The Matriarchy Called — She’s Busy Holding the World Together…

So here’s the line that slid in like a truth grenade with great hair: “Half of the world are women, the other half are their children.” I don’t know who said it first, but when Viola Davis posted it, it lodged under my ribs and refused to leave. It’s both obvious and revolutionary—like discovering water again and, this time, actually drinking it.

If you zoom out for a second, it’s hilariously ironic that so much of the world still worships at the altar of patriarchy while every last one of us—every king, conqueror, hedge-fund wizard, bass player, bus driver, and “I’m just asking questions” podcaster—arrived here by passing through a woman’s body or by being carried into a life by a mother’s love. Pick your Wakullah—your tribe, your tint, your tax bracket, your playlist—if you’re someone’s mother, you’re a mother. The job description lands the same: make life out of chaos, out of groceries, out of grief, out of the last clean towel and the last nerve.

We tell stories like the world was built by men with hammers, when more often it was sustained by women with calendars, casseroles, and that sixth sense that hears a change in a child’s breathing from two rooms away. Hammers get monuments. Calendars get refrigerator magnets. The monuments are lovely; the magnets kept all of us alive.

Motherhood is the wildest paradox we’ve ever normalized. It asks you to be an entire nation-state—economy, healthcare system, Department of Energy, Department of Defense—while pretending you’re just “running out to the store.” It’s strategy and surrender, CEO and janitor, priest and bouncer. It is the longest unpaid internship with the highest stakes. People will write dissertations about “emotional labor,” and mothers will nod kindly while stirring the pot that prevents the dissertation writer from eating cereal for dinner—again.

And still, we fight. We fight for pay that matches what the job actually is. We fight for the right to lead without apologizing for the sound of our footsteps. We fight for the right to say, “I am tired,” without being told we’re dramatic. We fight to be heard above the hum of a culture that loves our sacrifice but still tries to muzzle our authority. We fight wars foreign and domestic—the ones in the news and the ones at the kitchen table when a teenager decides the hill they’re dying on today is that their hoodie is a personality.

We fight even when we don’t want to be fighting. That might be the part that rips a little: a mother’s first instinct isn’t conquest; it’s protection. It’s not “win at all costs.” It’s “everyone gets home.” Which means the fight is never about dominance; it’s about dignity. “My body is not an open forum.” “My mind is not a waiting room.” “My labor is not a tip jar.” “My love is not your emotional laundromat.” If I love you, I’ll tell you the truth, and the truth is that women—mothers—are the original infrastructure. You want to fix a society? Start with the load-bearing walls.

Let’s pause for the universal roll call, because motherhood is not a single doorway. There are birth mothers, adoptive mothers, step-in mothers, big-sister-raised-me mothers, grandmothers-turned-commanders, aunties with PhDs in showing up, foster moms, godmothers, teachers who mother, coaches who mother, nurses who mother, neighbors who mother, the friend who knows your child’s shoe size and allergies without checking her notes. Chosen family is still family. Biology is a blueprint; mothering is the construction.

And if we’re honest—and we are—mothers are also the original stand-up comics. They learned to weaponize humor because if you don’t laugh at the mess, you’ll drown in it. Show me a mother and I’ll show you a person with a three-minute set about the absurdity of field-trip permission slips, the spiritual warfare of finding a sock’s life partner, the EPA-violating science experiment festering in a backpack, and the delicate choreography required to cry in the bathroom without freaking the whole house out.

That’s the part that feels holy to me: the hope. The hope that keeps showing up even when the day has teeth. You’ll see it in quiet, ordinary ways—a sandwich cut diagonally because someone likes triangles, a text that says “Home?” when a kid is two subway stops away, a hand on your forehead that can still tell if you have a fever, even when you’re forty and swear you don’t. Mothers traffic in hope because they’ve witnessed the math: tiny care, given often, multiplies. Civilization is just a long string of those tiny acts tied together with determined love.

The patriarchal joke—if we can laugh without choking—is that power has been defined as the loudest voice in the room, the heaviest hand on the table, the tallest building on the skyline. Meanwhile, mothers demonstrate a more subversive power every day: the power to turn chaos into belonging, hunger into dinner, fear into a plan, a meltdown into a lesson, and a hardened heart into a door with a working hinge. Tell me which power you trust at two in the morning.

To be clear, this isn’t a coronation speech. Mothers don’t need crowns; they need partners. They need policies that don’t confuse “family values” with “family sacrifices (mostly hers).” They need a cultural recalibration where we stop calling basic accommodations “perks” and start calling them what they are: respect.

And here’s where I’m going to widen the camera a little, because the punchline of that quote isn’t “women are better.” It’s “everyone is here because of women, so can we move with a little more gratitude?” If half of the world are women and the other half are their children, then every room is a family meeting whether we admit it or not. Act accordingly. Clean up after yourself. Share the mic. If you don’t know what to do, default to: “What would honor the person who brought me here and the person who raised me to be more than my worst day?”

I know “mother” can be a loaded word. For some, it’s a ghost; for others, it’s a lighthouse. For some, it’s a wound; for others, a quilt. But even in the complicated places, the pattern remains: you were carried. Someone carried you—in flesh, in paperwork, in prayer, in worry, in midnight miles, in overtime shifts, in sheer stubborn love. If we can’t build a gentler world on that foundation, what are we even doing here?

So, yes—let that quote marinate. Let it soak the tough cuts of our cynicism until we’re tender enough to absorb the point. The world keeps saying “power over,” and mothers keep answering with “power for.” The world keeps shouting “mine,” and mothers keep practicing “ours.” The world keeps asking for monuments; mothers keep building mornings. If you learned anything decent about being human—how to apologize without shrinking, how to feed someone without keeping score, how to love without becoming a doormat—it probably traces back to someone who mothered you.

Half the world are women and the other half are their children. We could keep pretending we don’t understand what that means, or we could finally act like we remember. Either way, mothers will keep doing what they do—creating home in a world that can’t stop acting homeless. If you’re lucky, you’ll help. If you’re wise, you’ll notice. And if you’re honest, you’ll admit you were raised by a revolution that made you breakfast.

And don’t worry, fathers… I’m getting to you next.