Paul Hopkins: Mothers in our times of trouble will cling to us

Depending on which side of the fence you reside, you may consider the Biblical Eve the first mother. If the Greek classics is your bag then Pandora — she of the box of evil spirits you open at your peril — is considered the first, with her daughter Pyrrha (Fire), the first-born mortal child.

However, in the more exact field of human genetics, Mitochondrial Eve, who is thought to have lived about 190,000 to 200,000 years ago, is considered the first mother of us all, the most recent woman from whom all living humans today descend, on their mother's side, and through the mothers of those mothers and so on, back until all lines converge on one person.

Whatever way you look at it, mothers have been around for some considerable time, otherwise, obviously, you and I would not be here, nor the rest of the planet's 8.1 billion inhabitants.

A mother is specifically a woman who has given birth to a child, and/or supplied the ovum that united with a sperm which grew into a child. Because of the complexity and differences of a mother's social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to specify a "universally acceptable" definition for the term.

Indeed, mother can often apply to a woman other than the biological parent, especially if she carries out the main social role in raising the child. Adoption, in various forms, has been practiced throughout history, but it is only in the last 100 years or so that adoption has tended to be governed by comprehensive rules and regulations.

And only in more recent times that adopted children have rights, in certain jurisdictions, to know who their biological mother is. Also, in recent decades, international adoptions have become more and more common. A surrogate mother is, commonly, a woman who bears an embryo, that is from another woman's fertilised ovum, for a couple unable to have children.

Thus, she carries and gives birth to a child that she is not the biological mother of. This is different from a woman who becomes pregnant via in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The latter has made pregnancy possible at ages well beyond natural childbearing age, and has generated ethical controversy and forced significant changes in the social meaning of motherhood.

The possibility for lesbian and bisexual women in same-sex relationships (or, indeed, without a partner) to become mothers has increased in the last few decades thanks again to new technology. Thankfully, the changing attitudes of modern Ireland has provided more acceptance for same-sex relationships.

There is also today the option of self-insemination and ‘clinically assisted donor insemination', modern forms of artificial insemination. With so many modern ways to becoming a mother, every woman has a good chance to become one, though not all women want to carry and give birth to and rear a child – and would indeed argue that maternal instinct is something of a misnomer.

Historically, the role of women was confined mostly to being a mother and wife, with women being expected to dedicate most of their energy to these roles, and to spend most of their time taking care of the home. [At time of publication the referendums outcome is not known]. Of course, while mothers have historically fulfilled the primary role in raising children, since the late 20th century the role of the father in child care has been given greater prominence and social acceptance in many Western countries — primarily because the same decades also saw more and more women entering the world of paid work. (The late Garret FitzGerald caused a furore when in the 1980s as Fine Gael Taoiseach he tried to put a ‘price' on stay-at-home mothers by proposing to pay them the princely sum of £9.50 a week – about €32.77 today).

Seamus Heaney once said his father was notably sparing of talk but his mother “notably ready to speak out'', a circumstance which the poet believed to have been fundamental to the “quarrel with himself ” out of which his poetry arose.

I like to think the novelist Washington Irving put it succinctly when he wrote: "A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavour by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate and cause peace to return to our hearts."