Moms Should Not Be Their Kids’ Servants

In my life as a public speaker, I often poll my audiences on various topics, sometimes to illustrate a point, sometimes to both collect and impart information. One such poll involves asking “How many of you grew up with a mother who, without raising her voice or threatening you in any overt manner, could strike terror into your heart?” Reliably, a clear majority raise their hands.

My mother certainly possessed that skill, and the terror in question was not connected with fear of losing her love or of some draconian physical punishment, but simply with incurring her uncompromising disapproval.

The worst thing, in fact, that she would do under such circumstances was to not talk to me for an hour or so. There was no rage, not even a long-winded diatribe on the need to behave properly, just silence. But the realization that I had violated her trust was quite enough to set me straight.

According to my peers, most mothers of bygone days were cut from similar cloth.

Then I ask, “How many of you women, again without raising your voices or threatening in some overt way, are able to strike terror into the hearts of your children, to freeze them in their tracks with a subtle shift of tone, to rivet their attention to you by speaking their names in a certain manner?” Few hands go up.

I interpret this to mean that in the short space of 30-odd years, the American mother has abdicated her authority over her children.

This has happened, I think, because of psychobabble to the effect that children are delicate bio-vases of self-esteem who will crack and begin leaking if they are made miserable by a parental action. Because of this babble, mothers were persuaded to become caretakers of their children’s psychological health.

It’s not that a child’s psychological health doesn’t matter. My mother and most of her generation (and those going before) realized that making me unhappy, even miserable when circumstances demanded it, was essential to my eventual psychological integrity.

I never doubted my mother’s love for me, but today’s mother seems to believe that if she makes her child unhappy and does not immediately correct her sin, that her child will question her love and grow up with chronic fear of abandonment or an attachment disorder or some such nonsense. All the more ironic is the fact that this generation of women claims to be liberated, at least relative to their foremothers.

I recently spent some time with one such “liberated” mother and her 10-year-old son. This boy contradicted her constantly, interrupted every single conversation in which she engaged, argued with her, manipulated her (with sullenness, whining, complaining and the like), and generally told her what to do next. And she catered to all of it.

During one of our few uninterrupted conversations - the child had gone to bed - she commented on how men dominate American life, domestic and professional. The patriarchy, she called it. I was too dumbfounded to even point out the obvious, not that she would have seen the connection.

I wonder how many of today’s women are similarly blind to the fact that respecting women - which, despite mythology to the contrary, most men of my generation do - is a habit that begins in childhood in a relationship with a mother who commands respect.

As for girls, how does a female child come to respect herself if her mother acts not as an authority, but as a servant? The answer, of course, is self-evident.

It is at once supremely ironic and supremely tragic that a generation of women determined to break through glass ceilings will let their children drive them up the wall and do absolutely nothing about it.

Is this not a case of taking two steps forward and then 10 steps back?

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