In The Beginning
Consider Mom. In our era of nuclear families, Mom is the center of the family, the axis upon which all else depends. Mom is the go-to person when problems arise, the remover of obstacles. Mom makes it all better. Mom remembers all the soccer games, the birthday presents, the holiday cards, all of the minutiae that make up modern, social family life. Social is the key word: Mom is the center of the family because she is its most social member. Mom’s life work, within the family, is the building and maintenance of social relationships. When that vital link fails – when Mom gets sick, or has to work 12 hours a day just to keep the family fed – the family begins to disintegrate. Other family members can leap into the ‘Mom gap’ – something plenty of 21st century Dads (and Grandmas) find themselves doing, becoming the family’s social caretaker. Someone must fill that role, or the family will not survive, because the family is that social bond. The social bond is what makes us uniquely human, and it is also what gives rise to the manifold forms of human groups: nuclear and extended families; tribes and clans; villages and cities; states and nations. All of them are differing variations on the same theme, a social contract which binds us together.
The social contract within the family is both simple and comprehensive: Mom takes care of the children, sees to their needs, soothes their pains, and prepares them for participation within the world. Mom does this by engaging with the children and with Dad, becoming the central point, the social nexus of the family. Everyone connects to Mom, everyone shares themselves with Mom, and Mom turns that connection and that sharing to the greater advantage of everyone in the family.
Tags: Book, connection, family, introduction, Mom, sharing, social
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Share This Book, Share This Course, hyperconnectivity, sharing examples, social network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:53 am
A thought provoking post.
One of many threads of reflection it prompted in my mind was about mum’s location; further, how our own perspectives influence our sense of mum’s location. To be a little provocative, I will ask whether mum really is at the centre of the family.
Is mum really at the centre of the family?
Sorry, couldn’t help myself… Anyway, as Mark illustrates, mum is typically omniscient. Now I reckon we could say mum is also omnipresent, in a non-spatial kind of way. Or if you like, in the facebook-like application called real life, mum is on every family member’s friend list. Here, there and everywhere. And as far as each family member is concerned, she appears to be a dedicated resource just for them.
Now, the notion of mum being everywhere also prompts the other dimension of mum: the engagement of the exogenous zone. If you’ve ever stopped to observe a group of mothers in action, organising stuff, you know what I mean. Things happen.
Now that’s hyperconnectivity.
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January 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I should be completely, unambiguously clear: this is the opening of Share This Book.
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January 18th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
This is a very powerful metaphor for me because I am a mum.
I know I’m not a perfect mum – nor do I aspire to be – but I do know that I am the social nexus of my family. Yes, I make things happen using a plethora of skills and, more and more, becoming better at delegating such that I don’t have to do everything for it to happen…as you said, with dad…and certainly with the kids as they get older.
I act as a gatekeeper for social events, or more pointedly, the social connections of each member of my family. As a friend would say quite often, “you’ve got to get along with the mum or the [kids'] friendship does not happen”. Luckily for me, my husband gets along really well with most of my ‘chosen’ friends….this is not snobbery, it’s just that relationships take time and time is such a rare commodity these days!
This means that mums foster positive relationships (eg repeated play dates, get-togethers) and to a degree (in the case of not making it happen), inhibit negative relationships; seriously, there are kids out there who are just plain nasty – naughty, I can take but nasty… nah-ah.
This is increasingly harder as my eldest entered high school last year and discovered the digital social network that I have far less control over. Now, it’s not so much about control but for her to see that there are relationships that make us grow and some that makes us ‘die’ a little. It’s a hard lesson to teach – and learn – and one I know I’m on for a long while yet.
As mentioned in a much-earlier post on ‘6 degrees of separation’, networks have hubs. Mums do act as hubs….and try to teach (and learn) the skills to be hubs…through modelling, talking/conversations, doing/de-briefing.
Can I just add…..
The happiest mums I know are the ones who are not entirely selfless. On the contrary, they’re the ones who make time for themselves either just for r&r, if not to pursue passions/hobbies. This is one I’m slowly learning myself and yes, I am a happier and saner mum as a result. In other words, in fostering a community, one must never forget the individuals that make up the community, least of all the ‘hub’.
…sorry, this got a bit long…
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mpesce Reply:
January 18th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
@malyn, wow. Long but GREAT!
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Sylvano Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
@malyn, your comments really make apparent the importance of mum maintaining the quality of the connections, be it with the gate keeping, the teaching and learning of being a hub, or the importance of maintaining one’s own well being by remembering mum is more than just a hub. Lessons here for all of us.
The way you imbue the sense of dynamism that is the reality of social bonds is terrific.
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kath Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:05 am
@malyn, great thoughts @malyn, especially your last para about Mum’s making time for themselves too being the happiest. Mum’s are definitely the hub of the family wheel
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January 19th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
A good friend of mine seems to have captured the spirit of mum, especially the idea here that “everybody connects to mum”, with his sticker campaign “YOUR MUM RANG” that has grown since the Millennium ‘cell-phone’ culture explosion.
Yes, maybe we can aspire for our family bonds to be extended to tribal bonds, and social bonds, and/or, out to humanity everywhere so that we can communicate ones deep and honest love for one’s own mother and blood-family to strangers from another gene pool, and possibly, to invoke GAIA, extend that love to the animal and plant kingdom and to all sentient beings…
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January 21st, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Thanks @mpesce, @sylvano and @kath for the kind words.
This has allowed me to go deeper in my reflections on social networks, the I and the other.
I’ve jotted these down in my personal blog.
http://aproposall.blogspot.com/2010/01/apropos-connectivity.html
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April 26th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Share This Course! » Blog Archive » Only Connect says:[...] was the essence of the post “In the beginning“. This post is the foundation, the bedrock of my thinking. I found it hard to write anything [...]