On Mother’s Day, I ask: What do we owe our children?
by Amina Zaineldine

It’s my first Mother’s Day as a mother this year.

A few months ago, I gave birth to twin boys, and I’m now just past what’s ever-so-affectionately referred to as ‘the newborn trenches’ — as if we were at war. It’s an exhausting time to be sure, and if every other parent on Earth is to be believed, this is only the beginning. You don’t get a day off for at least eighteen years.

That’s what Mother’s Day is for, isn’t it? To tell mothers that their toil is valued, appreciated. To give them the thanks they are owed. I can personally say that I owe my own mother a thousand, thousand thanks for all she’s done for me, and I’m only more aware of that now I’ve become a mother myself.

But since I’ve had my boys, a North Star has set itself up in the sky of my nascent journey of parenthood: These two little guys that now live in my home and under my care, relying on my toil, draining my body to feed, never asked to be here. They aren’t holding me hostage to their every need by choice. I brought them here to this life they now so helplessly, so vulnerably inhabit. The choice was mine.

One result of this idea repeating itself endlessly inside my mind, like an affirmation, is that it gives me the strength to weather some of the more challenging moments of motherhood. I chose this. They did not. That’s not to say I have no right to give voice to my exhaustion, to occasionally yearn for the days when I had more time for myself. It’s simply a little charm to ward off resentment, to grant an extra dose of patience.

The other result, however, is that it makes me reflect more widely on what it is that I owe them. I don’t mean food and shelter and attention — that is a minimum so bare it hardly warrants mention. What I owe them now is to understand that until they are grown, their future is in my hands. It’s my responsibility to let them grow up, never having felt like a burden, always having felt loved. It’s also my responsibility never to let them feel like they exist to fulfill some need of mine, like I only brought them here as an investment in my own future.

However, to safeguard my children’s future, I mustn’t only love and protect them. I must also strive to make the world that will host their future a better place for them to live in. To have children is to live more intentionally, to be more aware of the consequences of my every action, whether it is because I have a stake in how it will affect them, or because children often learn by imitation, and so I hope to do all I can to model for them behaviour, beliefs, principles that will guide them well through the world they live in.

The world is darker now than it has been for as long as I’ve been alive, and I have peers who are making a choice not to have children at all. What could possess a person to bring children into a world where imperialism and fascism are experiencing an unseasonable revival, the climate is barrelling toward a point of no return, and the ultra-wealthy are liberally exploiting the world’s most vulnerable? I don’t blame anyone unwilling to sentence a child to this, but I also say that having children can be an act of refusal to be swallowed by these woes.

It’s ingrained in many cultures that children owe their mothers infinite gratitude. That this is a fixed dynamic, one which assumes the mothers as givers by definition, and the children as takers. It rings true, by some logic. At this point in my life, I am giving my boys every moment of my time, every ounce of my attention, and far more, while in return, they are giving me only sweet little smiles, tumbling laughs, and sleepless nights. My own mother has done so much for me, far more than I could ever do for her.

But this cannot be taken for granted. Becoming mothers doesn’t automatically make us deserving of this infinite appreciation. It is something we must earn through the intentional practice of motherhood. We must earn the appreciation of our children by comprehending the enormity of our task, by understanding what we have condemned them to by bringing them into the world — the good and the bad.

I don’t know if I’ll feel differently, if I’ll demand my thanks, in a few years when I’ve actually gotten some experience under my belt. Perhaps then, my emotions will get the better of me and I will think more of what I am owed. But for as long as I can, I want to remind myself of my responsibility, of my reason to move forward. I brought them here. The choice was mine. And I owe it to them to make the best of that.