A Father's Eye View of Motherhood

On September 8, 2008, a 66 year old father was working outside with his 20 year old son when the son fell into the septic tank on their property. The father immediately jumped into the tank and for fifteen minutes held his son's head above the sewage while he himself remained submerged until help arrived. The son was hospitalized, but lived; the father did not.

There are many layers to this story, and when laid one upon another made it hard for me not to be moved when I heard this account of seeming misfortune. For one, the son (the youngest of seven) had Down's Syndrome; at no point did the father weigh the pros and cons or merit of that fact in his decision to dive into the cesspool after him. Nor did he hesitate to offer his own body as a buoy so that his son might have a chance of surviving the noxious submersion. He simply fulfilled what a father, by nature of his vocation, is called to--namely, to sacrifice. It was a noble and memorable example of the depths fathers are willing to condescend to in order that they might give life to their seed.

How I live out my vocation as a parent is refracted through the prism of being a man, a son, and a father. But parenting as a father is not a complete protein. The complementary of this vocation is accomplished in partnership--that is, namely, with my wife, the mother of my children.

From the very beginning, when your child is still incubating in the womb of their mother, there is a latent sense among fathers of being ill-equipped for many of the vital tasks demanded of by children. The bond at that point in development is more psychic than physical--at no point are they attached to or dependent on your body for sustenance in the way they are their mothers. When the child is born, we become late-night waterboys for our quarterback wives during the act of breastfeeding. 

As they grow older and are weened, they still instinctually cling and find their way to their mother who provides the comfort and innate nurturing that we can only fabricate. Whereas I was back to work after a week of each of my kids being born, my wife spent every waking hour with them for months, learning their unique needs and temperaments. I would receive this data from her second-hand and store it in my mental repository just in case I needed to corroborate for a doctor or an inquisitive bystander that they were indeed my own children and I knew enough insider information about them to prove it.

One of the "privileges" of fatherhood as a married man (much to the chagrin of many a wife) is that I can periodically "check out"--either physically or mentally--and grab a beer at the pub with a buddy, shop for a new circular saw at Home Depot unencumbered, or simply go to sleep uninterrupted. I'm "needed"--but not in any kind of primal, dependent way. Whereas in the Genesis account woman is created from man to be his helpmate in their single state, the roles are reversed in parenthood--man becomes the helper of woman, who is the source of life, the wellspring of Eden, and the eve of creation. 

It is a fashionable parody in modern media to portray fathers as hapless gomers with their hands in their pockets when it comes to the rearing of children. As any father involved in the life of his children knows, we play a vital and irreplaceable role in their formation and developmental well-being. But there is something about a mother that goes deeper, like an aquifer. Whereas men of virtue will sacrifice themselves to provide, to protect, and yes, even give their lives for their children (and their mother), a mother will literally pour herself out for her children. This applies to married women, single mothers, those who adopt, and widows alike. You cannot gestate an entirely genetically-autonomous being for nine months, birth them into the outside world, and feed them with your very body without incurring the status of a...well, a kind of queen.

And that is how we should treat the mothers of our children, and the debt to which we should recall when it comes to our own mothers. We remember it with a day in May with cards and flowers, and maybe breakfast in bed. But really, we owe the existence of the entire human race to those called to the most primal and ordinary vocation--that of motherhood. This is why even the most hardened criminal will put you up against a wall for a sleight-of-hand comment about his "mama" and an orphan will have a hole in their heart that may scab over but never completely heal.

It can be a strong temptation for married mothers to put their children above all else, and at first glance the nobility in this seems apparent. But in fact, just as the birth of a child is preceded by it's coital conception, and it's conception preceded by it's eternal predestination, the order of things matter. For the married mother to overcome this temptation of seemingly noble self-deference to put her children before all else, she must in fact subsume this tendency to a hierarchical ordering and prioritization: God first, her husband second, and her children third. In doing so, she will align her vocation with the natural order that makes everything work--for the glory of God for God's own sake, for the honor of her husband, and for the benefit of her children. 

In the Gospel of John it is recounted, "Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written." These words sometimes come to mind while observing my wife carrying out her everyday duties as a mother, much of which I would be hard-pressed to undertake for even twenty-four hours. I think if anyone were to do the same, they would echo the apostle's words and say of mothers "she also did many other things...if they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written."