How Patriarchal Religion Affects Motherhood
The activist and scholar bell hooks observed that the homeplace was a site of revolution. Whether you are a mother, or someone who works with mothers, you know that the act of mothering - all the emotional labor, bedtime stories, care and love, feeding, comforting, and encouraging - is an incredibly profound and meaningful experience.
But mothers are tired. Mothers are frustrated. Mothers are overwhelmed. The pandemic forced mothers everywhere to wake up to a painful truth…this world is not set up to support us. And until we understand how the institution of motherhood is socially constructed to exploit women and reinforce social inequality and injustice, we will continue to devalue mothers and hold them back from fully realizing their power and place in the world.
It’s time for a motherhood revolution.
This is a four-part blog series in which I dive into four cultural forces that oppress modern motherhood in America: patriarchal motherhood, whiteness, capitalism, and patriarchal religion. You can read the other posts here:
Mothering under Patriarchal Religion
In my four-part blog series of systems that oppress mothers, patriarchal religion is sort of a "bonus" system of oppression. I don't think religion is inherently oppressive. I believe there are religious or spiritual beliefs that can support mothers and women, and that a spiritual practice that centers and affirms women and mothers could be incredibly nourishing and rich.
But what I'm writing about here is how some of the current religious beliefs show up in the U.S. and uphold and support the systems of patriarchy, whiteness and capitalism as ordained by God. THAT’S what I have a problem with.
What is religion?
There isn't actually an agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a religion. But in general, it's usually defined as a social-cultural system of behaviors, morals, beliefs, worldviews, and texts that generally relate humanity to the supernatural. According to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), in the United States seven in ten Americans (70%) identify as Christian, including more than four in ten who identify as white Christian and more than one-quarter who identify as Christian of color. Nearly one in four Americans (23%) are religiously unaffiliated, and 5% identify with non-Christian religions.
How religion defines motherhood
I wrote a paper for school called Cultural Motherhood Norms as Defined by Religious Narratives. In it, I explored different cultural expectations of motherhood in different religions. Specifically, how creation stories build unconscious assumptions about the relationship between the father and mother in a family unit, how religious narratives of fertility affect women’s real-life pregnancies and births, and how religious stories portray mothers in a way that determines cultural motherhood norms.
Biblical creation story
The creation story of the Bible explicitly lays out the social hierarchy of men over women. First in the creation of woman as a helper made from part of man, and again as retribution for Eve’s sins. This edict has been used to support two thousand years of male-centered households.
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” (Gen. 2:18, 2:22-23)
And again as retribution for Eve’s sins, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16) This edict has been used to support two thousand years of male-centered households, limiting the rights of women and allowing patriarchal rule to spill over from the family home into the public arena. This really reinforces the experience of patriarchal motherhood that we talked about earlier.
With a defined hierarchy that starts at home, men feel justified by God himself in replicating that domination in every aspect of their lives. And it also creates innumerable challenges for those families who do not fit the prescribed model of a married mother and father because they are seen to be defying God's perfect family.
Skywoman
By contrast, the Earth Diver creation story as told by many Native American tribes centers a woman and her daughter, and creates a society that is more egalitarian. Details of the Sky Woman story vary by region and by tribe, but in one version a woman fell from the sky and with her she brought seeds, dirt, and her daughter and where she stepped, she created the earth
In this story, not only was the creator of the world a woman, she was also a mother. The legend continues to credit her daughter as the provider of tobacco, strawberries and sweetgrass. Sky Woman’s daughter bears twin boys, Flint and Sapling, who represent a need for balance in all aspects of life.
This mother-centered creation story features a mother-daughter relationship, a partnership with animals and introduces the idea of the sacred gift of crops to sustain humanity.
With this creation story at the heart of their society, many Native American tribes were organized very differently than the Europeans who came preaching of the story in the Christian Bible. Within the private domain of the home, marriage among the Iroquois was considered a rite of passage with the women leading the rules of courtship.
Women among the Haudenosaunee traditionally experienced economic independence, community support in raising children and equal respect in matters both public and private.
“One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a co-creator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.'“ - Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Eve
Women who grew up absorbing the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden have every right to fear the pain of birth. The contemporary understanding of giving birth in pain is heavily influenced by the Abrahamic religions as punishment for Eve’s transgression.
Quote - “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16)
Women have internalized this message for centuries; as a result of the sin of the first mother, every woman thereafter would experience pain during labor. Appropriating the natural physical symptoms of labor as God's punishment is a convenient way to force all women to identify with the sins of Eve.
Additionally, when fertility is viewed as a religious mandate and motherhood is the greatest measure of a woman’s worth, mothers are only seen as objects and in relation to the people they serve.
Ọ̀ṣun, the Yorùbá goddess
The Yorùbá people of western Africa place a high value on fertility and children. Historically, appeals for pregnancy were made to Ọ̀ṣun, the òrìṣà or goddess associated with fertility. Ọ̀ṣun is one of the more popular òrìṣàs and reflects a reverence for feminine power in the traditional Yorùbá beliefs. In addition to granting fertility, she is “believed to have the power to influence the destinies of men, women and the òrìṣà, and that Ọ̀ṣun’s presence is crucial to the sustenance of life and order on earth.” The presence of such a powerful goddess sustaining life undoubtedly has a positive effect on pregnant women.
The rates of hospital births are very low among the Yorùbá as compared to the United States; even in cities with access to health facilities only about 40% of Yorùbá women delivered their babies in a clinic or hospital while 99% of births in the United States occurred in a hospital. This suggests the Yorùbá have a healthy and positive view of childbirth that allows them to more safely deliver children in a home setting.
Mary
Much of our understanding of what it means to be a “good mother” in our culture is defined by Mary, mother of Jesus; the ultimate role model for the Christian woman. Mary was chosen as the mother of Jesus because she exalted God above herself and the characteristics she portrays are prized. Compassion, piety, humbleness, virginal, and above all, selflessness. When told by the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and give birth to God’s son, the Virgin Mary doesn’t hesitate: “‘I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled’” (Luke 1:38). She willingly accepts a pregnancy without any of the fun of conception, and implicitly agrees to bear the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock.
She never displays jealousy, sexual desire, or greed. And above all, she never displays anger. Mary had to birth her child in a barn full of animals, and no one felt her rage. She was set aside by her son as he began his teachings without a lecture on respecting his elders. And she stood by while her only son was tortured and killed, in sorrow instead of wrathful fury.
The image of the perfect woman as chosen by God to mother his son is a mother who shows piety, selflessness and compassion but never anger, jealousy or sexual desire. These characteristics have thus been deemed negative and unworthy in our society.
Kali
In contrast to the pure, virginal Mary who appears not to feel any emotion whatsoever, the Hindu goddess Kali delights in feeling them all. In the book Encountering Kali: In the Margins, At the Center, In the West, Kali is “simultaneously understood as a blood-thirsty warrior, a goddess of ritual possession, a Tantric sexual partner, and an all-loving, compassionate Mother.”
Kali is an inspiration to feminists searching for a strong female divine presence. Her “power, beauty, independence and religious importance presents an alternative vision to the limitations of patriarchal consciousness.” But in addition to all this, she is also portrayed as a loving mother, a compassionate Goddess and a devoted wife. Lina Gupta in Kali the Savior reveals a Goddess that displays the full range of emotion and qualities. “Is Kali the terrible destroyer who laughs at her enemies and devours them with pleasure? Or is she the beautiful mother who nourishes and preserves her created beings? There is truth in both these images.” Women can call upon the different aspects of Kali for support in times of need, whether it is fury or benevolence. There is no need to feel shame or guilt about wrathful anger when the emotion is validated by a Goddess.
Motherhood under patriarchal religion
So how do these religious narratives shape our everyday experiences of motherhood?
Hierarchy of domination: God → Man → Woman → Child → Animal → Plant
A hierarchy of domination is established. God dominates Man, who dominates Woman, who dominates Child and so on. Patriarchal motherhood that is justified by the divine right of God also creates the idea that women are objects and only exist in service to men and extends that to motherhood.
Painful childbirth is God's punishment for women.
“Not only was the blame for having eaten the fruit of sexuality, and for tempting Adam to do the same, laid heavily upon women, but the proof or admission of her guilt was supposedly made evident in the pain of childbirth, which women were assured was their eternal chastisement for teaching men such bad habits.” When God was a Woman, Merlin Stone
Gender roles: not only biological, but divinely ordered.
When feminists and other social theorists talk about how gender and much of our behavior is a social construct, the essentialists come at us saying, no it's your biology, women were just born to be more nurturing than men, etc. and then religion comes at us saying, actually not only were you born that way, you were designed by God to be this way. How do you argue against that?
Leadership roles reserved exclusively for men.
Leadership roles in churches are typically reserved exclusively for men. Yes, we've started to see more women ministers and bishops, but there are sill many religions that deny leadership roles to women, either officially or culturally. This reinforces that social hierarchy found in workplaces, governments, etc. If women aren't fit to lead in church, how can they be expected to lead elsewhere?
Mothers are expected to pass down religious values.
Mothers are instructed to pass down religious values. We see this in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, among others, where the mother is responsible for teaching the children and modeling how to be the perfect christian or jewish or muslim woman.
What if motherhood itself was a spiritual practice?
But how can we look at it differently? What if Motherhood itself was a spiritual practice? The amount of patience and focus it takes me to be present as a mother is greater than anything I’ve ever felt in over 20 years of practicing yoga. Forget about renouncing all your possessions and going to sit on the side of a mountain in solitude. That path is way too easy! Instead, we can reframe the challenges of motherhood itself as an express ticket to spiritual evolution.
When we consider the systems of religion and how they shape our lives, we can stop to challenge the beliefs that no longer work for us. What if God were a woman? Or if the divine feminine was a force that was recognized, celebrated, and revered What would that mean for us? How would that shape our motherhood experience? What would we teach our children?
