Simply ‘Mother’

“The birth of a child gives birth to a mother”- we often don’t consider the matter into this light, but it’s true that only after a child’s birth, does the term ‘mother’ actually come into existence. The woman exists, but not the mother; a mother is as new as her little baby is. The first word a baby learns to utter is ‘mother’; it is in this word that the baby sees its existence. As the child grows- up, the child learns to create a separate world for itself, but the umbilical cord that still connects the two lingers, grows stronger and sometime stretches to no end. The mother is held as the object of affectionate reverence in Indian Culture. The mother, specifically the woman, is the homemaker, the first teacher of the child, the person who lovingly transmits the culture of this ancient land to its heirs in their most formative years. In India, the mother is visualized as a powerful, compassionate human being, who is full of love and grace.

 The Puranas and Shastras stress the role of women as mothers and extol the mothers who instilled high ideals in the minds of the children of the land. The Vedas speak of Maitreyi and Gargi as great scholars and spiritual heroines. Gargi was well revered in the assembly of Vedic pundits for her mastery over abstruse problems of the spirituality. In recent history, we have Jija Bai, the mother of Chatrapathi Shivaji who raised him on the epics and Puranas, and brought him up as a brave human being. Jija Bai has been one of the strongest influences on the great Maratha leader Shivaji. She was a great source of inspiration for Shivaji and was responsible for cultivating the spirit of bravery and humanism in him. Shivaji shared one characteristic with his mother, which was the inability to compromise. This inherited trait was part of his strength of character and it remained with him throughout his life.

 The Mother, from time immemorial, has always been a figure to whom the child is attached the most. It is in her that the child sees the whole universe. In fact in a child’s upbringing, the mother plays the most crucial role. Not only is the important role of instilling values, purpose and responsibility best met by a child’s biological parents at an early age, but so too is the cultivation of a sense of security and well-being. Studies in the bonding and attachment theory have shown that a child’s emotional and mental well-being is inexorably tied up with continuous, sustained, stable physical and emotional contact between the mother and child. A mother can be said to be the first teacher of a child. Starting from uttering the first word to responding to others, a child learns everything from the mother. She is the example in social behavior that the child sees and learns to imitate. In fact even in today’s globalised world, the role of the mother has been stressed immensely and it is with regard to this that the schools have also been organizing regular parent-teacher meetings so that the children benefit from them. The mothers need to spend as much quality time as they can with their children, because children from the time of their birth can easily identify the warmth of their mother and associate with that warmth. The warmth of love that a mother gives is a child’s social baseline.

Thank you

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