The entire tribe

Before I realized that Inditex shops generally have a children section I used to buy a lot in Mothercare. It is funny, there are a lot of changing cabins, kid’s corners and baby shops in the world that are basically transparent until you have kids. Anyway, Mothercare. Besides pajamas with bunny ears, they had something I really liked. It was a sentence written in the bags “to raise a child it is needed the whole tribe”, and a manifesto that basically said you have the right to a life, even if you are a mother.

Probably the original sense of the sentence, printed in the bag in which I packed my milk pump, wanted to say that the kid needs the whole tribe. That the whole society should worry about his education and well being. I think the meaning was a bit distorted in the manifesto (written with the healthy objective of selling overpriced pacifiers) to say that "mummy needs the whole tribe", but in any case I cannot help buying everything it says and shout amen! The thing goes like this. If the tribe is around, mum is relaxed. If mum is relaxed she is a better person, if she is a better person she is not annoying with Martin, she does not divorce, she does not drink, and everybody saves in justice and health care expenses.

These all prove how easy it is to convince people like me to buy crap when you put a bit of literature in the picture. It also proves a great marketing department with knowledge about its target, basically working mothers that get orgasmic if you tell them they do not have the whole world on their shoulders. Something similar I thought about one campaign of the Body Shop. “There are three thousand million women in the world. Eight of them are top models”. Girl with more than fifty kilos, less than 1,70cm. I was such a clear target, couldn’t help buying…

Coming back to the topic, any Spanish mum in Germany will tell you how much she misses her tribe. The tribe, in general. Someone around that considers you a person and not only a mother. Our family is far, and we suffer the twisted mentality of the German society that tells you in a thousand different ways that kids should be your only responsibility. You know, by paying your husband more if you don’t work, by Krippe opening hours that allows you little more than doing Pilates, the trap of part-time job, those German friends that won’t leave a second their children alone with you (or with anybody else for that matter) and the language itself with that beautiful word, Rabenmutter, to define anyone that differs from this view.

The whole tribe. This is something that comes to mind when I’m in Spain, with my tribe. All these years thinking that family is best via Skype and this baby comes and changes my point of view. The little monster achieved what seemed impossible, and I do not mean the fact that in Spain mummy can go out for a coffee wearing heels and a white dress, which is also really nice. The miracle is mum not going out for that coffee because she is having the greatest fun home with my aunt playing silly, Daniel laughing like crazy and grandparents nicely and politely talking to each other after fourteen years. I don’t even need to go into the topic of who is going to pay pensions to be able to say that looks like the tribe needs the kid as much as the kid (and mum) needs the tribe.

Note: Here the only version I could find from the manifesto. Funny place to defend sharing the responsibilities of motherhood….