English Words About Motherhood and Loving Our Moms – NHK E-Tele "SNS Eigojutsu" #MothersDay (aired 2019/05/10)

1.Loving Your Mother vs. Being a Mama’s Boy

Our theme this week was #MothersDay, and we featured a variety of different Mother’s Day related tweets. Some were kids thanking their mothers, some were husbands expressing their gratitude to their wives. Others were mothers sending their support to other mothers. Our MC, Haruhi-san, and co-host, Hide-san, were especially intrigued by how forthcoming Americans were in expressing their love, using phrases like “with all of my heart", “my heart is with you", and “I would not be the person I am today without you". Americans love their mothers, and they aren’t embarrassed to express it.

On Mother’s Day, it’s custom to give flowers—pink carnations for mothers, and red carnations for a spouse. This is a familiar custom in Japan as well. For Americans, however, flowers are just the beginning. Love letters and handmade cards, jewelry and clothes, day trips and romantic dinners—it’s all about how you can plan out a day that’s tailor made to that mother’s tastes. For families with young children, the father may enlist the children to help him cook up the mother breakfast in bed. Then, after handing her a voucher for a spa treatment or massage, he could take the children with him on an outing to give the mother a full day to herself. Whatever the case, according to the National Retail Federation, the amount Americans spend on Mother’s Day has been steadily increasing over the years. In 2019, consumers are expected to spend about 196 dollars per person.

As for me, the two weeks leading up to Mother’s Day have always been poignant—even more so this year, because of the abdication of the Heisei Emperor and the ascension of the Reiwa Emperor. My mother’s birthday is at the end of April, and since I was a kid, the two weeks in between have been time to reflect upon all my mother has done for me. Since moving to Japan more than a decade ago, I haven’t gotten to spend nearly as much time with my mother—who still lives in California—as I’d like to, so I tend to get a little sentimental during this time of year.

It’s time for a confession. Growing up, I was a total mama’s boy. My mom always told me stories about how as a small child I would cling to her and call out 「お母さん、お母さん」(Japanese for “mom"). Around ten or eleven, when my parents, my younger sister and I would go to the theme park, my dad and sister would have a ball on the roller coasters, while my mom and I would look up nervously from the ground. Then as a teenager, instead of going through the usual rebellious phase, I was an overachieving goody-goody that sought approval from my mom. I had plenty of opportunities to try drinking or smoking or marijuana, but I remained steadfast—not because it was illegal or bad for me or potentially a gateway to something worse, but because my had mom said so. Looking back there are so many things that cause me to cringe, but perhaps the worst offense is the fact that throughout grade school, middle school, and high school, everything in my closet had been picked off the rack and purchased by my mom.

Of the many reasons why I came to Japan, breaking free of my mama’s boy tendencies and becoming independent was certainly high up on the list. At the same time, the physical distance between my mom and I has in some ways become my excuse for not being able to translate my love for her into concrete action. Since I’ve entered my thirties, I’ve made it a point to embrace the American in me and express my love and gratitude to her clearly and directly—and unabashedly—through emails and texts and over the phone.

2.Motherly Expressions

In English, there are many expressions that evoke motherhood and motherly love. For example, “Mother Earth" and “Mother Nature" both anthropomorphize nature as the creator of all things, and remind us that all humans are born to a mother. People come from the “motherland" (or a “fatherland" in Germany and several Scandinavian countries), and grow up speaking their “mother tongue". And although the expression is used more in the U.K. than the U.S., something that is necessary or important, and which rejuvenates us, is referred to as “mother’s milk". The word “mother" evokes a mother’s warmth and her big-heartedness.

By extension, the word “mother" has also come to connote inclusiveness and comprehensiveness, and scale. For example, large groups of people or crowds are referred to using the phrase “everyone and their mother". As in: in Tokyo, everyone and their mother lines up to get into popular stores and attractions. Then there’s the phrase “mother lode", which refers to a large amount of gold or silver ore underground, and by extension, an abundant supply of something useful. As in: Tokyo is the mother lode of good food.

Mothers are also invoked to describe things that are nostalgic and familiar—the good ol’ days. “Motherland" is a perfect example of that, as is the phrase “mom’s cooking". Small, family-run stores are referred to as “mom and pop stores". And because we’re told that “experience is the mother of wisdom", we know that life will teach us its lessons through experience.

Side note, at any supermarket or convenience store in Japan, you can find Country Ma’am cookies made by the company Fujiya. That name has always felt a little bit off to me. When you think of country cookies, you think of fresh-out-of-the oven chocolate chip cookies, baked with love by a mother figure. But these are not “Country Mom" cookies, but rather, “Country Ma’am" cookies. The name makes the cookies sound less than familiar.

3.Mothers in the Modern Era

Many of the above terms have carried on a mother’s warmth across the generations, but on the flipside, the terms we use to describe mothers themselves have greatly diversified since we entered the 20th century. There was a time when “mother” was essentially synonymous with “housewife” or “homemaker”. Back then, it was implied that at the center of mother’s world was her husband, or the household.

In the U.S.—a country that loves its sports metaphors—the term “soccer mom” came into use in the mid-90s. A soccer mom is busy taking their kids to and from soccer practice in their minivan or SUV. More specifically, the term refers to middle-class white women living in the suburbs, and the extracurricular activity can be a range of things. In Canada there are naturally more “hockey moms”; meanwhile, in the U.K., “football mums” don’t really seem to be a thing. The reason for that is that in the U.S., soccer is a middle-class sport, while in the U.K., football is a working-class sport.

Ever since the 90s, reality TV has become a staple of many Americans’ diet. So it’s only natural that the genre has given us a number of new terms for describing mothers. For example, “stage moms” have children in show business, and spend their days transporting their kids to and from auditions and sets. Then there are “momagers”—moms who actually work as their child’s business manager. Finally, “script moms” are writers that use the lives of their children as fodder for their work, whether it’s essays, novels, manga, and screenplays.

Then in the 21st century, America has seen a rise in the number of “mommy bloggers”, who write passionately about their child-rearing experiences on their blogs. Meanwhile, in Japan, you have ママドル (mamadols, a portmanteau of “mama” and “idol”)—starlets who have grown up and had a child, but still seek to retain an youthful image. In both cases, the moms don’t present themselves as “perfect”. Instead, they are forthcoming about their struggles and mistakes. Their brand is their journey of growing as a mother.

The evolution of these terms shows us how a mother’s identity has changed over the years, from husband and household-centric to child-centric. In more recent years, child-rearing mothers have started seeking opportunities to establish an identity for themselves as an individual. That has led to an increase in divorces and more and more single mothers, a fact which feels empowering from an American perspective, but trickier in Japan, where the family unit has traditionally been the central pillar of society.