Mother’s Day is despised by many people as a holiday full of sentiment and empty of any thought and meaning. Many see it as just another commercial occasion to sell flowers, candy and bath oils. Part of the reason for this development is that motherhood has been sentimentalized to the point of meaninglessness. Mothers are associated with unconditional love and endless patience, and people forget that there were ever societies in which strong women held their babies aloft over their city walls the better to motivate their men to glory in battle. Being a mother does not have to be all about weakness and selflessness. Consider, for instance, the Spartan mothers.
“Because we are also the only ones who give birth to men.”
Spartan babies were exposed at birth, and there was no intention of caring for a baby who would not mature into a self-sufficient individual. Much was demanded of both men and women, boys and girls. Physicial fitness was a very high value in Spartan society.
Everything the Spartans did was practical, so the clothing of Spartan women was simple and notoriously “short”. Their thighs were usually exposed, which the other Greeks found to be quite scandalous. But Spartan women owned property and could read and write, and they controlled the government by controlling their husbands.
Good question! Now that women can vote, do they have more or less political power than when Spartan women sent their husbands with instructions on how to vote in the all male assembly? Today when both a husband and a wife have the vote, husbands and wives often cancel each other’s votes out. But when a household is united, then much can be achieved by working together.
One of the essential functions of Spartan women was to bear children. Because of the traditional value that bringing children into the world was at the heart of every marriage, divorce and sharing of reproductive resources was not frowned upon. When reproduction is the real purpose of a marriage, then people understand that the best child bearers should be used by the best sperm donors to bring forth the healthiest children. But this does not mean that there was anything wanton or hedonistic in these arrangements. Modesty was one of the chief virtues of Spartan women, and the propriety with which they handled themselves under difficult circumstances would put modern women of today to shame.
Someone contacted a Spartan woman to ask if she would agree to let him seduce her. She said: ‘When I was a child I learned to obey my father, and I did so; then when I became a woman I obeyed my husband; so if this man is making me a proper proposal, let him put it to my husband first.” (Plutarch.)
Spartan women expected much from their men and their children, and they could afford to demand high standards, because of the very high standards that they also applied to themselves.
The names of women who died in childbirth were the only ones to be etched on gravestones, just as only the men who died in battle had their names preserved on a gravemarker. Motherhood was held in the highest esteem, because everybody understood that it was a serious matter and that everybody’s well being depended on it.
Are we better off today? Are mothers better respected now or were they more respected then? Isn’t respect something we have to earn? Do we earn it by granting unconditional love or by demanding much from both our men and our children?
If you want to read a book that features a mother in the Spartan mold, consider picking up a copy of Vacuum County. Then read about Anadora, a mother who rather than drying her son’s tears when he was beaten insisted that he had to learn to fight back.
This is an interesting perspective on Mother’s Day. There is an island on Indonesia where the men are not sent off to war, but the women basically always encourage the men to go fishing, which gives them more power when they are away to run things in the city. I see parallels between the Spartans, and also the war factories during World War II when women were building the machinery, and often running entire parts of the plant.
Thanks, Sweetbearies. I think you are right that it does not necessarily have to be war that has the men occupied, it could just as well be fishing as in your Indonesian example or hunting as with many hunter-gatherer groups. Yes, I also thought about the factories during WWII when I was researching this article.