Читать книгу Mother of All Myths - Aminatta Forna - Страница 6

Motherhood was invented in 1762. That is to say, ‘motherhood’ as we now know it was formulated then. Jean-Jacques Rousseau came up with the idea and laid it down in his extraordinary book, Emile. Historians, as one might imagine, quibble over the date and the details. Some argue that Rousseau did not really succeed in changing ideas, that it was the Victorians who really refined and institutionalized motherhood, draping it in swathes of sentiment.

What most scholars of this period of European history agree on is that even if one can’t draw a perfect timeline of events, motherhood was a very different matter prior to 1762 and in the hundred years which followed. Before Emile, mothers appeared by and large indifferent to their children; in fact, on the evidence it is clear they did not much like them at all. They sent them away from birth, spent as little time with them as possible and apparently hardly cared if they died. But somehow a revolution was wrought, and at the beginning of the next century a mother’s love ruled and women were expected to be only too keen to sacrifice themselves in ways large and small for the well-being of their children. In between those two points there were changes in many aspects of human life: philosophy, discoveries in science, new family structures and ideas about marriage, a revolution in industry and the redefining of gender roles. And it is out of all this that the institution of motherhood was born.