Mothers and Daughters: self-sacrifice, mothering and happiness. Mon 14th May

There have been several items about mothers and daughters in the news over the last couple of days; tales of self-sacrifice, intense unhappiness, and dislocated mothering, all issues at the top of my agenda and in a sense drawn together by the last item on this morning's Today programme: two pundits agreeing that mothers’ spending more time with their small children was an essential factor in raising the happiness level in society. I'll list the stories in no particular order.

The lead story for several days has been the abduction of little Madeleine from her holiday bed in Portugal, only a short walk from where her parents were dining out. Happiness turned to anguish in an instant, but was the psyche of the hominin mother designed by evolution to be happy even a short walk away from her small daughter? Never mind whether the psyche of the small daughter was designed to be happy when abandoned in such a way. Would a little parental self-sacrifice have prevented the misery, and why is being with one's small children made into a sacrifice by Western culture?

The Malaysian government (I think) is the one that, having recognised that society may be damaged by children growing up in the absence of their mothers, is planning to restrict its female citizens from working abroad if they have small children. How typical that men should solve the problem by restricting mothers and not by attempting to improve the economic circumstances of those mothers so that they would not need to go abroad earn enough to buy some hope for their children; and how typical of poor mothers, lovingly reared by poor mothers, that they should be so self-sacrificing! We heard of the unhappiness of a mother who had spent 10 years working in domestic service in Dubai and so missed seeing her daughter growing up. She had to extract what happiness she could from imagining her daughter's life as unfolding like that of the child she was paid to look after. So there were two daughters missing out on mothering.

I was appalled to learn how many children in this country are struggling as unsupported carers for sick or disabled parents, but not surprised. I think it was a daughter talking about how she was bullied at school just because her home situation made her different and she would cry herself sleep at night when it all got too much for her, knowing it would be as bad the next day. In my work I have naturally learned something of the psychological consequences of the exploitation of daughters'(and sons' too of course) inherent impulse of self-sacrifice in support of mothers.

The most painful item to listen to was the mother from eastern Congo, scarred by severe burns, describing how she had tried to shelter with her own body her baby daughter, thrown to the floor by the men who then raped her, too injured to crawl out of the burning home that collapsed upon her. Her daughter died anyway a few hours later. The piece was on justice and impunity, issues for the affluent! This mother wanted only to forget; a time of remembering in a court of law would do nothing for her! What does it really do for the Western mothers I can think of who have made a media career out of remembering and seeking, or living, vengeance/Justice for murdered daughters. I never thought of it before, but how much unconscious guilt is there fuelling their actions from all those times during their infancy when they weren't there for those daughters? Justice and revenge may bring spurious relief; can that make up for the happiness heedlessly thrown away whenever mothers and babies are apart?