Motherhood is the state of being a mother. It encompasses all roles and responsibilities linked with being a parent. Motherhood is glory, and a highest honour a woman can get as well as the biggest blessing endowed on her. Motherhood is what completes her. And we have been shown and told about various stories of what great mother looks like.
However, it must be noted that motherhood is not solely defined by biological factors, and one does not have to birth a child to be a mother, adoptive or surrogate mothers too are mothers. When we look around, we have always heard or seen what a ‘perfect motherhood’ looks like. Mothers are to be nurturing, caring, and always the one to provide emotional support etc. These are the traditional depiction of motherhood, one that is still universally accepted. She is the primary caregiver, capable of unconditional love and always sacrificing and selfless.
From Hindi movie ‘Mother India’ to English ‘Gone with the Wind’, mothers here are truly selfless forever moulding themselves for the need and requirements of their children and the society they live in. If she steps a little out of this predetermined line, she is eagerly classified as ‘the bad mother’.
But in today’s time, we can see this much necessary change in the portrayal of motherhood. With the evolution of the society and the alterations in the family dynamics, the concept of motherhood too has gone under tremendous changes. And it is important that mainstream media shows these changes in mind-set and beliefs.
We grew up watching Hindi serials like ‘Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki’ and ‘Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ that glamourised being the naïve and docile provider, completely neglecting the personal well-being of the mothers, mental health was a completely alien and taboo topic. Often times, a mother who did prioritise herself was depicted as a cold hearted woman, like in the case of Durga Devi from the StarPlus hit serial ‘Jamai Raja’.
In the recent times, the Netflix original ‘Ginny and Georgia’ too was criticised for its very modern take on motherhood. Georgia, played by Brianne Howey, is your classic teen pregnancy mother, who along with her two children yearn to have a typical home, but their journey and story is far from your everyday single mother-children story.
Georgia is unapologetically fierce and wild, she’s someone who knows her worth and goes far and beyond for her kids. But this take on motherhood was not liked by many, for it does not portray motherhood in the universally accepted way – soft and selfless. All she knows and wants – stability for herself and her children, more time than other, leading to taking morally ambiguous decisions from her side.
Motherhood has various underlying aspects to it, mental health along with physical, career, finance, etc., and it’s high time that these things too are showcased in the mainstream to give a real and authentic image of motherhood and not the glamourised and unreal version of it. Movies like ‘Lady Bird’, ‘Little fires Everywhere’, ‘Bad Moms’ and its sequel ‘A Bad Mom’s Christmas’ show contemporary motherhood in its imperfections, complexities and authenticity.