Jeanette Rusk Sefcik: ‘Mothering’ is not just something that mothers do

I haven’t had children of my own. But I have “mothered” many. The childless gap in my life has been bounteously filled with the opportunity to nurture other peoples’ kids.

The young people that I have helped raise have been mostly nieces, nephews and other relatives in my large family, but they also include children of friends and neighbors.

I strongly believe in the homily that was so beautifully written and personified by Hillary Clinton: “It takes a village to raise a child.” (Oh, how I miss Hillary and her emphasis on the welfare of families and children.)

The reason children need more than their parents and siblings for a healthy upbringing is that even the best of parents have quite natural shortcomings. Because they are human beings, they sometimes “like” some kids more than others (even if they “love” them all).

Parents can be unavoidably judgmental of their kids. Other adults, without the burden of responsibility, are often able to be more accepting and allow kids to express and show all sides of themselves. Children can spread their wings and grow in the nurturing company of other caring adults in their lives.

I preach this philosophy of community child rearing because I myself experienced the benefit of other adults in my early life. My parents were good people and they did the best they could for us, but they were too young and too poor to meet all our needs. I got so much of my emotional support — and encouragement to achieve my own personal standards and goals — from aunts and uncles, neighbors, friends, teachers.

I fondly remember an aunt who helped me with body image issues that I couldn’t talk to my mom about. I remember a neighbor who nursed me through a sprained ankle with loving attention my mom was too busy to give. I remember the dean of girls at my high school who “mothered” me in my emotional needs as a teenage girl. There are many other examples, and I truly believe they were crucial to filling the holes my parents couldn’t.

So it was natural for me to pay it back. I have been able to help nieces and nephews, even a younger brother, through growing pains by spending time with them, listening, accepting, encouraging — sometimes just hanging out and doing things together. As adults, they are telling me how much it meant (and still means) to them.

A few years ago my favorite nephew (yes, I have favorites too) wrote me a precious message, reminiscing about his youthful experiences with me, and expressing appreciation for my role.

“I so often think of the trip I made as a 10-year-old boy with the coolest aunt to southern Utah,” he wrote. Then he details many other fond memories, and ends with this: “You may not know how much you influenced and helped shape my life for good!”

Another heart-warming example. A woman who became my best friend when I first moved to southern Utah had a young son, maybe four years old when we first met. We did a lot of traveling and camping in my VW camper, and Micah came along.

Through the years I nurtured and encouraged him, and became his godmother. He called my camper his “little house on wheels.” He still loved it so much that when he turned 19 (and I was only holding onto it for sentimental reasons) he bought my camper and enjoyed several years of adventuring in it.

Nothing in this piece is intended to criticize or diminish the primary role of birth parents, particularly in infancy and early childhood. As my dear mother-of-six sister wrote to me when I sent her my first draft of this piece: “One thing that you have missed is the actual pregnancy and early nurturing bond that is a huge part of the mothering experience!”

She is absolutely right. The “village mothering” that I am promoting is most important in later childhood and teen years.

For the benefit of both parents and children, we all need to form a community of neighbors, friends, teachers, relatives pitching in to do the all-important, and richly rewarding, work of nurturing a healthy and secure next generation.

Jeanette Rusk Sefcik, Glendale, is a retired newspaper reporter and editor, having worked at newspapers including the Tucson Citizen, Daily Spectrum in St. George, Southern Utah News in Kanab and Lake Powell Chronicle in Page, Ariz. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona.