By Muhammad Khadija Shehu
Understanding a Mother’s Role and Encouraging Love, Adoration and Respect for Her In fact, “Mother’s Role in the Society” is considered to be quite a sensitive topic for a discussion.
Interestingly, nowadays there are many writers who highlight this issue in their literary works. In general, the mother can be described in various ways and in different situations.
Biologically, a mother is a social female parent of an offspring. Collectively, it is she who fulfills the main social role in raising the child But for the various definitions, there is one thing common throughout the whole world – each mother should be loved and respected.
This factor should be emphasized by the society we are living in. Indeed, there can hardly be a community which would say that the mother is nothing but a living being made to deliver children.
However, there might be some humans who would think like this, but in general, every culture has a valued position for the mother. It is a well-known fact that the mother is strongly related to her children. Everyone supports a view that the mother is not just the woman who gives birth to a child, but the one who adopts the child and considers it to be hers.
In reality, there are many reasons why the mother cannot bring up the child she gave birth to;
Poverty: It is crystal clear that raising of a child in poverty is a great challenge. If a lonely mother cannot earn her living, she may not be able to earn for the child. This makes her abandon her child.
Social problems: Some communities still follow Infanticide, which is killing an infant. In such cases, each mother wants her baby to survive and hence she may give away the baby to someone else.
Superstitions: In certain uneducated families, new born babies are killed or discarded because they were born with some disease.
They tend to give such kid a superstitious name and throw away the baby. In any case, a mother is always unhappy about the departure of her baby. In many communities, a mother is considered an incarnation of Goddess. Therefore, she is highly praised and worshiped.
People celebrate Mother’s Day to commemorate the spirit of motherhood.
Traditionally, the mother is associated with the following roles:
1. Giving birth to a child
2. Educating the child with good values
3. Making a family circle from a house
4 Taking care of all members of the family
It should be kept in mind that in a father-mother-children relationship the closest person for any member is a mother. She is the center towards which all other elements are closely attached. The father may not be too close to the children because he needs to take care of earnings for his family. Children might not be that close to their father, as he is most of the time away from home.
Amazingly, some mothers might act even as a communicative line between the children and their father. This shows the importance of a mother in a family.
Thus, mothers should be given priority care and all necessary support in order to have a free crime and decent society.
Khadija Shehu writes from Mass Communication Department Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic Bauchi.