Mother: superheroine and scapegoat

Motherly love, it is said, is the strongest feeling of all: natural and absolute, eternal and incomparable to anything else. Accordingly, an image of the good mother exists in our minds: "Unconditional, self-sacrificing, selfless - these are her attributes. A superhero who can do everything and who is always in the right place at the right time. A person who loves inexhaustibly and is available for everyone.

Someone who provides support throughout her life, but also lets go magnanimously when the time is right." This is how journalists and authors Annika Rösler and Evelyn Höllrigl Tschaikner describe an ideal of motherhood that we are all familiar with in «Mythos Mutterinstinkt».

We are characterised by an extremely exaggerated image of motherhood.

Gaby Gschwend (1956 - 2017), psychologist

In Switzerland, Gaby Gschwend was one of the first to criticise this image of the mother in specialist literature. «The mother myth is an extremely exaggerated, idealised, romanticised idea of the mother, her importance for the child and the nature of the mother-child relationship,» the psychologist and author, who died in 2017, stated.

Problematic clichés

«Although these images are not and cannot be realistic, we are strongly influenced by them emotionally and mentally.» This has resulted in seemingly irrefutable certainties such as that a mother's love for her child is unconditional and that the intensity of her feelings knows no fluctuations. Or the assumption that a mother loves all her children equally - and that they only thrive in her care.

Such clichés are problematic in many respects, says Gschwend. For the child, for example: anyone who doesn't receive love from their mother automatically blames themselves - because the unloving mother «simply doesn't exist». And women can only fail because of the mother myth, because they naturally don't only have positive feelings towards their children. «Many feel guilty about it .»

Motherhood - a double-edged sword

The exaggeration of motherhood is a double-edged sword: people put the mother on a pedestal - and judge her all the more harshly when something goes wrong. Claudia Haarmann, therapist and author, knows that when things go wrong in the lives of adults, the question soon arises as to what part the mother could have played in it. «The mother can only do it wrong,» she says, «because the idea is that she has to be right in everything.»

Motherly love is a human emotion like any other - fleeting, uncertain, imperfect.

Elisabeth Badinter, philosopher

Where does this ideal of the super mum come from and what does it achieve? Do mothers really know best by nature what children need? And let's take a look at the private sphere: What motivates women who accompany their children on their journey through life? How does a mother mould her daughters and sons? What influence does our experience with her have on how we deal with our own children? This dossier explores these and other questions.

«Motherly love is only a human feeling. Like every feeling, it is uncertain, transient and imperfect. Contrary to popular belief, it is possibly not a basic component of female nature,» writes French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter in «Motherly Love».

The transformation of motherly love

In this classic, she shows that the idea of the unconditionally loving mother is relatively young. Badinter quotes official documents from 1780, which show that of 21,000 children born in Paris, only 1,000 were breastfed by their mothers. «Another thousand,» noted a police lieutenant named Lenoir, «enjoy the privilege of being breastfed by wet nurses at home. All the others are placed at the tenderest age with a foster mother who may live far away.»

A circumstance that raises questions, says Badinter: «How can one explain the fact that the infant is left in the hands of strangers at a time when mother's milk and maternal care meant a greater chance of survival for it? Why is it that the indifferent mother of the 18th century has turned into the anxious mother of the 19th and 20th centuries?»

A completely new view of the child

Author Gaby Gschwend asked herself the same questions. In «Mothers without love», she traces how the meaning of motherhood has varied over time. «Until well into the 18th century, motherly love was not associated with any particular social or moral value,» writes Gschwend. «In general, children did not count for much. Especially for women who had to work for a living, they were often regarded as a misfortune.»

After the puerperium, children were left to foster families and farm servants. In the middle classes, they were sent to boarding schools so that the mother could represent or act as a matron. She helped out in her husband's business or trade and hired labourers and domestic servants.

Until the 18th century, one in three children died before their first birthday. It is true that poverty forced many women to give up their child, admits philosopher Badinter. However, she argues that this does not explain the high infant mortality rate in all social classes, pointing to women «who were perfectly capable of bringing up their children and loving them, and who did not do so for centuries. Apparently, they felt that this occupation was unworthy of them and so they decided to get rid of this burden. Incidentally, they did so without causing the slightest scandal.»

At the same time, a new ideal of motherhood was born. In «Émile», the most widely read educational book in world literature, Jean-Jacques Rousseau opened up a new view of the child in 1759: he described it as an individual in need of care. The Genevan Enlightenment philosopher was convinced that human beings were good by nature. However, their talents did not develop on their own, they needed guidance. Rousseau had the mother in mind for this - as a mother who gives birth and nurtures, she is predestined to preserve the good in people.

How the mum got on the pedestal

The advance of industrialisation made such ideas more popular. People moved to the cities and there was a separation between the household and the workplace. Prosperity increased and the middle class grew. «In fact, it became a central component of middle-class status that a man could do without the productive labour of his wife,» writes historian Steven Mintz in the anthology «Mutterschaft, Vaterschaft».

While motherhood remained of secondary importance in working-class families, education became a conscious matter in the middle classes. «There was a growing conviction that women - free from the corrupting influences of business and politics - had a special ability to develop character traits in children that a free society depended on,» says Mintz. And: «In the middle classes, raising children was increasingly associated with instilling feelings of guilt.»

The image of the mother who is exclusively a mother - because she is called to be one by nature - has persisted for almost 200 years. Modern contraception and feminism have brought about changes. However, they have not been able to dismantle what educationalist Margrit Stamm calls the ideal of the intensive mother. «It is based on the deeply rooted social conviction that a mother should do everything imaginable for her child and must always remain its most important carer.»

Mothers in the attachment trap

According to Stamm, this credo has even intensified recently. There are many reasons for this. For example, women's policy has propagated female employment as a guarantee of freedom, but motherhood continues to be regarded as a private matter - «the main responsibility for the child remains with the woman». According to Stamm, this is due to the unshakeable belief that a child needs its mother for optimal development.

It is fuelled not only by traditionalists, but also by one-sided interpretations and often outdated assumptions of attachment theory: «Since the beginning of the new millennium, attachment theory has been reclaiming the place it held in the 1970s. It is remarkable that this triumphal march with its worrying view of the absent mother began - once again - when women returned to the labour market in large numbers.»

Your everyday life is their childhood: for many mums, this sentence feels like stepping on a Lego brick at night.

Annika Rösler & Evelyn Höllrigl Tschaikner, book authors

In the 1970s, researchers such as John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and Donald Winnicott raised awareness of the fact that secure attachment is central to a child's development. This focus on the child was groundbreaking, but only made mothers responsible. For example, the British paediatrician John Bowlby initially held the view that «the father is of no direct importance for the development of the infant».

His colleague Donald Winnicott found that women alone are able to empathise with their child due to their «primary maternal nature». If this was not successful, the child was at risk of drastic consequences such as autism. Winnicott later coined the term «good enough mother». He hardly deviated from the mother as the most important caregiver. And emphasised that it was crucial for a good relationship with the child that the woman enjoyed motherhood.

Children as a moral authority

It seems as if his admonitions still resonate today: «Your everyday life is their childhood» is the number one motto in mum communities. «A phrase that for many mothers feels like stepping on a Lego brick at night without stopping,» say journalists Annika Rösler and Evelyn Höllrigl Tschaikner. «It's no longer about having children and travelling a stretch of life together with them, but also about being as happy as possible. A happy mother is a mother of happy children. Whereby the children are elevated to a kind of moral authority.»

If the world becomes harsh and inhospitable, the child and family represent a safe place and are needed accordingly.

Claudia Haarmann, therapist

Social researcher Stamm is convinced that self-sacrificing motherhood is reinforced by social pressure to optimise. «We believe that we can mould children until they meet certain expectations.» Behind this is an attitude that views the child as an indicator of parental success and thus turns it into a competitive factor. «Children should no longer develop within the norm, but ideally beyond it.»

This support responsibility falls primarily to women. «In Switzerland, the reality is that schools call on mothers when necessary and fathers only in emergencies.»

Child refuge

Educational scientist Margrit Stamm, philosopher Elisabeth Badinter and therapist Claudia Haarmann all suspect that it is not least uncertain times that contribute to the over-stylisation of motherhood. Haarmann calls this phenomenon the «refuge of the child»: «When the world becomes harsh and inhospitable, it is human to harbour hope. Then the child and the family represent a safe place and are needed in that sense.»

Badinter observes an escape into the «natural». In her bestseller «The Conflict», she notes that more and more women are discouraged by the tough world of work. They let themselves be seduced by the new, biologically influenced feminism. This no longer demands equality between the sexes, but rather emphasises their differences.

The majority of the world's population treats children differently than we do.

Heidi Keller, Psychologist

In contrast to the women's movement, which regarded motherhood as a side effect of a woman's life, a new generation of feminists understands motherhood «as the central experience of femininity, on the basis of which a new, more humane and fairer world can emerge».

This feminism glorifies the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and childbirth - as well as nature as a reference point above all else. «Women see it as a relief to stay at home for a few years, to be the really good mothers that their own mothers were not, and to make their children their life's work. They pride themselves on being more authentic, less consumer-orientated and more in touch with nature.»

Other countries, other customs

With all the over-focus on the child, we forget that things are different elsewhere - and that children still develop healthily. Heidi Keller, a retired psychology professor, spent decades analysing how children grow up in different cultures. Her conclusion: in all parts of the world, communities are convinced that they are dealing with their offspring in the only right way - «which can look very different».

In village communities in Madagascar, for example, the mother's main task is to breastfeed the child, while older children take over its upbringing. In parts of Cameroon or India, maternal behaviour that is considered caring in this country, such as playing with the child, would be unthinkable. «Children there have such experiences among their peers,» says Keller, «because many forms of interaction between young and old, especially eye contact, are hierarchically ritualised.»

In western industrialised countries, on the other hand, a mother who refuses her child undivided attention is considered disinterested. «In our culture, one-to-one interaction is desirable,» says Keller. «The majority of the world's population handles it differently: a child has a large number of contact persons, communication is often simultaneous. They listen to several people at the same time and observe a lot.»

Keller also criticises attachment theory - because it claims universal validity, but is based on the model of the Western middle-class family: «Attachment figures are adults, the exchange with them is exclusive. This pattern does not apply to the majority of the world's population.» Keller knows from her research in daycare centres: «People are quite quick with attachment classifications when it comes to making a judgement based on a snapshot.»

The diagnosis of «insecure attachment» is made arbitrarily, whether because a child cries often or rarely, is brash or reserved. Prejudices are usually levelled at the mother. «The demand to always react sensitively to the child's needs is too much for many women,» says Keller. «Some to the point of exhaustion.»

Barriers to a modern image of motherhood

The common suggestion that mothers should be more relaxed falls short of the mark, says educationalist Margrit Stamm. «Such demands are one-sided because they assume that excessive devotion to the child is an exclusively individual choice. What we need more urgently is a redimensioning of societal beliefs about how mothers should be, as well as overcoming the prejudice that women are the most caring carers.»

Many believe that this can be achieved if men take on more family work, while the state invests in supplementary family care and promotes more flexible working models or compensatory benefits such as parental allowance. According to Stamm, such efforts are a step in the right direction, «whether they will help to reform a backward maternity ideal in the long term remains to be seen».

Mothers need to free themselves from the idea that they are the most important person in their children's lives.

Margrit Stamm, educational scientist

The belief that only self-sacrificing mothers are good mothers is widespread among the majority of educated women. Regardless of whether they are full-time mums or working mothers. «They believe that they are primarily responsible for their child, even if it is being looked after by others,» says Stamm. «This logic is the biggest barrier to modernising the image of motherhood.»

Reflecting on emotional overinvestment

This is why we need mothers who not only demand more flexible jobs and more committed fathers, but also change their perspective. «This means that they are willing to confront their potentially over-involved behaviour,» says Stamm, «and free themselves from the idea that they are the most important person in their children's lives.» The emotional over-investment in the child not only impairs their freedom, it also prevents shared responsibility as parents.

The researcher knows from surveys that women definitely recognise that being a good enough mother would be an option. However, a common argument is that cutting back as a mother is not an option because the partner does not compensate properly - and then serves fast food, does not dress the child warmly enough and neglects the household.

Stamm's long-term study on parental workload shows that mothers work far more hours in the household than fathers, even if the women work full-time. In all other areas, however, the shared workload predominates. And: fathers generate three quarters of the household income on average. «Whether we like to hear it or not,» says Stamm, «a full pay packet is also a form of care.»

Sultana pickers and control freaks

The most common family model in Switzerland - the father is the main breadwinner, the mother earns the extra income - is usually chosen by couples together, Stamm knows: «Women express the desire to spend more time with the children and take on the main responsibility for the home.»

Couples thus perpetuate the gender-specific division of labour, which cements the corresponding clichés. Once again, surveys bear witness to this: «Mothers complain about inexperienced partners who cherry-pick at home, while fathers often point to their two left hands and the seemingly superior skills of their partner.»

How could it be better? «One prerequisite is the willingness of both partners to question themselves,» believes Stamm. «First of all, this means recognising that you can't change anything in a partnership if you only want the other person to change. Both partners should therefore sensitise themselves to the situation of the other. This is the case when men recognise that their cherry-picking or flaunted helplessness is a burden on their partner's identity as a woman. And when women learn to reduce their sphere of influence and relinquish it without seeing their own approach as the gold standard.»