The catch phrase “Children are the flowers of life” leads many to a direct analogy: does it really mean that if a girl does not like to grow flowers, it means that she will be a bad mother? Let’s try to understand this issue with the help of a psychologist.
It all started with Inna’s story. She is 28 years old, she is married, but she has no children yet. But there is a mother-in-law and a mother who are crazy about flowers and are looking forward to their grandchildren.
“I hate indoor plants. At first, my mother took out the brain, forcing me to water the flowers in pots, and punished if I forgot about it. And now a new story: I got married and my mother-in-law is a crazy flower grower. She has indoor flowers all around in her apartment: both on the windows and on the floor in some kind of tubs. She always rushes with this hobby, constantly brings some leaves, roots, processes – sometimes from the clinic, sometimes from friends. And when my husband and I visit her, she tells me all the time about how she cuts, loosens, washes these plants, how they grow and how they bloom. I smile and nod, but I don’t really care. In our apartment with my husband, there are no potted plants: I don’t want dirt on the windowsills, and I just don’t see anything beautiful in it, I don’t want to have flowers.
But my mother-in-law, coming to visit us, began to bring me flowers from her house – she presents me these pots or mayonnaise buckets with sprouts and waits for joy. In general, a couple of them have already dried up, because I simply forgot about them, did not water.
Recently, I very politely and tactfully explained to my husband’s mother that I don’t like indoor flowers and that I have no time for them: I have a lot of work, sports on weekends, my husband and I love to ride bicycles together …
In response to my words, she shook her head and pointedly raised her finger up: “If a woman does not like to grow flowers, then what kind of mother will she be?”
My husband and I don’t have children yet, but of course we are planning them. But this statement that if a woman does not like to grow flowers, then she will certainly be a bad mother, it hurt me. Is it really appropriate to compare the cultivation of a plant in a pot with caring for your own child? “
Comparison of children with flowers has some grounds: both of them need our care, guardianship, a certain regular care, an expenditure of mental strength and time. But it all depends on what is meant by the definition of “good mother”.
Apparently, those who compare the love of floriculture with motherhood reason like this: endless, vigilant “loosening”, “watering”, “feeding” – this is the symbol of real motherhood. But overprotection is not a sign of true maternal care. Rather, it’s about taking care of your own fears. And children can be “loved” with excessive care, and flowers can be tortured with leaving.
A good mother is the one who, by caring, understands when it is necessary to give freedom to children – freedom of expression, choice, movement … There is definitely a grain of truth in comparison of motherhood with floriculture: a disciplined mother will provide the child with an impeccable regime: feed on time, give medicine, dress for the weather, leads to the hairdresser. Now let’s remember that a child is not a plant, but a living person. He needs not only care, but also spiritual food, understanding.
You can see many mothers who, in raising their children, observe only external regime moments, but in fact remain absolutely strangers for them. The child looks perfect, healthy, beautifully dressed, gets A’s and certificates – which means I’m an exemplary mother. Such a mother perceives a child as a part of herself, and not as a separate person, and is afraid that the offspring would not put her to shame in front of people, so there is no freedom! A good mother knows best what her child needs.
A child requires a more complex, in-depth, individual approach than Tradescantia, Monstera or cactus.
I think women who do not like indoor plants need not worry about their lack of maternal instinct. After all, every person has a different model of motherhood. For one, “children” are flowers, for another – aquarium fish, a cat or a dog. As for the maternal instinct, this is a very powerful feeling, and it wakes up in every woman in a different way. For some, at the first pushes of the baby under the heart, for others, at the first latching on of the newborn to the breast. And it is quite possible that until that moment she had, as they say, “neither a kitten, nor a child.”