Overtired mothers: let's break their loneliness

"I know why mothers are so anxious. You are anxious because you cannot count on dads'. So begins a monologue by comedian Max Angioni on parenting, and it is certainly not the only stand-up comedy on the subject. Hyper-engaged and multitasking mothers and slow and distracted fathers. It is certainly a generalisation for artistic purposes, but the audience laughs because they often identify with the caricature. The mental load, as well as the care work, that mothers carry is still huge. Between work, their children's schooling, various bureaucracies, doctor's visits, registration deadlines and bills, women with children live out their days with a backpack of tons on their shoulders, which they have to carry with them to the office, shopping and even in their rare free time. If then to the lack of balance in the subdivision of domestic 'thoughts' is added the social isolation due to the lack of appreciation of motherhood, often experienced as a problem to be solved in the workplace, then the loneliness of mothers takes on a consistency that is difficult to manage. With a thousand nuances as there are a thousand complexities in each one's life: from the caregiver mother who has to wade through discrimination and difficulties in guaranteeing equal treatment for her disabled child to single mothers who more often than couples have a job and are not immune from the risk of poverty; from migrant mothers grappling with a language and culture that are not their own to mothers with mental health problems, even if only for temporary periods; from mothers who are victims of domestic violence to divorced and separated mothers who have to rebuild their lives; from Lgbtq+ mothers who are also discriminated against by the law to foster mothers who live with a precarious situation. Each story with its specificity makes up the universe of women who have children in Italy and who deserve different attention, starting with politics. Because every mother contributes daily to forming the citizens of tomorrow and to giving a future to our society and our country. While respecting the choices of all women, care must be taken that the rejection of the myth of motherhood does not turn into its opposite. We all need to rediscover the importance of motherhood on a social level because as the French historian Jacques Gélis wrote: 'In the way it welcomes the newborn, a society reveals its deepest strengths, its awareness of life'. And not leaving mothers alone means releasing energies, resources and skills at the service of society as a whole. Because at the moment, as the American writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes: 'Mothers are the only workers who never have holidays'.