Extreme Motherhood
A mother's love is like nothing else in this world.It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down relentlessly all that stands in its path… — Agatha Christie.
Nature innately built into the female gender of relatively all advance animals the gene of primordial tendencies to protect their offspring. We see this from invertebrates to vertebrates, birds to mammals, reptiles to human and even among arthropods, I.e. insects, arachnids, etc. The mothers love is so powerful some animals easily sacrifice themselves to see their progeny live on in the cycle of life, examples are some arachnids e.g. the desert spider, crab spider that are Matriphagous (allow their offsprings to feed on them).They don’t survive this process and some caecilians even sacrifice their body parts to feed their young in an extreme form of “Parental care” though they regenerate these consumed body parts. They take motherhood or maternal instinct to a whole new level that is astonishingly selfless.
The story of Moses in the holy book is a study in practice of maternal sacrifice of the woman Jochebed, a Hebrew, who was willing to separate herself from her child to ensure survival for the infant who otherwise would have been killed by the Egyptian despot King Pharaoh… albeit in the interim. We consider human being to be the apex animal, most advanced in reasoning, response,adaptability and intelligence.
All these attributes suggest an unspoken pressure on him to exhibit the maternal instinct needed to protect his offspring and thus ensure the continuity of life. Surprisingly, it is not so. In war times, stories of women who willingly sacrifice themselves by feeding their children all the scraps of food scavenged while they go hungry, but yet these babies were stifled to death a chance that their cries could attract soldiers and give their positions away. Historians have it is on record that parents sacrificed their children to appease gods who they believe will bless them with better harvest, longer lives, benign weather and wealth. The Aztecs and Mayans of South America, the Yorubas and Igbos of Africa are common examples. The killing of Ikemefuna in Achebe’s “things fall apart” is striking, though credits for that goes to the men who made these ignoble decisions for the greater good of the community or so they thought.
Self-preservation, it seems, ranks high for the species Homo sapiens. It is then a minor submission that maybe the quest for self-survival cannot equate maternal instinct.Modern times have witnessed horrific atrocities perpetuated by mothers against their child, genital mutilation, physical abuse — the likes of torturing to exorcise a child, underage prostitution, child trafficking for cheap labour and early marriage among others. All these and more are prevalent in third world country with no system designed to protect the boy and girl child. Third-world countries in Asia and Africa boast the highest number of out-of-school children and while this may not be the direct fault of parents, some that can afford to are debilitated by deep-seated cultural beliefs that discourages the education of the child especially the girl child.
Recent times have witnessed child abandonment by mothers who exit their marriage leaving behind children who are minors to cater for themselves while they go ahead to remarry and rarely look back at the children left behind in their previous marriage. This practice is common in some part of Africa, and with no social security provided by the government, the child becomes fair game for the numerous ills that ail the African developing countries. Such children grow up with the same damaged sense of responsibility and are likely to repeat the same. Over time, a culture of child abandonment practice proliferate and teenage mothers boom!
The question obviously is what happened to the innate maternal instinct wiring input by nature to ensure that mothers and fathers, in most instances, are able to guarantee the survival of their progeny. Did it die out because of socio-economic pressure that deforms natures programming, and reprogram a code so despicable as to put man on the basest level with lesser animals, who I dare say themselves, rarely abandons their children even in the face of certain death?. Humanity is designed for humans and when removed, what does it make us?.
We cannot believe that because we are separated by geographical boundaries manned by technologies and the military, this insulates us from these despicable actions against children in other countries. Mothers must be re- taught to be human first and mothers again. The world must not turn its nose on mothers who lack the wherewithal to defend their children against a society rigged against them. The world must invest in educating and providing for them an environment that will nurture their growth to be responsible mothers, parents and ultimately humans.
