is the perfect mother a perfect wife? is the perfect mother, in every case, the result of mental perfection and ethical superiority? or is there a hidden strife between love and motherhood? is mother love always the enchanting image presented to us by poets and intimidated sons? or is it an alloy of higher qualities, biological necessity and egotistical neurotic cravings?
i do not intend to settle all those problems within the limits of a short chapter, but rather to point out some of the morbid components of mother love which a psychoanalyst detects in his women patients, and which, exaggerated in the neurotic, exist to a slight degree in every woman.
sex cravings and motherhood cravings are so closely related that few psychologists have ever dreamt of dissociating them for the purpose of study. the average moralist, who prefers cheap popularity to scientific accuracy, excuses the exis[pg 242]tence of sex cravings only on one condition, that they become absolutely subservient to motherhood cravings.
the birth control agitation which is making such rapid headway at the present day, on the other hand, means, in part, that while motherhood may be the consequence of unregulated sex activities, it is not, for all women, their conscious motive.
why is it that some women with an erotic disposition and a voluptuous physique, fear pregnancy while other women, apparently indifferent to men, crave motherhood?
physiology does not give us a very satisfactory answer to this question. endocrinologists tell us that sex cravings are determined by the ovaries and motherhood cravings by the posterior part of the pituitary gland, but this leaves us exactly where we were when we started out.
pregnancy and health. all physiologists will agree with the statement that in a normal, complex free woman, a type which unfortunately, the complexity of our civilization does not allow us to behold very frequently, pregnancy is accompanied by an unusual activity of all the organism, imparting to the female a sense of great power and, consequently, of well-being, mental and physical. the[pg 243] adrenals work at high pressure to produce the muscular tone necessary in gestation. the thyroid is called upon to transform more and more of the electric current produced by the brain cells. new glands of a temporary nature develop in the woman's body, regulating her life functions more accurately and imparting to her a feeling of dreamy happiness and relaxation.
after delivery, another part of her body enters into activity, her mammary glands, so closely related to the genitals that any stimulation of either region finds a strong echo in the other. many are the women in whom lactation produces intensely erotic feelings affording them at times full gratification.
fear of pregnancy. unfortunately, civilisation has surrounded motherhood with so many complications, social, ethical, financial, sentimental, etc., that in very few women, indeed, is that biological process an unmixed pleasure, dissociated from all pain and anxiety.
vomiting, which expresses the female's disgust for her condition, or her mate or the offspring; cramplike tensions, expressing her worries about her appearance, her anxious thought of financial or social consequences; anxiety states, affecting the ad[pg 244]renals, which discolor her face (pregnancy mask), make pregnancy hideous in many cases.
even the process of parturition seems to have become more painful and dangerous with advancing civilisation.
any one who has seen, for instance, mexican women barely interrupting their labor in the fields to give birth to a child, and resuming their tasks an hour later, must realise that autosuggestion has much to do with the physical disability of the civilised woman in child bed.
in spite of the complexities of modern life, the female organism which is not affected by fear complexes, must expect a pleasure premium from pregnancy, lactation and other duties of motherhood. this would supply us with an organic basis for the mother's attachment to her offspring which is observable almost in every animal species.
that a number of women may be found who hate their children owing to the suffering to which unwelcome motherhood and difficult parturition have subjected them, is easily understandable. in fact we face a vicious circle. the unwelcome pregnancy will be an unpleasant one, followed almost unavoidably by painful delivery, etc.
when mother love is lacking or when a[pg 245] mother hates a very young child, the psychologist must look for morbid unconscious influences which analysis should remove as soon as possible.
stekel, the viennese analyst, tells of a woman who was very fond of three of her daughters but, for some mysterious reason, detested the fourth one. analysis revealed that she imagined she saw every one of her husband's faults reproduced and magnified in the unfortunate child.
she also imagined that she loved her husband very deeply.
the year when the unloved child was conceived, however, she had fallen in love with another man, a young poet. she remained "technically faithful" to her husband, altho, when in his arms, it was always the poet to whom she was giving herself.
she hoped sentimentally that the forthcoming child would look like her platonic lover but the little girl reproduced with striking faithfulness her father's features.
unwilling to accept her dislike of her husband, the romantic mother had transferred it to the child who served as a scapegoat in various ways.
frigid wives. we often observe a great craving for motherhood in frigid wives.
let us not rehash on this occasion the poetical[pg 246] and silly statement that the frigid woman is one whose love has been spiritualised and can only find an outlet thru her children.
the frigid woman is a cripple or a neurotic. either she was born with poorly developed genitals or she was made abnormal by the unconscious fear of yielding to man's domination, or by a morbid sense of sin due to asceticism, or by painful or humiliating sex experiences before or after marriage.
her craving for motherhood is not infrequently the hypocritical expression of her desire for intercourse, which her puritan training would otherwise make lewd and sinful. it is, at times, a desire for the superiority which age and bodily size will give her over infants, helpless and inarticulate.
this is why, in a good many cases, a perfect mother makes a detestable wife. unable to dominate her husband she craves children whom she can dominate with a minimum of bodily strength and mental effort, and she devotes all her time and care to them.
when the children grow up and develop independent personalities, the neurotic mother often loses her interest in them. how many times have we heard women (and men) remark that children[pg 247] should remain "babies," that young children are far more lovable than adolescents, etc.
mother and father love differ in several respects.
fathers look upon their children, especially their sons, as a visible proof of their virile power. in their sons they see their own image, the more attractive to them as they are more egotistical.
the weak, infirm or unsuccessful son, however, receives little love at the hands of his father. he is not a credit to his progenitor.
no mother, on the other hand, seems to neglect a cripple or idiotic child. be it male or female, it is a human being which she can dominate easily. the more neurotic she is, the more she will idolise the ill-favored child.
mothers always adore their sons, young and old, for they behold in them males whom they can easily dominate.
and fathers love their daughters, young or old, for similar reasons.
the relations of aging mothers and growing daughters, however, are almost invariably tinged with a certain hostility, overt or concealed, according to the women's habits, training, manners, etc.
girls at the flapper stage who resent the at[pg 248]traction which their mothers still wield over younger men, constantly remind them of their age and bid them to behave in a way more in keeping with their mature years.
the flapper's mother on the other hand, who sees her daughter gradually monopolising the attention of men callers, reminds the girl with monotonous regularity that she is only a child and bids her to behave as befits her tender years.
the mother resents her daughter's fresh beauty, the daughter, her mother's experience in dealing with males.
both watch each other closely, protecting each other's modesty and virtue and trying to make each other's life as uninteresting and uneventful as possible.
the girl becomes an ethical critic on her mother's smoking or gowns. the mother blossoms into a puritan who allows her daughter no freedom and seems to have entirely forgotten her own girlhood years.
the strife lasts until the daughter is old enough to have her own circle of friends and no longer needs a chaperone. after which mother and daughter, if matched intellectually, may once more become friends.
[pg 249]
repressed hatred. i have treated a number of neurotic mothers who seemed to be obsessed by their adoration of their children. that exaggerated tenderness was, as i mentioned in another chapter, a cover for death wishes directed toward those children.
some never allowed knives to be left in evidence in the house, some did not dare to carry their children in their arms on the stairs, while boarding trains, or while near open windows.
one never dared to administer a medicine to her little girl "for fear of making a mistake and poisoning her." one did not dare to bathe her child for fear of drowning him "accidentally" in the tub.
neurotic women who do not wish to become mothers and rebel against motherhood, (which some of them consider as a symbol of woman's inferior role), often compensate for their lack of love by an almost criminal indulgence and weakness toward their children.
unable to give them genuine love, they pretend to idolise them and are apparently unable to deny any of their wishes. this, in last analysis, is simply a total indifference to the little ones' welfare. that type of mother spoils her children and makes them unfit to face life and its emergencies.
[pg 250]
her extravagant adulation, her outbursts of artificial tenderness, however, do not always deceive the children themselves who feel automatically, thru nervous and muscular imitation, the tensions of their mother's body. the little son of the woman who was obsessed by the fear of drowning him (and who compensated for her murderous cravings by showering the wildest caresses upon him), could not be prevailed upon to ever go near the water until her obsessions, of which, he, of course, had no conscious knowledge, had been removed by psychoanalytic treatment.
neurotic mother love trains children for a neurotic life.
