The Conflation of Motherhood
Motherhood is a HUGE theme in my Hart & Cole series, and I thought it would be worthwhile to focus on this theme for discussion.
In our society, a woman’s worth is often conflated with her ability to not only bear children, but to then selflessly raise them without a thought for herself.
This is the crux of the drama for the first couple in my series, Kris and Nicole.
Nicole: “I could do that whole… mom… thing”
Nicole can do the “dutiful wife” part; that’s easy – she’s always wanted Kris; the problem is that for him, the “mothering” part is also a major part of the wife role, and that’s where she struggles.
They’ve always talked about kids; she never saw herself as NOT having kids. I mean, it’s what you do, right?… whether or not you ever seriously thought about what it meant to have them or what you needed to sacrifice to do so; whether or not you yourself had a good relationship with your own mother; whether or not you ever really saw yourself as a mother.
Both Kris and Nicole come from dysfunctional families, despite the fact that they each had both parents around.
Kris’ background included a working-class home with parents that just couldn’t get it together to be home and actually parent their two kids; Nicole also came from a working-class home and was an only child, but her own parents were a hot mess as well.
For Kris, NOT having the kind of parents he would have wanted, made him even more desirous of the kind of home he wants to build with his own kids.
For Nicole, she just can’t figure out what’s missing in her, that motherhood didn’t come naturally. She’s going through the motions. She’s doing the pick-ups and drop-offs and dinner trade-offs and the natural order of splitting parenthood. She’s trying. But she’s faltering at every step of the way — and she knows it.
She sees how Kris is with the kids, and she envies it — how the kids crawl all over him, how he always stoops to talk to the kids at eye level, how he stops what he’s doing immediately to attend to something his kids want him to do.
She’s just… not like that. She doesn’t know how to be.
Luisa: “Stay-at-home mom”
Luisa, on the other hand, we only get to know in Book 1 through what Darren says about her, but it’s enough to realise she is Nicole’s polar opposite. I’ll focus on Book 1 only for now.
Darren describes her family in passing, and in the little he does say, it’s evident she’s nothing like Nicole. “Worldly” and “amazing” — he originally thought she was out of his reach.
To him, she was the epitome of what he needed on his arm — a trophy, the perfect wife and mother… “warm, loving, but composed“.
She also comes from a upper-middle-class background with both parents and brothers that love her, particularly Alejandro (Lee).
For Luisa, motherhood came naturally.
She’s a mother to her three kids, and even a mother-figure to her younger brother. Since her youngest child was born, she’s stayed at home with her.
As a stay-at-home mom, however, she doesn’t have what Nicole has — the career, the security of self-pride, the knowledge of her own awesomeness as a woman outside of the “mother” label. That’s where she falters.
Darren’s friendship with Nicole centres on his admiration of her talent — the raw talent he helped to develop out of her; and Luisa can sense that connection a mile away.
It’s what eventually leads her into the arms of another man.
Overprotective & Underwhelming Mothers
We also see some minor characters — Carrina, who is only 23 and raising her young son on her own; and Stacey, who dominates every aspect of her children’s lives, hovering to make sure they are mothered enough.
Carrina makes it look easy, and she’s good at it — Nicole sees her with her son and is jealous about how natural she makes it all seem, just like Kris does.
Stacey makes it seem like a job, but she’s also good at it — Nicole sees her as overprotective and overbearing, and rolls her eyes every time Stacey branches off into ‘baby-talk’ with kids.
We also get snippets of Kris’ and Nicole’s childhood memories…
Nicole’s mother constantly berated her husband; Nicole says:
“She made her throat sore from the yelling, the screaming, the squabbling… I remember her with her mouth open, always; the woman never shut up.”
And Kris says:
“Her mamma… was a dragon. Spat fire, that one.”
Kris’ own mother preferred to stay quietly on the peripheries of conflict, rather than getting involved. Even as an adult, she cowers to her husband’s raging temper, and leaves the room when he and Kris start to fight:
“Typical of her. Extracts herself from a situation that she doesn’t want to exist in. I’m surprised it took her this long to resign herself. She did it for twenty-two years while I lived under her roof.”
Give Mamas a Chance
…So there’s a lot here, to unpack, when it comes to motherhood. I think it’s an important theme to focus on, because motherhood doesn’t come naturally; we are fools to believe it does, or that it would, or that it should.
The redeeming quality of motherhood, in Nicole’s case, is that when you DO give her half a chance, she rises to the occasion.
Usually, with Kris being around all the time, being the super-parent, Nicole hasn’t had to try too hard. Kris has always doubted her, and never really gave her a chance to become the type of mom he wants her to be.
When tragedy strikes with their daughter, Nicole doubts her powers as a parent once more:
“I really wish Kris was here. He – he knows her better than I do.”
But, even though Kris does return, it’s Nicole who saves the day and triumphs in her newfound bond with her daughter to understand her and think like her.
Nicole is inherently selfish (as most of us would be, if we let ourselves be!); but while fathers can “get away with it” if they’re “half-arsing” it as a parent, mothers just can’t. Everyone down to her daughter’s teacher – down to her daughter, in fact! – can tell.
Nicole has to go through a journey to see herself as a parent – and it takes a good bit of soul-searching for her to get there, and for her little mini-me (her daughter Nikita) to lead the way.
So, that’s it, for the “Motherhood” theme, for the moment at least! 🙂
I’ll pick another theme to delve into for another post.
