ADRIENNE RICH DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN MOTHERHOOD AS EXPERIENCE AND MOTHERHOOD AS INSTITUTION
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Adrienne Rich Distinguishes between Motherhood as Experience and Motherhood as Institution
Introduction
Adrienne Cecile Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland and she was one of America’s essayist, feminist, and poet. Her career traversed seven decades, and the impact of her work was by her obligation to feminism and the women’s movements. One can give Adrienne Rich credit for bringing the harassment of women and lesbians to the front of the poetic address. This article analyses and distinguishes Rich’s argument between motherhood as understanding and motherhood as an organization. The editorial will further evaluate Rich’s discussion about the misperception of her division in patriarchal cultures. Finally, the writing analyses and describes the impacts of the experience of motherhood in of born woman.
Motherhood as Experience
It is possible for someone to think of motherhood experience as simple. However, it can be demanding and stressing. A mother is a person without any further identity, and she finds gratification in being all day with small children (Rich, 1976, p. 22). The thoughts of motherhood experience are of giving birth, having a family, adopting a child, and taking care of the child. Though, at times, motherhood experience can be severe and impossible to put words to it. Besides, it is possible to use motherhood experience as a measure of maternal handling that recognizes familiar specific sources of stress sustaining passionate wellbeing of mothers.
The experience of motherhood requires a level of coping and emotional well-being. Still, someone may identify and associate it with the experience of motherhood in women having small children. The only experience shared by men and women are those times when men spend unfolding inside the body of women (Rich, 1986, p.11). Besides, a mother with a child or children experiences external support, personal sovereignty, coping with the baby, or even satisfaction with life. Furthermore, there are correlations among the experience of motherhood and other measures of challenging infant temperament, social support, psychological morbidity, and life experiences. Motherhood as experience means a mixture of every kind of emotions and everything.
Motherhood experiences entail sacrificing their sleep, time, body, finances, and even mental health to raise the kids because life is not about them anymore. The needs of a mother always balanced against those of a child and the child will still win (Rich, 1976, p. 23). Such experiences make every day to be an adventure to mothers and might be emotional, tiring, and stressful. Moreover, mothers experience different situations because they deal with different characters of children. On the other hand, different mothers have unique experiences when they give birth, some experience instant happiness, others indescribable feelings while some undergo life-changing or even overwhelming experiences.
Motherhood as Institution
Motherhood as an institution varies as motherhood as experience. It is because institutions are important social instruments and essential cultural practices that regulate human conduct conferring to community needs and not individual needs. Therefore, motherhood as an institution has isolated and degraded the potential of women. A mother faces a range of painful socially weighted choices (Rich, 1986, p.12). Furthermore, maternity as an institution ensures that women and their potential remain under the control of men. Moreover, motherhood as an institution has only two aspects, the biological ability to bear and nurture human life and the mystic power endowed in womenfolk by men. Motherhood as an institution is not intrinsic or natural, it is a social institution functioning politically, and ideologically hence it venerates mothers.
On the other side, motherhood as an institution has a characteristic of certain ideologies and meanings. There is a primary link of motherhood as an institution with women regardless of whether they become mothers or not. Every time there is the new independence of the children means new freedom for a mother (Rich, 1986, p.11). Nevertheless, the expression of motherhood as an institution is different across various social classes, culture, ethnicity, and race. To understand motherhood appropriately as an institution, someone must start by enlisting it inside the broader context of gender discourse. Additionally, constructing variances among men and women is a general inclination across cultures, and the placement of motherhood as an institution is central in such a gender construction.
Description and Analysis of Rich’s Argument
Rich’s request to women is that they should regain realization and agency over their bodies with reverence given to the institution of motherhood. In the society, the women not only bear and suckle, but they also have full responsibility of the children (Rich, 1986, p.11). Rich further draws the suppression of women by the patriarchy and demonstrates how this has stretched to the family and motherhood. Furthermore, Rich details subjugating of childbirth and motherhood as individuals transitioned from equal or matriarchal societies to patriarchy. Later on, she traces how patriarchy systems drastically lowered the role and value of women explaining how medical procedures have stolen childbirth from midwives.
Moreover, considering the epoch Rich grew up in, one can understand that she might be angry about that fact. Besides, her arguments are excellent in empowering any female struggling to define herself outside the role of a woman without children or a mother. Women tend to know better the air they breathe, the oceans they travel than what motherhood means (Rich, 1986, p.11). Additionally, Rich argues asking why society defines women who are not mothers by something they do not have rather than by something they do, which is true. On the other hand, she claims that there is a reduction of women to the sum of their reproductive capacities.
The Confusion of Rich’s Distinction in Patriarchal Culture
The requirements of patriarchy needed women to assume self-denial for the furtherance of the species as well as to remain unenlightened and unquestioning. Women are descendants of women, but they understand little about the consequence on the culture of this circumstance since they have not been the creators of patriarchal philosophy (Rich, 1986, p.11). When women start to choose the terms of their lives, a patriarchy society will feel threatened. The institutions of patriarchy could not survive without motherhood and heterosexuality. Consequently, the treatment of patriarchy was as that of nature itself or as proverbs, not open to questions and tolerated alternative lifestyles for specific individuals.
Furthermore, Rich’s argument falls short in its capability to position the rise of patriarchal supremacy through all the different cultures that she mentions. The primary factor in a woman’s life has been her status as a child bearer (Rich, 1986, p.11). For example, Rich wrote about the lessening of goddesses in prehistoric Greece, and then she acknowledges another theorist explaining the same issue. Firstly, women should know how to disassemble the patriarchal philosophies, which have caused their sub dominance. However, it seems like reclaiming their bodies would do more in boosting their supremacy than in conquering capitalism.
Impacts on the Experience of Motherhood of a Born Woman
Rich shares her own experience of being a mother as she writes from a feminist viewpoint expounding how motherhood institution forced on women through the society regulates the experience of a mother in a woman. Women know love and disappointment as well as power and tenderness (Rich, 1986, p.11). Rich writes of a story whereby a mother amputated and killed her two kids in the front yard. After discussing that story with her poem’s cluster, all the ladies settled to feeling a direct association with the desperation of the woman. Besides, in her writing, she stated that every woman in her poetry cluster who had youngsters could relate to her.
It appears as if all mothers have a breaching point concerning their children. However, it might be highly unlikely that a mother might imagine doing what the woman did to her children. When the child cannot leave the mother to be herself, the mother becomes angry and thinks of the child’s demand as fraudulent (Rich, 1976, p. 23). Additionally, Rich discourses the detestation that mothers feel for their children and she shares the unhappiness that she felt while nurturing her three kids. For instance, at one point, Rich wrote that she did not know what she wanted, what she could do, or what she could not choose. Of a born woman may make someone think that to have a child is to assume adult womanhood. On the contrary, in today’s world, some women choose not to have children or families, yet people consider them to be into adult womanhood.
Conclusion
Adrienne Rich was committed to women’s movement, and she was one of America’s leading public philosophers and a feminist. In differentiating between motherhood as experience and motherhood as an institution, she brought women oppression to the forefront of poetic discourse. Motherhood as experience requires a level of coping and emotional well-being. On the other hand, there is a primary link of motherhood as an institution with women irrespective of whether someone has a child or not. Furthermore, Rich displays how patriarchy has lowered women value and roles. Rich was a mother, and she shared how she got depressed when raising her three kids and she explained that mothers sometimes get desperate.
Reference List
Rich, A. (1976). Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Norton NY " London, pp.21-40.
Rich, A. (1986). Of Woman Born. Norton NY " London, pp.11-12.
