Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Irene Oh
jore_456 638..653
ABSTRACT Common experiences of mothering offer profound critiques of maternal ethical norms found in both Christianity and Islam. The familiar responsibilities of caring for children, assumed by the majority of Christian and Muslim women, provide the basis for reassessing sacricial and seless love, protesting unjust religious and political systems, and dismantling romanticized notions of childcare. As a distinctive category of womens experience, motherhood may offer valuable perspectives necessary for remedying injustices that afflict mothers and children in particular, as well as for developing cross-cultural understandings of justice in general.
KEY WORDS: motherhood, Christianity, Islam, comparative religion, justice, agency, feminist
BECAUSE IT is common to the lives of so many women, both Christian and Muslim, motherhood is an ideal subject for comparative religious ethics. Do Christian and Muslim sources, however, offer different views of motherhood? Put differently, might Christian and Muslim women mother differently as a result of their religious beliefs? In foundational religious sources such as the Bible, papal documents, the Quran, and hadith, commentaries concerning motherhood differ only slightly and usually in emphasis upon one particular aspect of mothering versus another. These differences, moreover, pale in comparison to the responsibilities familiar to mothers everywhere: years dedicated to the daily work of feeding, clothing, cleaning, holding, educating, and myriad other activities necessary for the survival and ourishing of the next generation. Indeed, both Christian and Muslim texts that address mothers offer little prescriptive ethical guidance for them; in these traditions one nds that mothers tend to be objectied as symbols of willing and seless devotion. The actual experiences of mothers, however, challenge assumed ethical norms of maternal seless love, re-evaluate the role of mothers in establishing just societies, and correct romanticized views of childcare. The rst part of this essay examines how maternal experiJRE 38.4:638653. 2010 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.
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ences might be employed to critique the ideal of maternal selessness found in both Christianity and Islam. The second part explores how Christian and Muslim mothers interpret their religious traditions from the margins to protest unjust political situations. The third part argues that such critical views of religion and society are largely possible as the result of accurate and complex, rather than simplistically idealized, renderings of motherhood. The fourth and concluding sections discuss the distinctiveness of motherhood as the basis for cross-cultural justice movements. Given the shared concerns and experiences of Christian and Muslim mothers, the possibility emerges of a cross-cultural ethic of motherhood rooted in womens experiences of caring for children.
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Christine Gudorf, by contrast, offers a critical view of agape based on her experiences as the mother of one biological child and two adopted children with disabilities. For Gudorf:
The insistence on Christian love as seless has created tremendous guilt in people who constantly nd that they cannot forget themselves completely in their loving as they should. The experience of having their love rewarded, returning fourfold, frustrates many who come to assume that Christian love must be only for the saints, not for ordinary people [Gudorf 2005, 85].
Gudorf nds that the assumption of parental love as seless giving without any thought to ones self is both inaccurate and demoralizing. The maternal expectation set by gloried depictions of Mary is unrealistic and, moreover, ignores the social realities and web of mutual concern that surrounds the parentchild relationship. Although Gudorfs experience is imaginably more difficult than that of most mothers because of her childrens medical conditions, her sentiment shared earlier by Richechoes a profound dissatisfaction with the gap between idealistic expectations of mothering and the actual experiences of mothering. John Paul IIs euphemistic descriptions of mothering reinforce the belief that women ought to revel gloriously in the responsibilities of motherhood without any concern for themselves. Holding Mary up as the paragon of mothers, John Paul II sets an impossibly high bar for them. The absence of Marys own reections on motherhood further enables the popes rendering of Mary as the model mother. Without her testimony and given the papacys ultimate interpretive authority, Christian expectations of mothering fail to reconcile the ambivalent feelings actual mothers may have about mothering. The Churchs expectations of mothers are questionable given that these are based on incomplete and inaccurate understanding of childcare. As Gudorf suggests, the Churchs skewed understanding of Mary has serious ethical implications for mothers. Although mothers are certainly concerned about the lives of their children, mothers are also concerned about their own happiness and satisfaction. If, as the pope indicates, mothers are to love and work with unquestioning devotion, the Church essentially silences critiques of the injustices that unduly burden mothers. There is little space for understanding how mothers realistically perceive their own lives. Mothers sometimes do feel overwhelmed or depressed or simply fail to experience the joy that they, according to the Church, ought to feel, particularly when they are burdened with medical, economic, or psychological issues. The Churchs maternal vision obscures the many factors that facilitate or hinder a mothers ability to care for her children, including the role of
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other family members, neighbors, and governments. Motherly love personied through the singular example of Mary is not only radically misunderstood but also ethically negligent. The practices of mothering provide a lens through which one understands more accurately both agapeistic neighbor-love and proper selflove. The physical and emotional work of caring for a child renes for many mothers the notions of both self-love and other-regarding love. In caring for ones own child, one might better imagine how one cares for and loves children who are not ones own, and how others care for and love their own children. Because children are both other and of oneself, they also provide a unique opportunity to examine how love for another and self-love interact. The relationship between the ability to love oneself and the ability to love a child, who may not be capable of expressing love in return, tests the boundaries of such loves. Gudorf reminds her readers that when parents raise their young, they do so not purely out of self-sacricing love, but also with the hope that their efforts will be returned with love and affection from their children and with the satisfaction in seeing children mature. In considering the raising her two disabled children, Gudorf remarks that there
was no way to do that without also gratifying our own self-interest in that when they learned to walk, talk, eat, use the toilet, attend school, and form other relationships not only would their horizons expand, but ours also. As with all children, every achievement of the child is both a source of pride and a freeing of the parent from responsibility for the child [Gudorf 2005, 80].
She points out that when parents care for their young, they do so with the expectation that the giving will become mutual. Parents are not completely seless in their love. While self-sacrice and selessness surely characterize much of childcare, especially when young children are utterly dependent upon parents, self-love and self-concern remain inextricably tied to the efforts and work of mothers. Christian feminist thought has explored the relationship between self-love and other-regarding love (Weaver 2002), but Islamic thought also contains possibilities for reading religious texts with similar concerns in mind. That is, one might take passages from the Quran and the hadith with a critical eye that focuses upon acknowledging the self-consciousness and moral awareness of the mother, rather than her seless love. In one of the most common wedding gifts given to Muslim brides in Southeast Asia, a century-old guidebook titled Bihishti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments), the reader does not encounter the terminology of self-love, but the text clearly indicates that young women ought to respect and care for themselves in order to prepare for marriage and
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motherhood. Author Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi encourages women to educate themselves about Islam. With emphasis placed upon taking the time and effort to become literate and well versed in Islam, to master essential math skills, and above all, to question condently traditions and customs that may be more harmful than good; Bihishti Zewar validates a brides intellectual, emotional, and social abilities (Metcalf 1997, 59, 97, 102). His guidebook also provides numerous portrayals of inspiring Muslim women, including scholars, doctors, and religious leaders. The vast majority of exemplary Muslim women in Bihishti Zewar, however, gain their knowledge and prominence in relation to the needs of men (Metcalf 1997, 293308). Although they are responsible for saving their own souls, women pursue educations so that they may better serve their children and husbands. Women who learn to read and write manage their homes well, raise their children well, and know every minute the proper status of her mother, father, husband, and other relations; and she will fulll her obligations (huquq) to them (Metcalf 1997, 59). The education of young women remains ultimately couched in other-regarding terms. In Islamic canonical texts, mothers are described as objects of veneration. The traditional canon comprising the Quran and hadith contains numerous references to mothers made by observers of mothers, but few references come directly from mothers themselves. The Quran as well as the hadith of Bukhari, considered the most reliable archivist of hadith in Sunni Islam, state explicitly that children are to respect their mothers. In one famous hadith, mothers are deserving of the kindest of companionship, even before fathers. Many Muslims view the wives of Muhammad as exemplars of virtue and behavior, but hadith concerning Khadija, the Prophets rst wife, are especially popular among Muslim women in part because, of all of Muhammads wives, she is the only one to have borne a child who survived the death of Muhammad (Stowasser 1992). Still, traditional religious references to motherhood are mostly variations on the theme of respect for ones mother, without providing guidance to mothers themselves for handling the struggles and complexities of motherhood. Although hadith from Muhammads wives exist, few can be attributed to Khadija (most are attributed to Aisha, who did not have children), and no substantial commentary from mothers about mothering exists from this formative period. In several hadith, however, the nursing mother is described as performing moral work that deserves divine reward. Notably, these hadith are addressed to mothers themselves and refer to concrete practices of mothering. The nursing mother in the Quran and hadith is depicted as a woman who receives reward for the work of mothering.
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According to one hadith, Muhammad explains that when a mother nurses, she receives for every mouthful [of milk] and for every suck, the reward of one good deed. And if she is kept awake by her child at night, she receives the reward of one who frees seventy slaves for the sake of Allah (Schleifer 1986, 53). Although it might be construed as religious reinforcement of the sacricial mother, this hadith might also be viewed as the Prophets explicit recognition of the physical and moral tasks of mothering. Mothers pain in labor and weariness in childcare are not viewed as punishment for sin, as described in Genesis 3, but rather as occasions for immense gratitude. The Quran indicates that a Muslim ought to revere ones mother because a mother beareth him in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years (Quran 31:14). The Quran also acknowledges the ambivalence that mothers may feel, given the hardships associated with pregnancy and nursing: ones mother beareth him with reluctance, and bringeth him forth with reluctance, and the bearing of him and the weaning of him (Schleifer 1986, 52). Developing an understanding of the ethical agency of mothers may require the retrieval of sources within these religions that acknowledge more realistically the lives of mothers. Both Mark and Luke in the Christian scriptures, for example, describe pregnant and nursing women as those who suffer greatly at the end of days: And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! (Mark 13:17), and For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck! (Luke 23:29). Genesis 3, of course, famously describes the pain in childbearing that will plague women since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. These and similar texts in religious sources avoid romanticizing motherhood and begin to acknowledge the realities and work of mothering. Focusing on such sources may provide a means for developing an understanding of motherhood as ethical practice, rather than as an impossible ideal.
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Fearful of reviving the mystique of womans moral superiority, Rich cautions against the use of motherhood as a basis for political, particularly antimilitarist, work (Rich 1986, xxiv). She questions the implicit belief that only mothers with children of their own have a real stake in the future of humanity (Rich 1986, xxiv). Similarly, Marilyn Friedman sheds doubt on the association between an ethic of care and womens practices (Friedman 1995, 66). Nonetheless, a heightened sensitivity to injustice and violence may emerge out of maternal experience. The experiences of caring for children arguably result in maternal thinking, which, as feminist philosopher Sarah Ruddick describes, constitutes a kind of intellectual effort that is nely attuned to the nature of violence, the employment of force, and the fragility of peace (Ruddick 1989). She asserts that common maternal practices of protection, nurturing, and trainingfamiliar to mothers despite cultural differencesresult in the development of moral perspectives that are especially aware of the effects of injustice (Ruddick 1989, 65123). Given the ban against women holding positions of authority within major Christian denominations and in Islam, mothers have sometimes found greater opportunity to voice their concerns about injustices in the public, secular square. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Disappeared, in Argentina, carefully employed the image of the Mater Dolarosa, the grieving mother of Christ, by dressing in simple, homely attire and grieving publicly for their missing children during Argentinas Dirty War (197683) (Femenia 1987). After being turned away by the Catholic Church, which had in fact been complicit with the military government, a group of mothers donned white head coverings and silently circumambulated a major public square to protest the kidnappings of their children. Their imaginative, subversive use of the Catholic Churchs imagery in the political sphere awakened the consciousness of the international public to the terrors of Argentinas military regime. The Madres skillfully played upon cultural and religious expectations of the apolitical, domestic, subservient mother to shock the country into action and generated worldwide support. The mothers effectively employed Catholic symbols to point out the injustice of the Church and the government in the face of those human rights abuses. In this example, maternal experience led to political protest that resulted in global awareness of the massive human rights violations. Mothers around the world found themselves moved by the pain and suffering experienced by Argentine mothers for their disappeared children. Indeed, the Madres have since inspired numerous other mothers groups who call forth our sympathies and our indignation toward injustice.
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Muslim scholar and activist Amina Wadud draws from her experience as the mother of ve children to speak out against the injustices reinforced by the oft-quoted hadith stating that paradise lies at the feet of the mother (Wadud 2006). Her protests against the poor treatment of mothers within patriarchal cultures are inspired by the living hell for many single female parents, or women with disabled or un-able fathers, husbands, and brothers in a Muslim community that pretends that such an idiom [or more accurately, an adage] is a statement of fact and therefore ignores the agony of these women making them invisible (Wadud 2006, 126). Through the lens of motherhood, Wadud provides a subversive reading of the story of Hajar (Haggar), the ancestral mother of the Arabs and Islam. She notes that Hajars status as single head of household is never commented upon, no one was held accountable for its resolution, and later legal codications in Islam would still overlook it (Wadud 2006, 144). This oversight within Muslim societies carries important implications, especially considering the ways in which current Islamic laws treat single mothers by harshly penalizing pregnancy out of wedlock. Wadud calls for a more equitable system of justice within Islam that recognizes a single mother not as a deviant gure, but as a paradigm that demands greater consideration and just treatment. For Wadud and the Madres, protests against the injustices carried out by religious traditions and political systems come directly from their experiences as mothers. While their status as mothers lends them the credibility to speak out publicly concerning these issues, their direct observations of mothers lives seem to have provided the critical lens that motivates their activism. Rich and Friedman are rightly concerned about the dangers of associating motherhood with political movementsmothers may very well be reinforcing stereotypes by protesting issues directly relevant to childrens welfarebut given the urgency of these injustices, such concerns are arguably secondary to the need to call attention to them, whether by mothers or by others. Rather than view mothers politicization as a step backward, the unexpected activism of mothers against the abuses of children and mothers may in fact constitute a step toward overturning romanticized images of motherhood.
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observes, for example, that the history of Western philosophy has paid scant attention to the process by which babies become rational adults and especially to those mothers who raise them. Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, which has played a signicant role in the development of both Christian and Islamic ethics, does not acknowledge the role that mothers play in the upbringing of virtuous young male citizens. Ironically, the women who are expected to raise children, at least in their earliest, most formative years, are themselves excluded from the education of virtue. This omission raises concerns about the accuracy and comprehensiveness of Aristotles pedagogy of virtue. With regard to the liberal tradition within philosophy, Okin observes that it
appears to be talking about individuals, as components of political systems, it is in fact talking about male-headed families. Whereas the interests of the male actors in the political realm are perceived as discrete, and often conicting, the interests of the members of the family of each patriarch are perceived as entirely convergent with his own, and consequently women disappear from the subject of politics [Okin 1979, 202].
Mothers have historically played a vital, but unacknowledged role in the formation of the body politic. Their absence from philosophical thinking about virtue, governments, and the good life does not constitute a mere oversight, but has potentially serious ramications for the development of any complete ethical framework. Author Jane Smiley has similarly observed the extreme paucity of mothers and the tradition of a maternal vision in Western literature. She asks, What do we know about mothers from reading our literature? We know what they look like and what others feel about them (Smiley 1993, 6). Very little reliable information exists, for example, about how Mary thought and acted as a mother except in relation to her sons birth and death. The Greek term used for Mary in Orthodox Christianity, theotokos, literally the God-bearer, emphasizes the physical relationship of Mary to Jesus, rather than the emotional, intellectual, or spiritual one that she may have had with her son. Similarly, in stories of exemplary women found in the Quran, the importance of childbearing as a central part of a Muslim womans identity is emphasized (Brockopp 1999, 7). Charles Hallisey, describing the dearth of information about women in Buddhism, remarks that rarely do we see the women in these models depicted as having the complex, if not contradictory, characters that most of us do in fact have. . . . Nowhere is a gap between idealization and realistic possibility more visible than in Buddhist models of mothers (Hallisey 1999, 12324). Available information about mothers is often secondary, told through the voices of male observers, redactors, or authors, not
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through the voices of the mothers themselves. This lacuna has important implications for developing a more complete understanding of the good life. Understanding motherhood as an ethically rich and complex experience ultimately depends upon accurate portrayals of motherhood in society. Traditional images of mothers in Western religious history and in popular media portray young, healthy, content, and presumably married women, with equally healthy and content babes in their arms. One questions the accuracy of the placid images of Mary and the baby Jesus given the physical drain and messiness of the birthing process, newborn care, and nursing. The iconic image of mother and baby is so deeply entrenched that a contrary view, such as that of a profoundly destitute mother and her young children portrayed in Dorthea Langes Depression Era photograph, Migrant Mother, elicited comments that the photographs were subversive propaganda and false (Stevens and Fogel 2001).1 Poor women have long experienced motherhood differently than white, middle-class women. From the time of slavery, African American mothers have had to work outside the home while their own children were raised by othermotherswomen in the African American community who shared the work of raising each others children (Collins 1995, 120 24). Images of Mary and Khadija, hardly normal mothers, are not the only culturally prominent mothers. Celebrity mothers and ctionalized mothers can be found in supermarket tabloids and in lighthearted mommy lit, as the genre is dubbed (Bazelon 2006, 10). Our culture is simply inundated with skewed images of motherhood. These diversions, however, hint at the need to recognize the ethical struggles of real mothers. The attraction to Mary and Khadija, Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears, as well as the protagonists of mommy lit may suggest the publics desire to understand maternal viewpoints on a plethora of topics, both trivial and profound. These women symbolize moral boundaries in the form of good mothers and bad ones. Unfortunately, like Mary and Khadija, celebrity and ctional mothers are promoted without sincere reection upon the actual experiences of mothers. They provide little insight into the mundane but ethically important daily work of mothering. The danger of these modern depictions of motherhood lies in their glamorous extremity and the applications of that extremity in creating ethical norms for mothers.
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4. A Distinctive Voice
In recognizing mothers voices and recording their experiences so that they are available as sources of critique, one needs to value motherhood as a distinct category of experience. Some may argue that experiences of mothering and fathering are similar enough such that the term parenting is the more valid term. Other thinkers may argue against the use of the term motherhood for political reasons. bell hooks, for example, reasons that the use of mothering as a term to denote childcare exacerbates the problem of the gendering of childcare (hooks 1984, 13839). Changes in language to become more sex- and gender-inclusive, she asserts, may function as a precursor to social and institutional equality. Also, men who have borne a fair share of their work raising young children may protest the decision to use the gendered language of mothering, rather than the more inclusive term of parenting. In North American and Western European societies, men are increasingly active partners in the rearing of young children. Additionally, some women do not want or cannot become pregnant, while yet others may not be able to or choose not to become primary care givers to the children they bear. The choice to employ the term mother instead of father, parent, or caregiver honors the fact that historically and across cultures, women have typically carried the responsibility of childcare (Ruddick 1989, 4445). Nancy Chodorow also reminds us that while substantial changes have occurred over the last few centuries with regard to womens work, marriage rates, and fertility, womens mothering is one of the few universal and enduring elements of the sexual division of labor (Chodorow 1978, 3). Discussions of men as primary caregivers to young children are virtually absent in traditional religious resources. Caring for children, especially young children, has, for both physical and cultural reasons, been typically viewed as womens work. Lactating womeneither biological mothers or wet nurseshave fed infants, and women in their roles as mothers, teachers, nannies, and sitters have raised children to maturity. Choosing to use mother and its obvious association with women also makes sense given that most women have no choice but to confront the biological possibility of pregnancy and motherhood. The possibility of pregnancy (through rape, for example) is signicant because it forces women to consider motherhood, even if they never want to become mothers. Men, on the other hand, may never know for sure if they are biological fathers; unless confronted with DNA evidence, they can fairly easily deny their biological role in creating a child. For women, concealing a pregnancy or birth, while possible, is quite difficult. Confronted by their biology, women inevitably face the question of whether
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or not they want to become mothers. Women therefore spend a disproportionate amount of thought, time, and money to avoid or to become mothers. Susan Starr Sered observes that
in every known culture adult women grapple with motherhood. Most women are, have been, or try to become mothers, or conversely, make effortssometimes even life-threatening effortsto avoid becoming mothers. Many, if not most women, are concerned with controlling the number of children whom they bear and raise, and with determining the way in which their children are raised. The diverse implications of motherhood . . . strongly resonate with womens religious beliefs and rituals [Sered 1996, 7].
By choice or by coercion, many women nd themselves facing possible motherhood. The non-gendered term caregiver, while in many ways appropriate to this study, is also not acceptably accurate. Caring for a young child, an elderly person, and a disabled person (child or not) engender different ethical reections. All three types of care involve a relationship between a caregiver and one who is cared for, but the physical, psychological, and intellectual demands of each type of care differ. A person who cares for her aging parents, for example, experiences distinct, though no less profound, emotions than in caring for her young infant. In the former case, memories of being cared for by ones parents; surprise, shock, and anger at the aging process; and the reality of end-of-life concerns entail different ethical responses than those emerging from the care of a child whose future and whose memories are yet to be created. For many women awareness of the ethical demands of motherhood begins with pregnancy, a condition that women alone experience.2 Many women, for example, prepare for the responsibilities of caring for an infant during pregnancy when they restrict the consumption of certain foods and tobacco, seek prenatal medical care, and begin or end other practices unique to their pregnant lives. Arguably construed as exercises in virtue, pregnant women attempt to habituate certain practices deemed culturally good over the course of months with the goal of fullling a desired end of a healthy mother and child. Emotionally, women often begin the process of bonding with their infants when they are still fetuses in utero. The intense physical and emotional bond between women and their children, found through practices such as nursing, often develops through infancy and into early childhood.
2 Thomas Beatie, a transsexual man who kept his female reproductive organs intact despite a sex-change operation that transformed his outward appearance, has recently announced that he is pregnant. So, although I state here that women confront pregnancy, I realize that exceptions may occur (Beatie 2008, 24; Winfrey 2008).
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Pregnancy involves different, but related, ethical issues than motherhood because pregnancy often initiates the ethical lives distinct to motherhood. The morally transformative process often begins with pregnancy, but lies predominantly in the years of work caring for dependent children. Biological mothers may perform the majority of early child care work, but adoptive mothers, fathers (biologically male parents), and other persons who assume a primary role of caregiver for a child can also care for children. Therefore, fathers, adoptive mothers, and others who take on this role may similarly experience the moral work of caring for children. Notably, the Abrahamic traditions acknowledge our moral responsibilities to non-biological children. Both Moses and Muhammad were orphaned and cared for by adoptive parents. Psalm 68:5 praises God as Father of orphans who gives the desolate a home to live in (NRSV). The Quran warns Muslims to protect the assets of vulnerable orphans (6:152, 17:34; 18:82), to feed orphans (76:8), and to avoid the harsh treatment of orphans (93:9, 107:2). Even in caring for adopted children, however, women in most cultures still assume the lions share of the work of caring for children. The language of mothering has admitted deciencies. Nonetheless, such language best suits this particular study because it reminds us of the fact that women have, and continue to bear, the primary responsibility of caring for young children. The gendered term also acknowledges that most women do in fact become biological mothers. Perhaps most signicantly, the category of motherhood prods us to consider more fully the ethical perspectives that result from the experiences of women who care for the next generation of humanity. Mothers constitute a distinct group of persons who, as women and as caregivers to the young, may develop particularly valuable and much-needed perspectives on religion and society.
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property rights, and workplace discrimination, loses traction if women lose status as a distinct sex. One might extend this argument to mothers as a discrete, albeit large, category among women. There are serious issues of injustice facing mothers in particularissues such as alarmingly high maternal mortality rates in poor communities, workplace discrimination against mothers, and disproportionately large numbers of mothers and children living in povertythat require the recognition of both the plight of mothers and the voices of mothers themselves if we are to remedy these injustices (United Nations 2010, 3038). The unpublicized struggles and joys of motherhood potentially provide a basis for cross-cultural justice movements. Although mothers would be the rst to claim that the experience of raising a child differs from child to child and culture to culture, enough of the experience of childcare is similar that mothers from different religious traditions are able to empathize with each other over the various triumphs and travails of mothering. Experiences of motherhood as complex practices of care bring into sharp relief the relationships between self, other, and society. Mothers see how the well-being of a child relies upon the well-being of the mother, and how this relationship depends also upon a well-functioning society. Mothers across political spectrums and religious divides share a concern for the communities and environments that they and their children inhabit. The care for ones own children and the empathetic recognition of other mothers work can translate into a profound concern about cultural values and the role of religious institutions in upholding or neglecting those values. Changes in moral self-understanding as a result of motherhood may provide the impetus for social and political change, including the transformation of religious traditions. In creatively seeking moral agency through their respective religious traditions, mothers illuminate the potential of religion in ways that might otherwise be neglected. Indeed in both Christian and Muslim communities, children possess the unique status of being social objects of great social worth and have the symbolic power to transform womens identities (McMahon 1995, 21). As symbols of society, children imbue mothers with the legitimacy to act in the public sphere on their behalf and on the behalf of other mothers. Especially in these times of intense discord, the needs of mothers, witnessed to by mothers, may provide platforms to critique unjustied religious conict. Because mothers, in their experiences of nurturing the future generation of humanity, comprehend the responsibilities of caring for children, they especially may provide much-needed perspectives to foster greater understanding and justice between cultures and traditions.
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