Maternal Martyrs
by Joseph Rowlands
There's been a number of times where a friend told me about a strained relationship with his or her parents. The similarities are interesting, and it points to a common philosophical perspective.
What happens is the mothers talk to my friends as if they hate them. They talk about how much they had to sacrifice for them, and how they didn't get anything positive out of the experience. How the children were such a burden, and how they ruined the mothers lives. Every interaction is portrayed as negative.
At the same time, they insist on helping wherever they can. If there are grandchildren, they'll insist on taking care of them, running errands, etc. My friends can't even find alternatives. Their mothers will insist. And after they push their way into helping, they'll complain about how life is so unfair to them and how miserable they are.
This kind of behavior seems insane and erratic. But a single viewpoint explains it all.
These mothers want to view themselves as martyrs. Having accepted altruism, they have justified their choices in life by claiming moral superiority due to the sacrifices. In their mind, the thing that makes their life worthwhile, the thing that makes them feel a sense of moral pride, is the fact that they gave up everything for their children.
The problem with this view is that there's no way to feel that sense of pride in your sacrifices if there were benefits and values that came with it. If they loved raising their children, and felt that was worth it for the experience or joy, they couldn't take credit for the sacrifice. So they have to constantly downplay the values, and exaggerate the costs. Every act must be a terrible sacrifice for them, and if they claimed enjoyment, all that sense of sacrificial virtue would go away.
But while they may claim it is a sacrifice, and talk constantly about the pain and suffering they must endure, they definitely don't want any of it to stop. If you try to handle everything yourself, they'll insist that you let them help. They have to be involved because in their minds, they must sacrifice to continue their perverse sense of pride.
In order to perpetuate the illusion, they have to be incredibly insulting. They have to portray their own children as valueless and nothing but trouble. In the process, they can actually make them feel bad about themselves, their choices, and feel an endless supply of guilt. Being told over and over throughout your life that you make your parent's life miserable can take its toll.
It all comes from the miserable ethical system, altruism. Moral pride comes from putting the interests of others ahead of your own. You have to suffer, and they must be the cause of your suffering. And the moral pride is proportional to how much you suffer. The greater the costs, and the lower the benefits, the more you are living up to that moral creed.
From the emotional trauma inflicted on their children, it should be obvious that altruism is never really about helping others. That is the excuse, but not the goal. The real goal is a sense of moral pride, a sense of superiority, that comes from practicing the moral system.
The sacrificial martyr needs to view the targets of their charity as a burden on their life. While some thing that altruism would lead to brotherly love and peace, it leads to conflict after conflict. The moral credit only comes when someone's life is a burden to you. And even if it isn't a burden, you have every incentive to see it that way. Instead of focusing on the values each person offers the other, altruists focus on the costs. They wage a constant battle to be the loser in every interaction.
While the cases I've seen usually deal with a maternal martyr, it is also possible for fathers to feel and act the same way, as I've also seen. Parent's have a unique opportunity to cast themselves as suffering martyrs. Raising children is not a trivial task. There are significant costs, even if you decide the benefits are greater. But the costs are more readily identified and described. And if they only focus on the costs, they can claim to be sacrificing more than most people do in any other context. The sense of moral pride is easily achieved, with the only cost that you ignore the values, focus on the costs, and cast your children as an enormous burden on you life.
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