By Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi
Last year, my mother got very sick, and it was scary. It got me reflecting on what my mother means to me and who she is. I have often found myself reflecting on motherhood and being a mother. Not because I am a mother or plan on being one, but because I don’t think we afford motherhood the appropriate level of reverence – especially in the Western canon.
Unfortunately, the colonial project and its constant rebranding have hegemonic control over how we conceptualise motherhood, and rendered us unable to articulate its complex and reverential nature.
In my time of pain, anxiety and deep sadness for my mother, I found myself picking up Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s What Gender is Motherhood (WGIM) again to remind myself of the “otherworldly, pre-earthly, preconception, pregestational, presocial, prenatal, postnatal, lifelong, and posthumous” relationship I have with my mother. The only thing that could bring me peace was that my mother would remain my mother no matter the outcome.
Ìyá is often translated as the Yoruba word for mother; however, these are not the same. The institution of motherhood in the English canon is represented as gendered by various dominant conceptualisations, feminist and non-feminist. To gender the Ìyá, or reduce it to a gendered institution, is not only reductive to who an Ìyá is but, frankly, insulting.
Ìyá embodies what Oyěwùmí refers to as the matripotent principle. This concept reflects the spiritual and material authority of Ìyá that is derived from their procreative role. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between Ìyá and their birth children, as this expression of matripotency is considered the most potent.
By Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi