A Brief History of Motherhood

While some complain that Mother’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, celebrations of motherhood can in fact be traced back to ancient times. Ancient Greeks celebrated Rhea, the mother of the gods, while ancient Romans had a holiday to celebrate Cybele, a mother goddess. The tradition of celebrating mothers in springtime can be traced back to the celebrations of the goddess Brigid, which occurred at the first milk of the ewes. This brief history traces the way embarking on motherhood moved from being women’s sole purpose, to an assumption, to a duty to produce heirs, and finally, to a decision for the woman herself.

Ancient Times

Around 600 BC, Spartan girls were trained in athletics like running, discus and javelin, in order to become strong and healthy mothers.
In 431 AD, the Council of Ephesus first recognized Mary as the “Mother of God,” resulting in the spread of the cult of the Virgin Mother.
In the early years of the Roman Empire, women had little power: they were expected to be mothers and run household tasks. Infertility was grounds for a divorce. Women did not have a choice between having children or not, and also were not able to overrule the husband if he wanted to get rid of a newborn. After birth, babies were placed at the father’s feet. If he picked the child up, he “recognized” it as his, but if he left it where it was, the child was left to die by exposure. Later, as women gained economic power, Roman mothers exercised a genuine influence over family decisions.

Medieval Times

Medieval people had a special reverence for motherhood, in many ways inspired by the idolization of Mary. Motherhood was thus honored as an almost mystical ideal. Men were expected to show lifelong deference and respect to their mothers. Mothers of kings even held their own courts and led influential factions in royal politics.

On the downside, the medieval diet was low in iron, which women need more than men. Iron deficiencies meant many women were frail during childbearing years, and death during childbirth was common. In general, women died much earlier than men – but if they survived their childbearing years, they often lived longer than men. Later, changes in agriculture that brought better nutrition significantly raised the average woman’s life expectancy.
Women generally had 4-6 pregnancies over the course of twenty childbearing years. With a high rate of miscarriages and still births, women were either pregnant or nursing for most of their adult lifespan. (Up until the 18th century, 25% of children born in England died in their first year.)
For women of all social classes, raising a son to adulthood was the only means of securing their own support in old age.

Early Modern Mothers

Motherhood in early modern times has been described as “nasty, brutish, and far from short” – like Medieval women, early modern women spent about fifteen years either pregnant or nursing their children. Mothers wrapped their children in swaddling bands, thought to make limbs grow strong and straight. There are some accounts of peasant mothers hanging their swaddled babies on hooks to keep them out of the way while the women performed their exhausting amount of daily chores. Babies were also carried out to the fields and placed near where their mothers worked, sometimes secured in trees.
The Reformation was key in upgrading motherhood to a teaching position. Protestantism held that mothers were expected to read the Bible to their children, and to instruct their children in reading and religious knowledge. Of course, women were still restricted from official positions in the church, and many women in lower social classes remained illiterate, but the foundations of women as educators were laid.
The 17th century also laid the groundwork of a different cult of motherhood, as breastfeeding became a moral issue. Even wealthy women were encouraged to breastfeed their own children, although many still relied on wet nurses. This new emphasis on the joys of motherhood and celebrating domesticity would become the full-fledged “cult of motherhood” in the 18th century.

Industrial Revolution

While motherhood usually refers to the direct personal care aspects of mothering, the woman’s ability to contribute to the income of the household can also be considered a form of motherhood. So, it’s natural to expect that an economic force like the Industrial Revolution would reshape the role and perception of motherhood.

The effect of the Industrial Revolution on women’s employment was mixed. On the positive side, some claim that new labor opportunities developed. However, with limitations for women (legal and otherwise), the classic division between the man as provider and woman as domestic expert began, the division of labor principles of the Industrial Revolution pushing a further, parallel division of social role.
Working-class families that needed to pool wages to survive would tend to have more children, so as to have as many working hands as possible. Women not only formed a part of this familial labor force, but had to struggle to manage the greater domestic strain of having bigger families.

1930s

The 1930s marked a radical shift in family structure and the ideals of family life: a ‘good’ mother did not work, and women who did pursue careers were stigmatized as selfish women, devoid of a proper maternal instinct and nature. The Great Depression only furthered the need for a mother to keep the family together, while the man was out trying to provide for his family.

1940s

The role of mothers became even more crucial and demanding with husbands and sons off to war. The war years caused most families incredible hardship. Around five million war widows were left alone to cook, clean, and care for the children. Making up for the workforce lost overseas, many women were also trying to hold down factory jobs which demanded long hours. Stresses and strains of separation and war trauma caused a spike in the divorce rate after the war.

1950s

Marriage and birth rates soared at the end of the war, and women were again placed in charge of housekeeping and raising the family. The 1950s encouraged the ideal of the ‘stable’ and ‘model’ family and the American Dream Ray H. Abrams’s article, “The Concept of Family Stability” (November 1950), emphasizes the materialistic bent of this dream: “the ideal family, judging from the advertisements, blurbs, and social pressures of our time, is also one that it is constantly endeavoring to raise its standard of living by security better houses, automobiles, education, radio and television sets, and in a not too aggressive fashion by attempting to climb the social ladder with all of its neat class stratifications.”

1960s

The sexual revolution of the 1960s allowed women to begin to exert power and freedom more publicly. Despite this revolution and the efforts of minority groups to gain equal rights, attitudes towards women changed a surprisingly little amount. Most American women in the Sixties were mothers and housewives, volunteering at churches and PTAs. Business and politics remained almost exclusively controlled by men. Women did start to work more outside of the home, but those who did were still in the minority.
In a huge leap forward for women’s choice in having children, the 1960s saw the birth control pill become widely available to the public, with 1.2 million American women taking the pill by 1962. 2.3 million were on the pill by 1963, and by 1965, 6.5 million women were taking the pill and it became the most popular form of reversible birth control.

1970 - Today

The most significant changes in women’s roles were brought about by the rise in feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Women organized for equal rights and employment finally began to change. Their full participation in the labor market was even encouraged. Women with college degrees were actually using those degrees to enter the professional world.

Another significant change occurring in the family structure was the role of the mother. Whereas her responsibility and duty had been based solely in the care and upbringing of her child, the role of ‘educator’ was now being relegated to professionals. Children as young as two and three years old were sent to pre-schools, allowing mothers to pursue careers as well as have a family. Even though beliefs that the rise in working women would bring about the demise of the family, women proved they were still the glue that held the family together.

Notably, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels argue in The Mommy Myth that media since the 1970s has created an impossible to reach idealized mother figure that has subtly demonized the working mother’s role, her attention away from perfect mom details coming off as unduly sacrificed. Women – and mothers – are certainly working more: under a third of married women worked outside the home in 1961, while by the 1990s, closer to two-thirds of married women were in paid employment.
Less than a third of married women were in paid employment in 1961, in 1991 it was over half. As wages have trended towards more equality, more and more cases of the typically maternal role have shifted to men as part of a greater redefining of the women’s and a mother’s place in society. Single motherhood is more accepted, women have more rights, and while domestic arrangement stereotypes still exist, they are on the decline.

There is no denying that mothers certainly have a tough job to carry out, even if concerns like death during childbirth have been largely controlled. Surveys report that one of the biggest challenges in raising children today is dealing with outside influences such as drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, television and other media outlets, which were not as prevalent even thirty years ago. Though children are expected to be more self-sufficient, mothers are often the ones caught juggling the duties of work and family life.

So this Mother’s Day, take a moment to appreciate how far motherhood has come, and look forward to a future of capable and equally-treated women as you thank your mother for doing the job as millions of mothers have before.
Here are some quotes about motherhood to leave you with:
Honore de Balzac
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
Tenneva Jordan
A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.
Sophia Loren
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
Irish Proverb
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
Victoria Billings
The best thing that could happen to motherhood already has. Fewer women are going into it.
Honore de Balzac
A mother who is really a mother is never free.