Let’s salute our mums

Molly Gunn - 22 Feb 16

It’s mother’s day soon, have you noticed? Whether this is a ‘thing’ you celebrate in a cards-and-flowers-Hallmark-style, or is just means you’ll get a lie in past 8am (the joy!) – it’s a nice nod to us women with kids, who are doing IT 24/7. (The dad’s are doing it too, of course, but we can save that post for father’s day).

But while it can sometimes feel like we’re the only ones who ever trod this sticky-raisin’d-mum-path; I’ve recently been marvelling at the fact that we’re not the first ones to do it. We’re not the first to experience life as a mum. Stop. The. Press.

Our mums, their mothers, our fathers’ mums, and their mothers, and all the mothers before that… they must have done a GOOD job, because we’re all here, aren’t we?

If they had done a bad job, we probably would not have graced this earth. Generations of women before us must have circumnavigated life to the best of their ability, nurturing and protecting their young, overcoming whatever challenges and obstacles the time they existed in, threw at them.

They would have done this without the internet. Without disposable nappies. Without wet wipes. Without nippy-fold-down buggies. Without Ella’s pouches. Without Netflix. Without tumble dryers. Without NCT, BabyCentre, Doctor & Daughter, Gina Forde, Annabel Karmel etc. Without all the stuff that we take for granted which makes our lives easier.

Whenever and wherever they did it. They got by! And that is a wonder in itself!

I once asked my mum how she coped, when me, my sister and brother were young. When she had three kids under five, with my dad working long shifts at the BBC, and I, the middle child, refused to sleep past 4am… for years. I asked, puzzled: “But what did you do when I woke up early? You didn’t even have an IPad or on demand TV!!!”

My mum said: “If you look at pictures of me in the late 70s / early 80s I just look exhausted. I just got up and played with you when you woke up early. I felt like I didn’t sleep properly in years! And during the day there weren’t any baby groups apart from the church creche once a week, so I mostly stayed indoors and amused you kids. And I did some typing to earn extra cash, even when you were babies, so I worked too. But that was how it was, so I just got on with it.”

I love hearing about how my mother mothered. And I appreciate I’m lucky that she is still here with me, so she can pass these things on. Especially as when my mum had us kids she didn’t have her mother around to ask or help her out; my grandmother Valerie, died in 1970, when my mum was just 22, so my siblings and I never met her.

I would have loved to hear her motherhood experiences and tips. Because Valerie would have been mothering in the late 1940s, bringing up three kids in a house with no central heating, and buying food with a ration book! As well as being a mother she was a photographer and wife (in the 1950s sense). My grandmother would have had her own daily-mum-battles, and she didn’t have Facebook or Instagram to offer supportive social media back-up.

Going back further, Valerie’s mum Edith, brought up five kids at the turn of last century. Her first born had died a cot death a day after birth. And sadly, her youngest child, Audrey, died at the age of five. Edith didn’t have maternal support; as her own mum had died when she was a toddler. I can’t imagine the grief as a mother losing two children and not having my mum’s support. Audrey was the same age as my eldest is now. I want to give my great-grandmother a massive hug!

I guess my point is, that while motherhood can feel like a lonely place and that we’re the only ones living IT on a daily basis, it’s reassuring to know that we’re not the only ones who’ve gone through this. In fact, if we glance back through the not-so-distant path it is easy to see we’re experiencing motherhood at a GOOD time. We are expected to live through childbirth, when our kids are expected to thrive, when we have a free education system and the back-up of the NHS. We also have each other!

So, when you have a new baby that doesn’t sleep or want to feed; or you have siblings who goad each other; or you think your arms will drop off from carrying a toddler who refuses to walk, for a mile in the pouring rain (like I did last week) – it’s comforting to know that we’re not the first ones to go through this.

It doesn’t make it all easy, granted. But it does mean we can take solidarity from the generations of women who have gone through this before. Because, however much they were winging it, just like us – they manage to do it well enough to continue the bloodline! So, here’s to us. And our mothers…. and their mothers’ mothers.

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This post was to celebrate Maverick Mums – past and present. I’ve teamed up with Not On The Highstreet for their #MaverickMum campaign. If you’d like to win £500 worth of NOTHS vouchers, simply share a pic on social media with the #MaverickMum hashtag. It can be about you as a mum, or about your mother, or anyone who mothers!

Molly Gunn

Molly Gunn is the Curator of Goodness at Selfish Mother, a site she created for likeminded women in 2013. Molly has been a journalist for over 15 years, starting out on fashion desks at The Guardian, The Telegraph & ES Magazine before going freelance in 2006 to write for publications including Red, Stella, Grazia, Net-A-Porter and ELLE. She now edits Selfish Mother and creates #GoodTees which are sold via TheFMLYStore.com and John Lewis and have so far raised £650K for charity. Molly is mother to Rafferty, 5, Fox, 3 and baby Liberty. Molly is married to Tom, aka music producer Tee Mango and founder of Millionhands. They live, work and play in Somerset.

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