Mother's Day, Sunday 26th March 2006

The idea of Mother's Day is nothing new. Celebrations honouring both women and motherhood have been around for thousands of years, perhaps nearly as long as motherhood itself. In ancient Greece and Rome there were various festivals celebrating women – some of them so wild that they were banned. In Britain, an ancient Celtic celebration of the goddess Brigid was Christianised, like many other pagan festivals, to become a celebration of St Brigid. Then, in the 17th Century, it became known as Mothering Sunday, a day when servants were allowed to go often long distances to their parents' home. And then the celebration slowly died out, perhaps because the custom of the wealthy to keep servants ebbed away. It took the American servicemen staying over here during the Second World War to bring the idea of a day to celebrate mothers and motherhood back into public consciousness. And since then, with commercial forces driving its return, Mother's Day has become an important date on the calendar. And despite its commercialisation it is an important day, one that is now more vital than ever.

Today, combining motherhood with a career is ever more difficult as well as all the more necessary. Paying the bills when there are two parents can be hard enough, but when a mother is bringing up a family alone the difficulties must sometimes seem insurmountable. For many women nowadays being a mother means being a professional – going out to work to earn money for your family. The fact that women now have increased access to the workplace, and validation and encouragement as professionals as well as mothers, is a step forward, but it is now all the more crucial that women shouldn't still be expected to be full-time mothers when they come home.

On average a woman earns less than a man working in the same job. This can act as a pressure on women to think less of their careers, and less of their workplace goals. Instead it should mean that government and businesses work all the harder to equalise pay, make women feel more valued, and end this unacceptable situation. Along with this there is undeniably still the (often implicit) social expectation for a woman to be "a good mother to her children", to take on the lion(ess)'s share of the housework and childcare. The combined action of these problems puts tremendous stress on women and needs to be addressed.

Being a mother is not something to be more proud of than of not being a mother – and many women decide that motherhood isn't for them. But what does need to change is the fact that many women feel they need to make a choice between having children and having a career – something that has never been much of an issue for men. It's a difficult area, but perhaps what is needed, as well as legislation to equalise women and men's rights and obligations, is a cultural change where the idea of what being a mother and what being a father is rethought. Even if you don't have kids, it's a day to think of your mum and the difficulties of being a mother, and so to remember all her great points and to forget all her mistakes.