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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 of 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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