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| Hercules & Omphale on the way to making babies (Francois Boucher) |
Just ask any mother!
The truth is that the task of raising a child is herculean.
The choice of adjective is deliberate.
Hercules is of course a mythical male
famous for his 12 labours. While none of
his labours includes anything quite like raising a child, he was nonetheless
associated with neonatal rituals in Roman culture[i]. It is not entirely clear why, perhaps because
of his own precocious childhood, or his being granted immortality through the
breast milk of Juno in Roman and Etruscan myths, or his fathering of many
children.
Regardless, birthing and raising a child is a challenge
worthy of Hercules. The awe with which we hold Mothers reflects their
willingness to take on this challenge. The word mother is virtually synonymous
with dedication to child-rearing, beginning as it does and appropriately enough
for the argument here, with labour.
And if mother means all this, then the term single-mother
takes that this all to another dimension. A mother who is trying to raise
children while also keeping the house, working and without a partner is one of
best modern images of a battler well worthy of compassion.
The word father – whether referring to single fathers or
otherwise – does not evoke anything like this kind of effort and sacrifice. And
justifiably perhaps given their apparent willingness to put child-rearing into
the ‘too hard’ basket.
Why is raising a baby seen as so different from other
man-projects? I mean, it’s fiddly, the
details can be annoying, and he will certainly get his hands dirty, and yet,
will the chaos of the process that takes place in the workshop will produce
something magnificent.
In fact, a child is a better project than most because it
keeps on developing. The child is always growing, changing, and at some point,
s/he is very likely to take on a mind of her/his own.
Parenting then is much as Michaelangelo famously described
sculpting: ““Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of
the sculptor to discover it”[ii].
Even so, still takes a lot of work for the parent/sculptor to do.
So
much work perhaps, that many men seem to baulk at the challenge. This is of
course ironic as men are held to be the ones that rise to the big challenges,
at least stereotypically as reflected in the character of Hercules. To shy at
this challenge might seriously undermine the stereotype of men’s strength, and
cast their courage as little more than a myth.
Even so, still takes a lot of work for the parent/sculptor to do.
So if the man isn’t willing to take instructions, is he at least willing to make mistakes?
In fairness, there is something about the nature of
child-wrangling that makes the challenge a little different from engaging in
arduous journeys (like Ulysses), wrestling lions (like Hercules) and getting up
to investigate things that go bump in the night (like our modern male hero).
Imagine someone who is about to jump from a plane with a
parachute on their back for the first time.
What they feel is fear.
A fear that things could go terribly wrong. And if something goes wrong,
he (or she) is in serious trouble.
However, the fear in a challenge like skydiving – and like
many of the challenges that men do like to tackle – is of a personal nature.
That is, ‘If I get this wrong, I might be damaged.’
The fear in the challenge of child-rearing is quite
different: ‘If I get this wrong, my child could be damaged.’
That is a big
responsibility. I make a mistake, I mess up someone else’s life. Still, for a
man to even feel this fear is a good step in the right direction. It means that
he has realised that there is someone out there that is more important than he
is! An important step towards manhood is the shift from seeing himself as the
centre of the universe to seeing himself as an infinitesimal and integral
element of the universe.
However, while his fear of getting it wrong for the child is quite reasonable, he is not alone. Mothers of course may well share a similar fear.
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