Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Motherhood and the denial of the mother

Maris Piper said:
It's true though. Humans are animals and they are really easy to breed which undermines our individualistic myths
Click to expand...

This is rubbish. Women take a serious health risk by becoming pregnant and having a baby. Any number of things can go wrong for both mother and foetus.
Your throwaway post appears to dismiss women and child birth as a simple straightforward biological thing and that is wrong. You fail to acknowledge, let alone recognise life and death risks that exist during pregnancy.
 
SheilaNaGig said:
My mother was dangerous from the very start. She denied being pregnant whilst carrying both me and my sister. She just stopped having contractions during my birth (inertial uterus) because her denial of motherhood was more powerful than her own biology; we laboured together for nearly four days before she was knocked out and I was cut out of her. She denied being pregnant even during labour with my sister and then said "take it away. I am not a mother" when she was born. She went floridly mad after both our births (post partum psychosis). She nearly killed us both with neglect. My father rescued us again and again, finally by divorcing her.

There's no doubt she was very unwell. She never wanted children and should never have had them. She took drugs whilst carrying me that have rendered me infertile and contributed to my own breast cancer. I am profoundly unmothered, as is my sister.

My father later married a woman who was (and remains) deeply unkind, abusive, enotionally violent and dangerous. All her children and step children continue to struggle with the effects of her abuse.

My mother is old, unhappy, bitter, mean-minded and lonely. I've never loved her even as I yearned desperately for her. I didn't deny her: she denied me.

I'm not unique in having dysfunctional mothering.

I don't recognise the argument set forth in the OP.
Click to expand...
I’m a bit :eek::hmm: at the idea women who don’t want children can stop the childbirth. It sounds biologically unlikely and feeds into the whole ‘if you were good enough as a mother you’d have a natural birth/have an easy baby/have an intelligent healthy child/whatever else society wants to guilt trip mothers about’. Many women are wracked by guilt and distress at having had difficult births and emergency c-sections because of this sort of narrative. It sounds like your mother has a lot of problems and then a very traumatic birth, which can cause trauma and issues bonding.

I’m not denying your mother and step mother may have been awful and not wanted/been in any way suited to having children. I just think we can discuss this AND avoid feeding into some of the myths about women and their bodies....

(For those following American politics, this sort of thing is already very prevalent over there. Women can only get pregnant if they want to, according to some republicans, so if you are pregnant as the result of a rape- well, you must have enjoyed it. Women who have miscarriages are routinely investigated for ‘causing’ them. It’s all very nasty and regressive)
 
SpookyFrank said:
If your kids don't call you, maybe that's a personal thing not part of a massive social trend.
Click to expand...

:D My poor kids are still at home with me

kropotkin said:
Maybe her daughters have sacked her off?
Click to expand...

Sons - at the moment I have sons

spanglechick said:
Umm. No. The ovaries are pretty essential in IVF.
Click to expand...

I know someone who adopted an embryo. Ovaries were still important but not her own ones.

S☼I said:
Nah, the way it works is this: you introduce a statement/question/phrase, and if you weren't clear it's up to you to make it so.
Click to expand...

Seems to work quite well doesn't it

Lupa said:
I'm not sure what this thread is about based on the OP?

But human matriarchal societies existed in the past and still do in certain places...

6 Modern Societies Where Women Rule...
Click to expand...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31274/6-modern-societies-where-women-literally-rule
Thank you I look forward to reading the link(s)

Lupa said:
The OP isnt so clear but maybe that's ok. It gives people an opportunity to look at human relationship from a perspective of mothers or motherhood or matriarchy.
Click to expand...
I never am it seems

S☼I said:
Bold mindset for a new poster, this.
Click to expand...

Bold, slightly bonkers, possibly brilliant...

Red Cat said:
Anyway, on my street, there are families who've lived here for decades and the daughters and mothers live on the same street and the daughters who live elsewhere visit several times a week. At the school my children attend, I often see mothers and their mothers.

I don't visit my own mother much because of a difficult relationship; I don't see it as a general phenomenon although I think these difficult relationships are sometimes repeated in families.
Click to expand...

Where do you live? I kind of dream of being part of a society like this. Only kind of dream

Maris Piper said:
Ok. This is way beneath me. You lot are better off just saying why you like, finally understand your mother
Sorry you couldn't get to glasto and be on enough drugs to make your empty lives seem interesting xx
Click to expand...

Yep def bold and bonkers :D Let's see if the brilliance shines through

Clair De Lune said:
I have no idea what this thread is about :D:confused:
Click to expand...

:D:D:thumbs:
 
To clarify a bit more on my OP... I posted late last night/this morning in a flushed rush and then "had" to go to bed...

Luce Irigara writes much on the relationship of women, especially mothers and quite specifically at times about mothers and daughters. I would not recommend reading her as for want of a better word (but my brain is still unfocussed) it's pretty turgid stuff. You can read and reread and still not be quite sure what she is actually saying. Interestingly as a person she comes across as extremely unmaternal and almost misogynistic. Don't tell her I said that. Although she has said worse to me.

If you give her a google there are some great explanatory essays that are much nicer to read.
 
S☼I said:
Hi Judith. Still awaiting clarification on what you meant by "denial of the mother".
Click to expand...

Does mother know best? That's the simplest way I can think to articulate it. My brain is a bit mushy this morning. I will try and expand later after a veggie fry up.

And if mother does know best do we and if we do, when do we start to rebel against this assumption and why? I hope that makes sense? I need greasy food...
 
Maris Piper said:
Ok. This is way beneath me. You lot are better off just saying why you like, finally understand your mother
Sorry you couldn't get to glasto and be on enough drugs to make your empty lives seem interesting xx
Click to expand...
Spot being a patronising condescending twat, please. Thanks.
 
Lol

Someone once told me that we will never feel more content than when we were in the womb. We eat, sleep, pee when we want, are constantly womb and protected.

Knowing that made me feel a bit depressed tbh
 
I've always hugely loved and admired my mum for a lot of things... one of which is that she came so positively out of having a mother who couldn't or wouldn't express love to her - something I think my mum realised in her adult life was because tragically, her mum lost her three other children (cot death, meningitis, lethal reaction to anaesthetic in a routine operation), so she was scared of loving the only remaining one.

I often think my mum could easily have reacted to this by being a cold and distant mother herself, or by being smothering and overbearing, but she's always been great at just making it clear she loves us all. I think once she understood why her mother acted as she did, she forgave her and moved on from any resentment she may have felt about it.
 
JudithB said:
Lol

Someone once told me that we will never feel more content than when we were in the womb. We eat, sleep, pee when we want, are constantly womb and protected.

Knowing that made me feel a bit depressed tbh
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's true. Or not universally. Current findings re: epigenetic changes strongly suggest that anxiety, stress, hunger etc. experienced by the mother materially change the in utero development of the child. This would also suggest that the embryo is somehow also experiencing stress etc.
 
I expect that the rather ugly term "Inertial uterus" was used to cover a lot of stuff back in those days. She was probably exhausted, frightened, at her wits end. Labour wasn't working. Nearly four days.
Click to expand...

I suspect this is exactly the point Manter was making. Saying she could stop her labour at will is not quite the same thing.
 
Lupa said:
View attachment 175872
Click to expand...
Some_image.width-1200.e6e098e.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Humberto
Medieval British Tortures at the Hands of the State - Victims and Their Stories
2
Replies
33
Views
1K
Humberto
Humberto
Yugoslav
The Left Failing Young Men (and how to reclaim the Left from liberals)
5 6 7 8 9
Replies
244
Views
4K
existentialist
existentialist
K
Any members of the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids?
2
Replies
43
Views
2K
dessiato
dessiato
danny la rouge
Scottish velar fricative change by age, gender and class in Glasgow - hypothesis
2
Replies
59
Views
1K
maomao
maomao
Cloo
The gap between theoretical arguments and lived reality
2 3 4
Replies
103
Views
6K
Koknbul
Koknbul
Back
Top Bottom