The great primal Mother Goddesses, the creatrixes of nearly every culture, were invariably called Ma. Remembrance and reverence to Her Who Birthed the World has been indelibly imprinted on our collective brain. Her invocation, a common bond. Mama, Mama Cuna, Mama Cocha, Mama Quilla, Nammu, Macha, Ma-Nu, Mamat, Mana, Maa, Mah, Al-Mah, Qis-Mah, Asintmah, Ilmatar, Maat, Matu, Mat Hatti, Maj, Yemanja, Mawu, Mahuea, Mayuel, Mami Aruru, Mamaki, Mamokoriyoma, Mamata, Mahatma, Mater Matuta, Matabrune, Mara, Mardoll, Magog, Margawse, Magna Dea, Madri, Marici, Maia, Maya, Mari, Mary, Mai, Mariamne, Mana, Mana-Anna, Man, Manannan, Maha-Nila-Sarasvati, Manasa-Devi, Matrikadevi, Mati-Syra-Zemlya, Malinalxochtl.

A baby, cradled close, is nursing. Along with the rich nourishment of her mother's bountiful body, she blissfully imbibes warmth, security, contentment, love. Her small head buried in soft breast, she enthusiastically sucks. Mmmm. Mmma, mmmaa, mmaaaaaa. Ma! Mama!. Ma, as in "maternal," Ma, as in "mammary," Ma, as in "mammal." Mama means "mother's breasts" in many places, and ma frequently refers to "milk" as well as "mother." Certainly from the point of view of a dependent child, mother is milk.

It is interesting to note that our galaxy is not only named for milk, it actually means "milk." Galaxy is from the Greek, gala, "mother's milk," referring to Gala-Tea, the Milk Goddess, the galactic mother in classical Greek mythology. The one portrayed in Pygmalion's famous white marble sculpture. Since the time of ancient Egypt, western civilization has referred to our galaxy as the Milky Way, made from the magic milk of the Great Mother or one of her divine daughters.   

Today I saw a woman plowing a furrow.

Her hips are broad like mine, for love, and

she goes about her work bent over the earth.

I caressed her waist; I brought her home

with me. She will drink rich milk from my

own glass and bask in the shade of my arbors

growing pregnant with the pregnancy of love.

And if my own breasts be not generous, my son

will put his lips to hers, that are rich.

" Sister" by Gabriela Mistral

 

Our Mother who art within us

Each breath brings us to you.

Thy wisdom come,

Thy will be done  

as we honor your presence within us.

You give us this day all that we need.

Your bounty calls us to give and receive

all that is loving and pleasurable.

You are the courage that moves us to be true  

to ourselves

and we act with grace and power.

We relax into your cycles of birth,

growth, death and renewal.

Out of the womb, the darkness, the void,  

comes new life.

For you are the Mother of All Things.

Your body is the Sacred Earth and our bodies.

Your love nurtures us and unites us all.

Now and forever more.

- Dale Allen

Women of the Sixties Generation were the first to enjoy an unprecedented access to a variety of birth control methods. It was also largely the women of those politicized times who demanded, and ultimately won, the right to legally decide the destiny of our own bodies.

Once in possession of this precious, personal choice of whether or not to become and/or stay pregnant, we have chosen, on the whole, to have fewer babies and at a more advanced age than ever before in history. Freed of what we considered to be biological tyranny and possessed of sophisticated ecological concern, fully one fifth of us chose not to have children at all. And among the urban educated classes, the number jumps to 25%.

When the tenure of our Mother time ends, it causes many of us to re-evaluate the choices that we have made about fertility, decisions that have defined our life for the past few decades. The finality of menopause really rankles. Some women who had never wanted babies now suddenly become nostalgic for what might have, could have, been.

Thirty-three years after writing a ground breaking piece in Look magazine about not wanting to have children, the writer Betty Rollin admitted on the pages of Modern Maturity that she was "one of those old-time 'career girls' who forgot to have children. At the age of sixty," she continued, "I began to mourn for the children I never had."

Others, upon consideration, are secure and still satisfied with their earlier choice to remain childless, or what many in that category prefer to call "childfree." One such woman wrote in response to Rollin's recent article that Rollin's earlier piece had been "a source of strength" over the decades to resist the social pressure to have children when she knew she didn't want them.

For those of us who are not biological mothers, it is still extremely important to acknowledge that we have, in fact, been Mothers in the archetypal sense. We have been birthing careers, mothering social causes, nurturing creative endeavors, tending businesses, mentoring students and co-workers. If, as it has been said, "Some people give birth to children and some give birth to culture," then we were the Culture Mothers, the Mothers of Necessity, the Mothers of Invention.

The World Record for having the most number of children officially recorded is 69 by the first of two wives of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782), a peasant from Shuya, 150 miles east of Moscow. In 27 confinements, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. The children were born between 1725-1765.

The modern world record for giving birth is held by Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. Now in her mid-sixties, she claims to be the mother of 64 children. Of these, 55 are documented, birth certificates apparently being something of a less-than-serious concern in Chile.

The youngest mother whose history is authenticated is Lina Medina, who delivered a 6½-pound boy by cesarean section in Lima, Peru in 1939, at an age of 5 years and 7 months. The child was raised as her brother and only discovered that Lina was his mother when he was 10.

Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman, known as Octomom in the media, is an American woman who came to international attention when she gave birth to octuplets in January 2009. The Suleman octuplets are only the second full set of octuplets to be born alive in the United States. One week after their birth, they surpassed the previous worldwide survival rate for a complete set of octuplets set by the Chukwu octuplets in 1998.

Jayne Bleackley is the mother who holds the record for the shortest interval between two children born in separate pregnancies. She gave birth to Joseph Robert on September 3, 1999, and Annie Jessica Joyce on March 30, 2000. The babies were born 208 days apart.

Elizabeth Ann Buttle is the mother who holds the record for the longest interval between the birth of two children. She gave birth to Belinda on May 19,1956 and Joseph on November 20, 1997. The babies were born 41 years 185 days apart. The mother was 60 years old when her son Joseph was born.

In 2008 when her daughter was born in Baddhu Patti, India, Rajo Devi became the oldest women to give birth. She was 70 years old. She died less that two years afterward, having experienced a ruptured womb as a result of the cesarean birth. Her husband said that she died in peace, having finally - after 53 years of marriage - escaped the stigma of being barren. 

Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.  
- Charlotte Gray 

So when the great word "Mother!" rang once more, I saw at last its meaning and its place: Not the blind passion of the brooding past, But Mother - the World's Mother - come at last to feed and guard and teach the human race.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

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