Of all the roles that women assume in life, none is more demanding, consuming, and important to us all as that of “mother,” declares Cecilia Ford, Ph.D., the clinical psychologist who is the Thursday columnist for Women’s Voices. “There’s no disputing that becoming a mother is an essential change, one that entails a major identity shift, and one that can never be reversed.

Here, chosen from Our Archives, are reflections on how well or disappointingly each of five very different mothers inhabited that “role of a lifetime”—from her daughter’s point of view.

LOVING MY MOTHER TOO LATE
By Jennifer Cheyne | May 9, 2013

Finally, I left home at 17 in the wake of a hearty row.  As the cliché goes, of course I can’t remember what we fought about.  We were always fighting. With all the surviving going on, not a lot of mothering came my way, and though I would never admit it, I was bereft. And bitter. These fictional mothers who existed on television were my idea of what a mother should be, and mine, well . . . there were no TV shows with moms like mine. READ MORE

GROWING UP WITH SCARLETT O’HARA
By Toni Myers | May 11, 2013

She wasn’t the milk-and-cookies mother. [She] did outrageous things—cut the thick telephone cord when she thought Father had gotten too many calls. She covered our dog Hansy with Chanel No. 5 after he got into the dead fish by the lake water. One day at the lake, she fell asleep in Kontiki, our rubber life raft, and the lake current took her out to the middle. When none of us rescued her, she used the covers of the book she was reading to paddle back. I think her later emerging from the woods shooting a roman candle at us was revenge. READ MORE

MOTHER’S DAY REFLECTION: BRINGING MY MOTHER HOME
By Larysa Bemko | May 8, 2016

[As I was growing up, we had] no shortage of houseguests: friends who had suffered as [my mother] had, who needed a respite, a warm, generous heart, and a safe place to sleep, as well as kids who’d had fights with their parents, kids who felt they didn’t fit in and had no place to turn.  She was “Mom” to everyone.  It was in this home that we all learned about her younger years [fleeing the Nazis from country to country]; like most children, we’d roll our eyes at some of the stories, saying, that’s impossible. READ MORE

THE KEENAN WOMEN: A MOTHER’S DAY REFLECTION
By Amy K. Hughes  | May 6, 2016

The Keenan women from whom I descend are made of something very like steel. They wield a thousand-yard stare that can stop cold any child, misbehaving or not. My cousin Jen calls it “the look that separates flesh from bone.” We are known to be no-nonsense, unflappable, tough, stoic, independent, and resourceful. My cousin Liz suggests that we are “quietly domineering,” while my cousin Judy insists, “We are very loving—even if we don’t want anyone to know it.” Whether by nature or nurture, and for better and worse, I’ve inherited these traits. It’s not hard to trace them, in a direct line, through my mother to my maternal grandmother, Lucy. READ MORE

ON EMOTIONAL HEALTH: DISCOVERING MY MOTHER TOO LATE
By Barbara Fertig | August 21, 2014

In one rare moment, in one extraordinary place, I was shocked out of an assumption that I could define my mother. There had been this other person whose interior life I can only sense through tangible evidence, half-remembered. I have not learned to love my mother more, but in my search for this other person who my mother may have been, I have found more of myself than can be accounted for in all her parenting, all her intentions for me. READ MORE

BEING A MOTHER — THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME
By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.  | May 18, 2017

Of all the roles that women assume in life, none is more demanding, consuming, and important to us all as that of “mother.” That is not to say that women who do not become mothers lead less satisfying or meaningful lives. But there’s no disputing that becoming a mother is an essential change, one that entails a major identity shift, and one that can never be reversed. READ MORE