Throughout antiquity, and certainly in the days preceding the emergence of monotheism, when goddesses were an essential part of the pantheon of many cultures, a woman's power to bring forth life was viewed with awe. She gives birth to a great number of sons. The sons, greatly puzzled by this act which they cannot duplicate, become frightened. And so, because of their fear of this mysterious ability of woman, and of its reversible possibility, they kill her. This is how we cement relations between partners, because we imbue sex with symbolic meaning through love.
Love also gives meaning to, and reinforces the behavior of, mothering and parenting in general.
During this period, mothers are the primary transmitters of knowledge and values. Since this late 19th-century polarization of the public sphere, which men dominated, and the private sphere, which women dominated at men's insistence, women have had a continuous struggle to break out of one sphere and attain access to all the political and economic privileges present in the other. In moving between the two spheres, as most women do today, work and the roles of mothers have continued to change, as has society's understanding of what a good mother is. The lesson we learn from mothers themselves is that their variety is infinite.