Professor Janet Melville-Wiseman looks at the true meaning of Mothering Sunday for children coming into care, and suggests that we should all celebrate nurture and love.

This year Mothering Sunday, and its commercial off shoot Mother’s Day, fall on 15 March. As usual for a few weeks beforehand I have received emails asking me if I would prefer to opt out of marketing promotions targeted on this day. The commercial world seems to understand this might not be a great day for some people. This can include those who have had difficult relationships with their mothers, lost their mothers, lost their children, or who have longed to be (or to be recognised) as mothers. At some point, for those taken into the care system their relationship with their first mother will have often been irreparably ruptured, 

Historically, in the Christian tradition, Mothering Sunday marked the mid-point of the forty days of Lent when fasting was paused with the eating of simnel cakes and the focus on the concept of traditionally perceived qualities of good mothering, and the church as our collective mother – the Mother Church. We were also encouraged to reflect on the decision by Mary, the mother of Jesus, to accept God’s wishes. The Annunciation or announcement or recognition celebrated on this day marks the day it was declared that Mary would become mother to a very special son. 

In the passage of time and influenced by narrow concepts of mothering (and the invention of the greetings card), Mothering Sunday has evolved into Mother’s Day. Along with this though is the pressure to celebrate a named mother in our lives regardless of if we still have one, have one we get on with, or have been able to become one. 

There are currently 107,000 children living ‘in care’ in the UK.  Each one will have had their relationship to their first mother disrupted as part of that process whatever the reasons for them now needing care. We know that child poverty and household deprivation increases the number of children needing care and that half of children entering care are from lone parent families. For some mothers they simply cannot figure out how to be a ‘good enough’ parent with so few resources to support that role.  However, the most frequent reasons that children come into care is because of abuse and neglect, and this is the case across all ethnic groups. For those children not only are their relationships disrupted at the point of coming into care, but they were most likely the cause of much trauma and relational harm in the years beforehand.

Children coming into care may be lucky enough to be placed with caring foster parents but the task of providing re-mothering by them has long been under supported and under recognised for the dedication and love it might take. We also know that the number of children coming into care and living in ‘supported accommodation’ has increased. In those settings no one is tasked with providing ‘mothering’ or care for those children – just support and advice. 

Mother’s Day will always be tough for children coming into care even though you can now buy cards to be given to foster mothers. But perhaps the answer is not to develop more and more categories of ‘mothers’ who need cards, but to revert to the original ideas about Mothering Sunday – that we celebrate the qualities of nurturing love and care given to the child that is within all of us throughout our lives, by people of all genders, all roles, and within all types of relationships – and who, sometimes against the odds, have come into our lives when we needed them.    

Janet Melville-Wiseman is Emerita Professor in Social Work, and a member of the Association for Care Experienced Social Work.