Net of cultural legacies and rhetoric - she who gives life, blood of your blood, sacrificial figure - how can we substantiate not yesterday historically but today the figure of the mother? We talk about it on the occasion of Mother's Day, Sunday, May 14, a holiday that has become an incredible commercial business, but that also pushes us to some reflections.
She who generates certainly, but even if she has not generated is a mother anyway for example with adoption, breeder yes but not unique because to raise the children there are many, we get help from the family network from the fundamental grandparents, from the babysitters, from relatives in general, educator yes but really not alone it would be a huge effort and it would not be right for the children themselves.
Moreover, thinking about today, everything related to the role of the mother actually concerns parenthood, an underestimated concept in traditionally mammon Italy that struggles to emancipate itself in parental equality by forcing mothers themselves to the scourge of multitasking, that is, of a thousand commitments carrying on their shoulders an almost unique effort to raise children and forcing fathers to carve out secondary roles when they should be On the same front line, not everyone is happy to step back and a civil society should promote parenting as a whole to make task-sharing on an equal footing.
The mother, in her ancient, original and eternal meaning, is a point of reference for life without ifs and buts, a symbol of unconditional affection.
You can be present mothers, obsessively present, at a distance - like the many migrant women who leave their children in the country of origin as happens to our domestic workers or old sitters, carers, far from them until the dream of family reunification can not come true - you can be mothers by adopting children at a distance or adopting other mothers in difficulty who perhaps live in war or poverty zones fighting malnutrition or disastrous health (some associations such as Mani Tese have specific programs of distance adoption of these mothers), you can be mothers who with a long path full of obstacles come to an adoption, mothers in all respects because it is mom (and dad) who grows you with love beyond blood ties. And you can be temporary mothers, the foster carers, even here in a parental couple. Foster mother is a beautiful courageous figure perhaps the most intense of all.
40 years ago the law on foster care came into force in Italy, a reality still little known today, but it is a very important institution of help and support to guarantee the child the right to grow up in an environment that can meet his educational and emotional needs, respecting his needs, with reference to personal and family characteristics and his specific situation of difficulty. In recent years, among other things, - says Emanuela Angelini of the Caf association in Milan whose activity is supported by the solidarity project Chicco di Felicità - the situation has worsened due to the pandemic, only at the end of the health emergency there has been a slight recovery in the foster care trend, which until 2019 had remained rather constant, around about 13,500 minors entrusted throughout the country. And unlike adoption, not only married couples can take a child or a boy into foster care but also de facto couples, singles, families with or without children, even older or divorced people can apply for a reception project, provided they are of age and available to do a training and knowledge course with the operators.
The mother, yesterday as today, is ready for anything for her children, puts everything in front of everything, them, a symbol of maximum dedication only that in addition to being a mother, she is a woman and for the most part also a worker, all roles that together make the mother's life tiring and complicated. Frustrated by the perfectionism anxiety that society demands in each of its roles, from the senses ofLPA for not being with children enough.
As the writer Michela Murgia said in the touching interview with Corriere della Sera in which she announced her terminal illness, "I hate the rhetoric of biological motherhood, of the mystique of motherhood".
Motherhood has many forms, all those of welcoming first of all, of being a support for others, biological children and children of the soul. Mother of soul is a concept that is no longer modern but more inclusive, it puts dento the affections without ifs and buts, altruism, dedication, example, guidance. And in this broader concept all women have to do with them, with children of blood and not, women who have not had them but have desired them and for this reason they have courageously taken great steps such as opening the doors to children of others who were in need, adopting them, taking them into foster care, simply helping, mothers of children of others, mothers of other mothers in difficulty.