THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 13, 1995
Remarks by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
at the Mother of the Year Awards
New York, NY
MRS. CLINTON: Thank you so much. I am delighted to be here
and to have this honor is very touching to me especially because
of the kind comments ofl Donna and the other women who I share
this with. It is always a great pleasure for me to be with
Barbara Boxer. The end of that story that Donna started is that
her daughter and my brother got married. And in fact, Barbara is
on her way shortly to becoming a grandmother, as well as a
mother.
I want to echo the words of support that Carolyn McCarthy
deserves from all of us. She and Kevin have courageously
demonstrated what one does in the face of unspeakable tragedy,
and how to take that and turn it into a positive determination to
try to help other people, and we are very grateful for that.
And, Jane, thank you for your enthusiasm and your support for
causes that are a concern to so many people.
I would also like, with the other women on this podium, to
really thank all of the millions and millions of mothers whose
faces and voices will not be ever heard from a podium like this
but whose lives are every day, compelling examples of unwavering,
unyielding, uninterrupted commitment to their children and
families.
Someone asked me recently whether I thought I was a good
mother, and before I had a chance to think about it, I found
myself saying that I hoped I was as good a mother as my mother
was and is to me. I am very fortunate to have been blessed by a
mother and a father who gave me the unconditional love, the
respect, the nurturing and the strong family values that every
child needs and deserves. And I am sure there are many American
women like me who identify with Jo March, the oldest daughter in
Little Women, who said, "What do girls do who haven't any mother
to help them through their troubles?"
My mother has always been there for me, and that is the
greatest gift any child can receive from a parent. Of course, we
don't always appreciate what it entails in being there with a
child until we become mothers or fathers ourselves. I have
discovered, certainly over the past 15 years of my own daughter's
life that being a parent is a continuing learning process, a
humbling experience, a continuing challenge and one that evolves
and grows as your child does. I understand so much better a
friend's description of mothers as "every family's designated
worrier." Or as the old Jewish proverb says, "God could not be
everywhere so he therefore he made mothers." Thankfully my
daughter indulges me, and puts up with my rather constant
fretting.
In thinking about my own mother and daughter, whose wonders I
could regal you with for hours, I come back to a central thought
that I have been pondering in many places over the last month.
My mother, a homemaker, who never had a career outside the home,
inspired me to make the most of whatever opportunities came my
way in life. My aspirations turned out to be different from
hers, but with her support and encouragement, I was able to
fulfill them. She respected my choices. She supported me at
every step. And I suspect that if we went around this room, and
asked the women here about their own mothers, many of our stories
would be the same. Tillie Olsen wrote in her book, Mother to
Daughter, Daughter to Mother, "My mother is a poem I'll never be
able to write, although everything I write is a poem to my
mother." That one sentence sums up the powerful, enduring and
intangible qualities of motherhood.
And yet today we all know that our society is grappling with
the still evolving roles of women and mothers and parents. And
it's important to remember there is no prescription for being a
good mother. There is no full-proof formula for being a
successful parent. One is not necessarily a better mother for
staying at home, nor a better mother for having a career. I
remember so well when Chelsea was a tiny infant, probably about a
month old, and crying all night long, and as I was walking her
and then rocking her, I finally just looked at her, and I said,
"You've never been a baby before, and I've never been a mother
before. We're just going to have to figure this out together."
And that is what many of us do every single day.
Yet too often we fall into the trap of blaming many of
society's problems on the fact that now 70 percent of American
mothers work outside the home, and at the same time, when mothers
stay at home to care for their children full-time, they are often
criticized or disrespected for wasting their education and their
potential. It's another one of those classic female binds -- You
get it whichever decision you make. The fact is that mothers in
America today whether they work outside or inside the home, have
more responsibilities, obligations and expectations placed on
them than ever before. Somehow, while handling child-rearing,
the care of aging parents, career decisions, economic pressures
and all of the accompanying exhaustion and stress -- mothers are
supposed to live neatly integrated and balanced lives.
Yet we all know, that in reality, modern motherhood is seldom
neat. It is a constant and delicate juggling act. As many of
you may know, I just had the extraordinary opportunity to travel
to South Asia -- speaking to Carolyn and Bernie about that during
lunch. That's a part of the world, where, certainly, women
appear to have far fewer choices than we have here. And what
struck me over and over again, during my stay, was not only the
differences that clearly contrasted our experience with the
experience of women in the countries I visited, but also the
universality that I found among womens' experiences no matter
what country they live in. I will never forget one woman I met --
in a small village in Pakistan -- outside Lahore. This woman was
living in a village with no electricity, no televisions, no
telephones -- virtually no connection to the outside world, down
the road forty minutes in Lahore. She told me after I had
visited a girls' school that was the school for the young girls
in that village -- that she had ten children, five sons and five
daughters. And she was despairing over the fact that while her
sons could continue their education after finishing in the local
village school, her daughters would not be able to go further --
because there was no higher level school for girls in that area.
That, of course, was a sad fact that I found in many of the
countries I visited. This mother's concern for her daughter's
future, was not political, was not ideological -- it was not
motivated by anything other than a powerful maternal spirit that
makes us want the best for our children. And although separated
by half a world geographically, and even greater distances from
my own mother, her concerns for her children were essentially the
same.
In coming back from South Asia I realized that just as that
mother I met in the village in Pakistan was yearning to be heard,
our jobs here at home, is to listen to the concerns -- the real
concerns of mothers here -- to hear them, not to silence their
voices, not to marginalize their concerns. Because the concerns
of mothers and daughters, women and girls, are central to the
quality of life in any society. As I said in a speech that I
made in New Delhi, India, the concerns of women are not "soft"
issues. At best, on the edge of serious debate about all the
problems which confront us at the end of this century -- but
rather, they are central to our political and economic
challenges. So whether mothers are talking about child care or
the minimum wage, family leave time, good schools, safe streets--
or the need for close-knit communities -- their issues, our
issues are in many ways the central issues at this time.
They are the issues that will define our culture for many
years to come. They are the issues that speak our collective
concern about the erosion of family values and the importance, as
Senator Boxer said, of investing in our children and securing our
future as a nation. As daunting as the challenges we face, and
certainly as the ones I saw in South Asia, this is a very
exciting time for mothers and women in America and around the
world. Leaders on every continent are beginning to recognize the
vital role that women play in the political, economic and social
life of every nation.
Our joy and opportunity, at this moment in our history, is to
help do for future generations, what mothers and women have done
before us. And hopefully to do that with the same grace, courage
and compassion of our mothers. We owe it to them, we owe it to
our daughters, we owe it to all of us -- to do what we can --to
make it possible for every woman, every girl, every mother, to
feel that the future for her children is one that will give hope
and opportunity for years to come.
Thank you very much.
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