Mothers of all kinds and types hold honoured place in our society and traditional roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers are quite burdensome. Female gender roles are majorly patterned for marriage and motherhood. As the female grows into adulthood, they are made to embrace their gender roles. Marriage is an important source of gender-role learning, for it creates the roles of husband and wife
Our partners, society and the church have expectations of the women. Women are expected to be more expressive than men in personal relationships. If the children turn out well, she is deemed a good mother. If they do not, she lives under the strain that somewhere, somehow, did not do the right thing. It is accepted by many that if a child messes up in any way, it is because of the faulty parental influence. No wonder parents feel sometimes like failures. Many of today’s mothers find themselves under the pains of unreachable ideals; as a result, they give up on motherhood.
No job on earth takes more physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual strength than being a good wife and mother. There is nothing easy about good mothering. Unfortunately many ladies go into marriage thinking that mothering is easy. Being a mother is really tough. But we are not alone. God understands this struggle. Motherhood is not always fun, it can be very laborious.
Mothering does have its many pleasurable moments, but they come only with a total commitment of the will to weather through all the sticky times in between.
By nature, all of us are self-centred, proud and petty. In fact, part of the struggle to be a good mother is to overcome some natural, even sinful inclination. It is wrong for young ladies to grow up believing that mothering is fun. Any kind of interaction with another human, whatever the context, requires dealing with disappointment and irritation. However, the family context offers some rich additional dividends that other grouping cannot provide.
Mothers are one of the first indications of the sovereignty of God in our lives. Mothers teach us to have confidence and belief in ourselves. Mothers know from experience how important it is for children to believe in themselves in order to grow whole, strong with a healthy self value.
The good mother is very industrious. And because of her good conduct, the husband, the children, the society and even the Church reposes a lot of confidence in her. She contributes much to the personality and content of her husband and children positively. A good mother adds to the reputation of her husband and does not tarnish it.
While motherhood is a beautiful and priceless gift, it can also be very laborious and monotonous. Motherhood (even spiritual motherhood) is more than a mandate to groom the next generation. It is an unending invitation to a life of sacrifice.
Nevertheless, there are ways that make the whole mothering process worthwhile. First of these is companionship. There is a deep human joy in being involved with another person’s life. We are created to be social people. We are to communicate with each other. Our ability to laugh, cry, struggle, feel, successful and even fail with others is an important part of what it means to be human. But we cannot just jump into anybody’s life at that level. We only have that capacity for that level of intimacy with a few folks. Families provide the built-in structure for nurturing that kind of companionship.
Secondly, satisfaction is also one of the features that make mothering worthwhile. None of us can escape the inner drive to have meaning and purpose in life. Satisfaction comes from having a lasting, positive impact on the lives of others. Nobody on earth even comes close to a mother for having the potential for that kind of influence.
Then comes the question of where does a woman turn to find a sane list of expectations for being a good mother? The only consistently reliable source available is the Bible. One general outline for being a wife and mother is found in Proverbs 31. Let us focus on the overall spiritual principles of the passage. Proverbs 31 is a description of the virtuous woman which invariably refers to the good mother, as a virtuous woman is obviously a good mother.
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The woman is a weaker vessel, yet, made strong by wisdom and grace, and the fear of God. She has a good command of spirit and knows how to manage that of others, mostly in the home. She is a woman of resolution, firm and steady to her values and principles.
As mothers, there are battles we face, that may seem impossible to win, because Satan always try to twist the truth. He hides consequences. He blinds reality. He has schemes perfectly designed with our weaknesses in mind. Therefore as mothers, we have to battle the devil. He is the real enemy, not our children, not our husbands, and not our in-laws. We hold the power for victory in our prayers and praises to God.
The battle is taking place in the spiritual realm not in the physical. We cannot fight the battle with what we can see. Entrust your battle to the Lord today; spending time in prayers and praises to God
The influence of the power of a mother on her children, her husband and the society in general, which can either, be positive or negative cannot be over-emphasised. In 2 Timothy 1:5, Paul wrote to Timothy; “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice; I am persuaded that is in thee also. This is Apostle Paul’s thanksgiving that Timothy inherited the faith of his mother Eunice and his grandmother, Lois.
However, the role of women in the home and society has been under fire as well as becoming questionable in the face of high level of moral decadence among our children. There was a video recently of young secondary school girls smoking the murderous shisha.
The question that readily comes to mind is who are the mothers of these girls? It is certain that children that are well brought up in the home, mostly in Christ cannot delve into such. They can be tempted to go into certain things but not something this bad. Most of our mothers have failed.
Though women give much emotional support to the children and husband, as they are sympathetic and nurturing, they also need emotional support.
To this end, all mothers should go back to the drawing board, and search out where, how, when and why we missed it.
The question every mother should ponder on is: what legacy as a mother and a wife will we be leaving behind with our children in particular and the society at large.
THERESA EKIRI-MERIKIUWA ASHIEN