Image of a Mother

Image of a Mother
4 YEARS OF AGE ~ My Mommy can do anything!
8 YEARS OF AGE ~ My Mom knows a lot! A whole lot!
12 YEARS OF AGE ~ My Mother doesn't really know quite everything.
14 YEARS OF AGE ~ Naturally, Mother doesn't know that, either.
16 YEARS OF AGE ~ Mother? She's hopelessly old-fashioned.
18 YEARS OF AGE ~ That old woman. She's way out of date!
25 YEARS OF AGE ~ Well, she might know a little bit about it.
35 YEARS OF AGE ~ Before we decide, let's get Mom's opinion.
45 YEARS OF AGE ~ Wonder what Mom would have thought about it?
65 YEARS OF AGE ~ Wish I could talk it over with Mom.
The original poem has the word daddy and dad in places of mommy and mom, however, the author remains unknown.
Whether it is the image of a father or a mother, this poem reflects the growing phenomenon of the falling status of mother and father in modern western culture. This was not always the case in western culture. There are poems, anecdotes and proverbs in praise of mother. Some samples below will demontrate this:

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.
Cardinal Mermillod

How many of those who have achieved distinction can trace their inherited gifts to mother’s character, and their acquired gifts to a mother’s teaching and influence.
F. T. Marzials, Life of Charles Dickens

The greatest moral force in history is motherhood. Childhood is directed by its love; youth is kept pure and honourable by its sweet dominance; and mature age finds its influence regnant, shaping character even to the end. Mother is the title of woman’s supreme dignity.
The TIMES, February 1929

The mother is the most precious possession of the nation, so precious that society advances its highest well-being when it protects the functions of the mother.
Ellen Key

Even the West can recognise that society’s well-being lies in preserving the role of the mother. Yet despite this knowledge, why is their society bent on destroying the mother’s role?
Many factors are at work in this conspiracy. One well known factor is the feminist movement in deconstructing the family’s structure. Another factor is partly due to psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud.

Freud was a great enemy of women....Thanks to Freud, the whole of the United States is covered with millions and millions of grown men grizzling about the way they were treated by their mothers, who are usually dead.
Dale Spender

So many theories from the psychologists and other “experts” with their manuals on motherhood but as one woman discovered:

Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.
Kate Samperi

Even the school is a source that trains children to rebel against their parents. How many of us heard stories of children learning their rights at school and threatening their parents with the police or the Department of Community Services (DOCS) if they do not get what they want or for being disciplined? How long will it be before we see children suing their parents for not giving them the right upbringing, the right education, and the right materialistic needs? That future is not very far off.

It is easy to blame external forces but ultimately mothers must look to themselves. It is true that they help in transforming their children into great people. At the same time, it is also true that they can mould a child into a detestable human.
These mothers include those who neglect their children, those who are dominering and who do not respect their children’s opinions, those who do not practise what they preach, those who turn a blind eye to their children’s misbehaviour or who are over zealous in their punishment. Even those who show lack of intelligence.
Take the story of Samuel Johnson whose household had no warmth and whose mother would alternately spoiled and punished him often. Subsequently, as a child, he saw older people as “very unfit to manage children; for being most commonly idle themselves” and “by tormenting the young folks with prohibitions not meant to be obeyed and questions not intended to be answered.” He said about his mother, “...I did not respect my mother, though I loved her...”
To end, here are some useful quotes from the West’s notables:

A spoilt child never loves its mother.
           Sir Henry Taylor
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
            Oscar Wilde
Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
           Ralph Waldo Emerson

References:
Exley, H. 1995 A SPECIAL COLLECTION IN PRAISE OF MOTHERS Exley Publications, Herts (UK)
Handley, H. and Samelson, A. 1990 Childhood A literary Companion Robert Hale, London.
Mitford, N et al., 1994 A Celebration of MOTHERS Pan Books Limited, London.