Ji-Wen LI (Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Education, Shu-Te University)

Traditionally, the mother’s powerful role in influencing a nation or a race has been recognized, for women raise children and take care of men and elderly. However, are these features part of a natural role of maternity? Or, are women forced to take the responsibility as the “great Mother”? In Kyoko GASHA’s Mothers’ Way, Daughters’ Choice, and Claire PIJMAN’s Later We Care, we can perceive what Eastern and Western cultures expect from a “mother” or a “daughter.” In order to fulfill such traditional expectations, career women often have to sacrifice their personal ambition and freedom.

Japanese career women, in particular, face a great deal of gender stereotyping. They usually have to work harder to get promotion; once pregnant, they are treated as “patients,” and are forced to resign out of “the good will” from others. They are forced to play the role of a good mother that is expected by the traditional perspective of society. Director Kyoko GASHA was brought up in a conservative Japanese family; however, because of the law of Equal Opportunity Employment, Kyoko entered into a TV station company and got the chance to work with men. She brought her talent of crisis management into full play in the hostage crisis in Peru’s Japanese embassy. The incident made her worry about who would look after her daughter if she died while working. It became more and more difficult for her to work and take care of her family at the same time under Japan’s career environment; therefore, she transferred to Reutors in America. Later, however, the 911 explosions exposed her daughter to danger. Kyoko felt guilty for bringing her daughter to America, but she also recognized that only in America could she work and raise a child with ease. In the film, Kyoko interviews several Japanese women who had chosen to work in America. They all agree that, the reason they are willing to work so far away from home is that, they are “eager to be themselves.”

There are many ways to raise children, and it is not necessary for women to become a “perfect, full-time mother.” The film Later We Care records the real life of career women who have to take care of the elderly with Alzheimer disease and children at the same time. Usually these women endure heavy pressure without complaint, but seldom do people recognize their hardship.

The film Of Monsters and Skirts, directed by Spainish director Carolina Astudillo MUÑOZ, presents a mother as a political prisoner during the periods of upheaval and civil war in Spain, through narratives and memories of her son, daughter and nephew. The children didn’t know about the political situation; they believed that their mother lived in an abbey. Their childhood memory of her is that, when they were brought to see her, and they had to hug each other across railings. The mother was described by the court as a “demon wearing skirts.” On the other hand, by alleviating the political and historical elements in the film, we only see a mother with love and boldness.

The Korean director Joo-Eun BAEK’s work Vacances depicts a mother who, because of her acrophobia is unable to go to another world after her death. She stays with her daughter and acts like a spoiled child, which present the intimate but complicated relationship between mother and daughter. Later, the rebellious daughter starts to make meals. The father says, “It tastes just as if your mother had prepared it for us.” The mother never leaves, for her habits, tastes and life would become a part of the daughter’s life.

Director Christina ESCODA’s film Alijuna, which means “the outsider,” depicts a journey of a wealthy but infertile woman, who comes to the countryside, to adopt a new-born baby from a young mother. The film presents the struggle and depression inside the two women. The young mother desires to hold the child, but she is unable to resist giving her to the other woman with more economic ability. The woman from outside acknowledges the difficult situation of young mother, but she is also unable to help her, for she has her own predicament to face.

Motherhood may be an important role in a woman’s life, but it doesn’t mean that a woman’s only life goal is to be a mother. And every woman presents a different kind of mother; some are rigid, some are weak, some cannot attend to their daughters, some may abuse their daughters. At the same time, every woman is also another woman’s daughter; whether a good or bad mother, or daughter, the complicated emotion between mother and daughter is a knot that is difficult to untie.