By: Melbourne feminist, Vera Hartley

It was mother’s day sixteen years ago, the first year that we were without our mother. I remember how I had refused to celebrate this annual event and am choked with guilt.

But mother’s day has never been a particularly favourite celebration for me. My reluctance to enter into society’s celebration of motherhood - contrived or otherwise - was born out of my unhappiness within the patriarchal family both as a child, a wife and mother.

I grew up in the 1950s, the daughter of a very domineering man who ruled the lives of my sisters and our mother. He was a church-going man, but this didn’t stop him from striking me hard across my mouth when I dared to have my own opinions. Not surprisingly I could hardly wait to leave him but unfortunately married a man who dominated me and criticised everything I did, and at the age of 21 I was a mother. After many years of emotional and physical abuse, I managed to leave the unhappy marriage.

My experience within the family, an institution still lauded by society has not been pleasant, and has tainted my picture of marriage and motherhood to such a degree that to enter into society’s commercial celebration of the day has always been very difficult for me and of course my children can’t or won’t understand.