Article March 22, 1999 Issue

MOTHERING CHILDREN—AND THE WORLD

Susan Oyer

I am the oldest of eight children. Because I grew up admiring my mother and her occupation as a full-time mother, I wanted to be just like her. I always expected that I would get married, have as close to a dozen children as possible, and live happily ever after in a big, rambling house full of fingerpaints and tricycles. Not! Well, at least, not yet.

While still in my twenties, during a short-lived first marriage when I did not become pregnant right away, I began fertility testing and treatment. Tests were inconclusive, treatments ineffective, and divorce loomed on the horizon. Almost ten years later my current husband and I were still childless after numerous miscarriages. Later still, we were in the process of adopting a baby boy when his birth mother chose to parent him herself. At that point I thought I would never be a mother.

One day while praying, however, I realized that I had it all backward. I had been thinking that I needed a child (a noun) in order to mother (a verb), whereas the Bible says that "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:14). Realizing that the origin of Word is a verb, an action, helped me see that my right to mother — to nurture and care for — childlikeness, innocence, and goodness was divinely appointed to me (and everyone) as God's active expression. Therefore, my mothering did not need the permission or condition of a baby to give it authority.

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