My son is a bright, happy and beautiful 17 month old. He is loved and nurtured, his whole personality evolving as miraculously as the very rhythm of life. Materially, a silver spoon guides his life: He has a nice house to live in, excellent child care and fresh, wholesome food. So why are people constantly attacking him? Their weapons, the most powerful and disarming ones of all: Words.
Perhaps the crudest but most common example is the word bastard. You know, meant to describe children born out of wedlock. And indeed, I never married or even lived with his father. Nor did I want to. But bastard? The word implies my son’s circumstances, in spite of the daily doses of adoration and care, are somehow demeaning. Actually, though, I can almost accept the word. After all, people use slang to describe all sorts of body parts and bodily acts that are beautiful, fun and/or essential to our existence.
A more lethal example is the word illegitimate. The word implies that my son, and others in his situation, are not rightly entitled to their existence. The origins of the word clearly reflect a time when the puritan ethic reigned–at least in theory–invading everything from the home and hearth to the legal system. Of course, even then, plenty of much-loved, much-wanted and even much-planned children were born into single-parent households. And the unwanted children born into poverty and despair? Disadvantaged but still legitimate. Very much so.
Then, of course, is insult by association. The association is with me and others like me; unwed mothers. As such, I join company with other uns: the unattractive, unfriendly, unlikable and unhappy. No doubt about it, an unwed mother is, well, undesirable. Just as significant is the fact that we use the descriptive term unwed in the first place. How often do you hear about a married mother. Or a previously-divorced-but-now-married mother? Or a twice-married-but-now-divorced mother?
It’s not only right-wing proponents of the traditional family who use these words, either. Most mainstream publications use them, so do The New Yorker and National Public Radio. Recently, U.S. News and World Report described Alexander Hamilton as illegitimate. And at a Joan Baez concert, a virtual porridge of liberal/progressive sentiment, one of her band members listed the horrors confronting contemporary society as drugs, violence and unwed mothers. Huh?
Of course, the real trouble with these words is that they insinuate women are incapable of properly caring for a child without, as one friend put it, the ice and the aisle. Never mind that around 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. Never mind that only a quarter of those remaining couples are said to be happy. Or that children are often the greatest victims of marital stress.
In addition, these words demean the unrivaled bond between a mother and child. One that, in my experience anyway, has made every moment of life richer, deeper and amazingly better. Most importantly, though, they discredit the spirit that lives in every child: One that is beyond comparison or judgment.
Here’s the truth. Some single mothers have an easy time raising their children. Some don’t. Some married women find rearing children alone unthinkable. Others find mothering difficult because they are squeezed by an unhappy marriage. Children grow up in good or bad situations for many reasons. Marriage may or may not be one of them. We must recognize this and call children of single mothers what they really are: Welcome members of our society.
