what it's like to be a mother.  Maybe we should let women talk about what it's like to try to be a mother and fail.  Maybe we should hear what it's like to be a great mom and still—still--have an aching hole of unfulfilled longing inside her heart.  Maybe we should even get a mother into pastoring, and hear from her more than once a year, on stuff that matters to the whole damn congregation.  (Crazy talk, I know.)

Hell, maybe we should even let mothers talk about things that are important to mothers—who are, after all, at least nominally people, right?  Let's hear them talk about salvation, and Jesus, and coming to grips with the human condition.  Or having dreams, and a life of their own.  Or, God forbid, working outside the home.  (I hear that some mothers even like football and fishing and sex and tools, so let's let them talk about that, too.  Whatever the hell they want.  This is their day.)

And then maybe we can dignify their talk with more than just a polite chuckle to our neighbor.  Maybe we can find ways to pull women's issues out of a sidebar and put them into a mainstream conversation, to embrace the concerns of women as if they were genuine social concerns--which, last time I checked, they actually are.  Maybe mothers should be elders and pastors, and lawyers and CEO's and politicians—and maybe it shouldn't be a big deal when they make it happen.  Can mothers actually make policy and a family? Well, you know what they say: with the support of a great husband, anything's possible.

Or we can continue to maintain the silence.

But if we do, let's stop applauding ourselves for loving mothers, because if we maintain the silence, we don't love mothers at all.  We love the specifically assigned subordinant role that is typically given to women; we honor those women who pull it off with some semblence of competence; and we disfigure those women who don't, or can't, or won't.  (And we can't forget the way that linking motherhood to femininity in the first place causes tremendous pain to women who aren't mothers.)  The thing is, we're not celebrating the people who are mothers--we're celebrating the culture that keeps mothers from becoming the people they were meant to be.

Happy Patriarchy Day, everybody.