Motherhood Quote by Germaine Greer

Greer’s line is engineered to detonate one of the most sentimental assumptions in modern culture: that maternal love automatically sanctifies whatever system produced it. By pairing the mother with a caged bird, she makes affection sound less like a halo and more like a survival strategy. The bird sings because it’s alive and wired for song; the mother loves because humans bond, attach, and adapt. Neither response is proof of freedom. That’s the barb.

The phrasing “compelled mother” matters. Greer isn’t describing motherhood as chosen intimacy but as an institution that can be mandated by law, economics, religion, and sexual politics. The subtext is classic second-wave feminism: women are nudged, pressured, or outright forced into caregiving roles, then praised for performing them beautifully. The performance becomes the evidence used against them: you love your child, therefore you must have wanted this; you wanted this, therefore the coercion disappears. Greer refuses that moral laundering. “The song does not justify the cage” is a warning against confusing coping with consent.

There’s also a quiet insult to the culture that consumes the “song.” A caged bird’s singing is often read as charming, even uplifting; likewise, maternal devotion is treated as a soft-focus proof that everything is fine. Greer flips the lens: the loveliness is real, but it’s also what makes the captivity harder to name. Her intent isn’t to deny love; it’s to strip it of its propaganda function, insisting that tenderness can coexist with constraint, and that constraint remains culpable even when the constrained are radiant.