A father of a child with autism sits across from me and declares, “She is too anxious. If she would just relax, the child would be fine.” A young boy tells me, with heartbreaking matter-of-factness, “My father has to hit my mother because she shouts so much.” A teacher is quick to conclude, “If only her mother would give her more time, she would not be depressed.” A grandmother whispers to me in a family therapy session, “Tell her to stop working and all problems will be solved.” Every time a child has a problem, we know who to point the finger at. After all, it’s always the mother’s fault.

Step outside the therapy spaces and the same story is being played out in a loop. At home, when children do not behave as expected; in schools during PTMs, when the child has not reached the mark; in public spaces, when we spot a child throwing a tantrum. It’s always the mother’s fault. This is not a recent phenomenon; we have always found fault with mothers for generations. “Ma ne apne laad se bete ko barbaad kar diya” or the flip “Isko Ma ka pyaar hi nahi mila” might sound like old Hindi movie dialogues but they describe the cultural narrative. Either she loves too much or too little, too intrusive or too detached, overprotective or indifferent. Working mothers are told, “Why did you have kids if you wanted to work?” Stay-at-home mothers are told, “You are wasting your time sitting at home doing nothing.” Then, there is that particular, nauseating shame directed at women who cannot or choose not to have children.

And then, of course, there are the endless labels — helicopter mom, tiger mom, elephant mom, dolphin mom and so on. As though, we can be flattened into a neat box, a type, a cautionary tale. If you are anything like me, you can move from tiger to helicopter to please-just-leave-me-alone in the span of a single afternoon, depending on the day, the child and, honestly, who is watching.

In my decades of work with parents, I have not met a single mother, including myself, who has not internalised this “mothers are at fault” discourse. We are swimming in the sea of this shame, so it is impossible not to internalise it. “It is my fault. I have failed as a mother.” Let’s name what this is. It is not a personal failure. This is the politics of motherhood. This is how patriarchy plays out in our world of motherhood. Nobody is spared, no matter what your class, caste or religion. If your child does not fit into socially sanctioned boxes, the shame thickens even more. Ask any mother of a child with disability.

Patriarchy is a cunning shape-shifter. It seeps through cultural norms, language, institutions and notions of a perfect mother. To be a mother is synonymous with being selfless, ever-giving, living only for our children. We really try to mould ourselves to this script. Look around you the next time you are on a flight, in a restaurant or on a long train journey. Who is managing the children? Who is negotiating the snacks, the spills, the meltdowns, the boredom? We do not even see it anymore because it has become so expected, so invisible. The everyday drudgery, the self-erasure that largely remains unnamed.

Concepts like “refrigerator mothers” to explain autism, “schizophrenogenic mothers” to explain schizophrenia, were taken for granted at a certain time in the murky history of psychiatry and psychology. Now they might seem dated and horrifying but what is churned out in the garb of therapy-speak on Instagram is no different. Diagnoses are still being churned out — “toxic mother”, “narcissistic mother”, mothers who were not available and cause “mother wound”. A lot of problematic content on “healing the childhood wounds” propagated on social media is nothing but mother-bashing.

Then, there is a recent trend of labelling the attachment styles, where again, inevitably, mothers are at fault. “Anxious attachment style”, “avoidant attachment style”, “ambivalent attachment style” are free for all to take. Sometimes you get two styles at the cost of one. Words borrowed from psychology and quietly weaponised against the very women they were, supposedly, meant to help. And the saddest part? It is often women who end up policing each other. We churn under pressure and instead of turning towards one another, we turn on each other.

I am seeing this divide between mothers and daughters much more often, especially when they are in their teens. At the very time they need their mothers the most, they become adversaries instead of allies. Both are caught in the same patriarchal current, swimming hard, often against each other.

Saina, a 21-year-old girl, recently raged at her mother during a conversation with me, “I hate her so much.” She explained how her mother had not been there for her when she was growing up, how she “did not have the guts” to leave her father, even though he was abusive.

Initially, she was reluctant to meet me together with her mother but upon my request, she agreed to sit in the session as a silent witness. I checked with her mother if she would be comfortable sharing some of her stories with me. She shared her childhood, how being the youngest of the three daughters, she had to live with the shame of being “unwanted” and was quickly married off, even though she was keen to study further and work. She shared stories of how frightened she was coming into her husband’s family, where she was taunted for everything, his unpredictable rage towards her and not having anyone to turn to.

She burst into tears, talking about how she could not even be there for her own children because of her struggles with depression when they were little. “My children had to pay the price for my depression,” she sighed. I wondered aloud, “I am sometimes curious to know if fathers took over fifty per cent of the parenting and household chores, would mothers still struggle with depression?”

Saina, true to her words, stayed quiet through the session but something definitely moved in their relationship. As Saina shared with me, “Hearing her story, something shifted.” I started hearing many more stories about them going for long walks, chatting or doing yoga together. There seemed to be a wonderful lightness in them as if through their love, they had been able to unravel decades of pain. After all, we heal in kinship and not in silos.

Motherhood comes with hidden complexities. When we decontextualise these complexities, we become complicit in the injustice that is being carried out against mothers for generations.

On Mother’s Day next month, I urge you to go beyond just posting a celebratory message. Share the care. Interrupt the casual blame. Refuse the easy joke at a mother’s expense. Stand beside a mother who is being judged. And then, do something that shifts the story.

In this column, Shelja Sen curates the knowhow of the children and youth she has the honour of working with. Email her at shelja.sen@childrenfirstindia.com