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‘It’s hard to imagine a man singing it’ … Meryl Streep sings Slipping Through My Fingers in Mamma Mia!
‘It’s hard to imagine a man singing it’ … Meryl Streep sings Slipping Through My Fingers in Mamma Mia! Photograph: Allstar/Universal/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
‘It’s hard to imagine a man singing it’ … Meryl Streep sings Slipping Through My Fingers in Mamma Mia! Photograph: Allstar/Universal/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Mamma Mia! It’s hard to praise mothers everywhere and not insult anyone

This article is more than 7 years old
I know the idea of a mother’s love being more powerful than a father’s could offend but, when I look at my wife’s love for our children, I want to pay tribute

I love my children. If there is one incontrovertible fact in my life, it is this. I cannot examine, deconstruct or even conceptualise it. But it is one of those a priori pieces of knowledge that is so powerful as to be beyond all doubt.

All the same, I must ruefully admit that I think there is another love greater than mine. This is a mother’s love. I remember my father saying to me – sadly, not cruelly – after my mother died: “You’ll never be loved like that again.” I took it for granted that he was correct. So as Mother’s Day comes round once more, I want to celebrate a mother’s love.

However, it is not that simple. Once, to praise a mother’s love would have been fairly unproblematic, even welcomed. But it has become a conservative sentiment – and I may be treading on any number of ideological toes by doing so. The whole idea of a mother’s love being “special” or more powerful than a father’s could be seen as a form of oppression, a way of saddling women with a childrearing role and an accompanying load of guilt. It implies a mother’s role is “natural” rather than cultural. It could also easily insult fathers who are bringing up children alone, fathers in general, adoptive parents, gay couples and probably quite a few people I haven’t yet thought of.

I am not casting aspersions on these groups. I belong to one of them. However, when I look at my wife’s love for our children, I can’t help but be in awe. I know without a doubt that she would throw herself in front of a train to save them. I would do the same. But I have a nagging suspicion that the animal in me, the chimp brain, bent on self-preservation, might, in crisis, hesitate before I threw myself into oblivion. (For more examination of the question, watch the unsettling film on this subject, Force Majeure.)

I was watching another film, Mamma Mia!, with one of my daughters – specifically the bit where Meryl Streep sings Slipping Through My Fingers. It captures well a mother’s love and the pain of it – and it’s hard to imagine a man singing it. Fathers are somehow less raw. Whether this is cultural or biological, I do not know. It is not universal. But I suspect it is a strong tendency.

Whatever the force of society’s assumptions, the process of having a child grow inside your body is clearly not cultural. I envy it – despite all the pain and suffering it must involve. To have the possibility of such intimacy seems unimaginable. For most women, that intimacy continues after childbirth – perhaps with breastfeeding, perhaps with full-time caring. This may cost dearly from a career point of view, and be a screaming bore and a massive chore. But in terms of fostering love and attachment, it is hard to imagine anything more powerful.

There is not much research I could find on the subject. A Pew survey from 20 years ago found that “93% of mothers think their children are a source of happiness all or most of the time … for men, children often rank no higher than career as a source of happiness”. The anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote: “Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention.”

I cannot help but think it’s mothers who are likely to know the real meaning of selflessness (although stories of sacrifice in war suggest that perhaps men have a different form of it). But this is not a competition – it’s a tribute. I’d like to leave it at that and hope that no one takes it amiss.

Happy Mother’s Day on Sunday to mothers everywhere. We have a lot to learn from you. And, of course – quite literally – we owe you our lives.

@timlottwriter

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