There’s a pressure to have children, isn’t there? If you’re a grown woman of a certain age, motherhood is an expected rite of passage and one you’re not supposed to decline. There’s a certain kind of tsk-tsk-ing, a certain kind of expectation that happens when a woman is discovered not to have, or to want, children. As if she isn’t quite a woman unless she is a mother.
Or so they say. I have children and I am also a biological aunt and an honorable auntie, but I know there isn’t much difference between how I feel towards my children, my sisters’ children, and my best friends’ children. Because I mother my nieces and nephews, and my friends’ children.
What Is Motherhood?
Motherhood is not limited to biology. That’s what Oprah says. (1) If motherhood is only defined by the act of giving birth then there are many women who don’t qualify. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Because to birth a child does not automatically mean that there is care, nurturing, emotional or physical provision, or protection. Because, in fact, mother is a verb.
I growl at my nieces and nephews the same way I growl at my own children. My heart hurts when something awful happens to them just as my heart breaks when my own child suffers. I offer guidance and love just as I do for my own children, and I also beam with pride at their accomplishments.
It’s About Love
It is not because I have children that I am able to mother my sisters’ children. It is because I love. Reports show that more women are not having children. (2) Some women are consciously choosing that, and others are forced into this position. This kind of decision or situation, however, does not change the capacity to love nor does it change the capacity to mother.
As an adoptive mother develops love for a child who is not biologically hers, others can do the same for children not biologically their own, because there are no limits on love. The biggest impact of being an aunt is not just the biological connection, but the love that she experiences. It’s a new kind of responsibility, a new kind of growth and experience. A connection to and support of someone other than herself.
Shifting The Definition
Children need security and they need supportive adults in their lives. Consistent, positive, and loving relationships help build healthy brains in children and protect against the negative effects of stress. (3) My sisters have provided advice to my children—advice that I was unable to give them or that might not have been received, and answers to questions they couldn’t ask me. As my nieces and nephews grow up, I will do the same. Because an aunt who loves, protects, guides, nurtures, and contributes to the welfare and the emotional and physical strength of her niece or nephew is a mother.
Women have a natural instinct to mother, but it doesn’t always look the same. Because mother is a verb.
