The Essence of Motherhood
Reading: Song of Solomon by Toni Morison
What makes a book great? Is it the way that it turns ordinary lives into epic journeys? The way it dismantles myths while creating new ones? Or the language – powerful, precise, and emotionally raw?
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, my April classic reading, is all this and more.
Critics and reviewers have long explored the book’s themes, race, Black womanhood, the silencing and resilience of women but what I loved most in the book, was how visual it was, almost like as having a silent movie going into your head.
Song of Solomon is a story of identity. The main character, Milkman Dead, is comfortable and spoiled, and detached. He is black and middle class. His father, teaches him about possessions, of houses, of land, of wealth, but not of self. Around him are Black people, each one different, some eccentrics, others shaped by pain, defiance, and racism. All of them must confront what it means to be Black in America.
But amidst all this, a single line stayed with me long after I finished the book. At some point, Milkman accuses his mother, Ruth, of nursing him for too long – a thing that earned him his nickname (Milkman). He thinks of that as something shameful, even obscene. Ruth looks at him and says “I also prayed for you. And what harm did I ever do you on my knees?”
Here, breastfeeding becomes more than nourishment, it becomes a conduit for connection, and a longing for intimacy that Ruth cannot find elsewhere in her life. In that simple line, Ruth reminds her son of her unwavering, self-sacrificing love. “I loved you with everything I had,” she says. But she also wraps that love in guilt. Milkman cannot reject her and her devotion without rejecting his own comfort, his very existence.
This interplay of love and guilt is the essence of motherhood.
It’s a love that nourishes and overwhelms. Ruth’s devotion is genuine, but it is also saturated with her own needs and disappointments. Milkman resents not just the act, but the emotional entanglement it represents: a mother’s love so consuming that it becomes a burden.
I’ve been drawn to this love-guilt relationship for years. Psychology has examined this bond extensively, starting with Freud who was one of the earliest psychoanalysts to frame guilt as central to parent-child relationship. In literature, the theme of motherhood goes back to Sophocles’ and Euripides’ ancient tragedies. Just think of Jocasta and Medea.
Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, sees motherhood as a complex interplay between natural biology and social expectations. She acknowledges that having children is a natural part of life, but argues that social norms can transform it into a source of oppression, leading to a dual experience of love and guilt for women. She calls for a re-evaluation of motherhood, advocating for a society where women can freely shape their own paths, free from imposed roles and expectations.
And finally, in religious narrative, particularly in Christianity, the Virgin Mary is the epitome of pure maternal love, while in Buddhism and Confucianism mothers are expected to put their family’s needs before their own, showing duty and self-sacrifice. This sense of duty, however, can lead to feelings of guilt, especially when they feel they haven't met the high expectations passed down through generations.
But motherhood is not just a biological. It’s a constructed and evolving identity, shaped by the interplay of ideology, politics, economics, and race. Each reincarnation of motherhood reflects and reinforces broader societal values, struggles, and contradictions.
During the World War II, governments in the U.S and in Europe, encouraged mothers to join the workforce. For the first time, motherhood and employment weren’t seen as oppositional, but as complementary—serving both self and state. With the end of the war the narrative changed again. The myth of the “ideal mother”, domestic and devoted, was once again glorified—not just as a personal choice, but as a patriotic and national duty— tied to rebuilding the population, by restoring jobs and economic power to men. In socialist states like East Germany and the USSR, motherhood became a badge of ideological triumph. In the West, it was linked to suburban dreams, consumerism, and the nuclear family.
Today, expectations remain sky-high. Mothers are supposed to be nurturing, selfless, tireless and perfect. If they fail to meet this impossible ideal, guilt follows. For many women this emotional burden is devastating.
This burden often reaches its peak when women are faced with the emotional and psychological challenge of “setting their children free.” The so-called “empty nest syndrome” isn’t just an emotional experience. It can feel existential, particularly for those women who centred their lives on parenting - “Who am I if I’m not needed?”
While the struggle is real, to set our children free is not abandonment. It’s empowerment for both the mother and the child.
To step back is to make space, for the child to grow and for the mother to rediscover herself and reconnect with work, relationships, creativity, or personal growth. In doing so, she recognises that her child is not an extension of her body or her will, but separate, autonomous individual. In the end, perhaps the truest form of maternal love is not possession, but permission.
To be. To become. And finally, to fly.
