Your Hardest Days As A Mother, And What The Qur’an Says To You

Maulana Asim begins with a question: why are some women saying they wish they had never had children? He calls the thought frightening and says it is not only a Western phenomenon, since Muslim communities are living with it too. He says he has not seen Muslim scholars take it up and thinks they should. He places the discussion within a wider concern about falling birth rates, which he attributes to several social and economic factors; this summary stays with the part of his class that concerns mothers’ own experience.

He grounds the topic in the Quran’s command to be kind to parents, in which, he says, Allah singles out the mother and describes the heavy burden she bears in carrying her child. Maulana Asim explains one Arabic word in these verses as meaning to hollow something out, and reads it as describing a mother who gives so much of herself that she can feel like a shell of who she was, both physically and in her sense of identity. She stops being seen as a person in her own right, he says, and becomes only the mother of this child. He is careful to add that keeping a mother’s sense of self is not about consumer wants, but about the self Allah has placed in every person.

Maulana Asim then reads from a widely shared article in which mothers describe how hard early motherhood has been. They speak of exhaustion, anxiety, and feeling that the rest of their lives is on hold, as well as painful births, not being taken seriously afterward, and friends and family who answer with reassurance rather than listening. He calls loneliness a major issue for new mothers. He also says that postnatal depression tends to enter public conversation only after an extreme case, and argues that struggling mothers need to be noticed much earlier. Speaking from his own experience in the hospital, he says he wishes someone had prepared him for what a birth could involve, and that women have it harder, with little idea of what is about to happen to them.

For Maulana Asim, the Quran responds with honesty rather than denial. He points to Maryam’s words in labor, wishing she had died before this moment and been forgotten entirely, and describes her as arguably the most honorable woman who ever lived. If she could voice such a thought, he argues, it is wrong to tell mothers they must never feel it, and these feelings need to be validated. He adds that if someone says something forbidden, it should not be affirmed but dealt with. He cites the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ saying that Allah has pardoned his ummah for what their souls whisper to them. Such thoughts are not to be acted on and a child is never to be harmed; instead, he says, a struggling mother should take them to someone who represents the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching and say honestly that she is having a hard time, asking what help exists, including financial support or help at night.

He insists that praising children is not enough. It is easy to talk about the glory of children, he says, but for a mother it becomes a daily struggle, and the material help she needs has to be in place. He argues that care should be shared but does not think an equal split between spouses is realistic or beneficial, and says he is open to pushback on that. In his view, the Quran’s placing of the financial responsibility for nursing on the father means a husband’s role is to make sure his wife has the help she needs, paying for it where he can and perhaps sometimes waking at night himself. He also contends that people mistake pleasure for meaning, and that children are meaningful rather than always enjoyable. He recalls the Prophet ﷺ shortening a prayer when he heard a child crying, in order to ease the mother’s distress. He closes by reminding listeners of the Prophet’s ﷺ request, as he relates it, to have children, and says that guidance only works if communities help make raising children possible.