Mar Fondevila: Despite having more information than ever, we experience motherhood with more loneliness

Guiu, her eldest son, is mostly seen by his little head; she smiles with the guitar in her hands. She has had it as her profile picture for over a year and has often thought about changing it, because, with Laia, the family has grown. But it captures her day-to-day life as a mother and @mare.cantam so well that she always ends up keeping it. Mar Fondevila (Barcelona, 1995), a music teacher for children, created this Instagram profile when she heard some mothers say they wanted to sing songs to their children but didn't quite know what to sing to them.

If I sing Bad Bunny to my baby, will he fall asleep?

— When you sing to a baby, there is an instant reaction, a bond that is above all the rest. It does not matter what you sing or how you sing it: the important thing is that you do it.

What if I sing out of tune?

— It is exactly the same. I am a music teacher for children. Everyone sings all the time. It is when we grow up that we start to feel embarrassed and stop doing it. A baby does not know what it is to be in tune.

All cultures sing to their children.

— That is why the lullaby connects with our heritage. Songs that mothers sang, who in turn had heard their own mothers sing them, and so on. It is something so innate and earthly that it connects you with your entire history, both family and cultural.

Talk about mothers. And fathers?

— I am not saying that fathers should not sing; on the contrary. But what a baby needs most is to hear the mother's voice. I always tell my partner that I have a nine-month head start on him.

Was I already singing when they were in the womb?

— A lot. It was a moment of connection, of taking care of them from within. To Guiu, we always used to sing Corazón de maíz, by Pim Pau, about the heartbeat.

And do you remember what was the first song you sang to the little one?

— Nightingale, you who go to France.

It is a sad song.

— About an unhappily married woman…

Change letters in case they do not fit with today's values?

— I have dilemmas with this. Traditional song explains where we come from: how we lived, what we felt. The ideal would be to sing the pieces as they are and then reflect on why it says what it says.

But reflecting with a baby…

— With such small children, what comes naturally is singing beautiful things, with sweet lyrics, and depending on the situation, some things don't feel right. So I find myself shortening it a lot.

And any letter that has changed?

— The references to God in Vella xiruca or in Bona nit, bons germans. But that was years ago, and now perhaps I would not do it.

What happened?

— With the birth of my children I have given more value to traditions. We cannot ignore our heritage. When you change the lyrics to remove what you don't like, you run the risk that they lose their meaning. And when things lose their meaning, they stop being done.

How is Christmas in schools?

— Now we celebrate the winter festival, the spring festival… But we do celebrate these days and not others. Once a girl told me: then, let's not say goodbye.

Are strictly children's songs a contemporary invention?

— I am not sure if the category existed before. I imagine the whole family living together all day, while cooking, while working, singing. And you, as a child, learning the song that was playing. Now, on the other hand, we consider many traditional songs that everyone used to sing to be for children.

And new songs, on the other hand, are made thinking only of children. What is lost?

— If you make something intended only for children, maybe you no longer take risks with certain melodies, because you think they are too complicated. And you use a simpler vocabulary.

Nightingale, that goes to France says “commend me to mother”. Commend me! Unthinkable in the times of Baby Shark.

— It is the richness of the traditional song: words appear that are not used as much either in day-to-day life or with young children. But you are singing it, and if they hear it, perhaps they will ask you what it means.

What did they sing to her when she was little?

— At home we sang a lot of Lluís Llach, Ovidi Montllor, Maria del Mar Bonet… Xesco Boix was the best of the best, and for me he still is. He had a special gift for communicating with children.

But do you remember any specific song?

— Since I found it very hard to sleep, my mother would say to me: “One song and I’m off”. And I would ask her for Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol, because it was the longest one. It is nice singing it to my son, now, because it serves as an excuse for me to talk to him about all the characters that appear in it.

With her eldest son, @mare.cantam was also born.

— When she was born, she cried a lot, and singing to her came naturally to me. In parenting groups, I saw other mothers who told me they only hummed, or that they always sang the same song because they didn't know any more. And I thought: but I know so many! I put my shyness aside and opened the account.

Instagram accounts, mothers' groups… What defines parenting today?

— We have a great deal of information, more than ever, yet we experience motherhood with more loneliness. In the past, children were raised in a tribe: there was the network of family or neighbors right next door. Now, however, there is a lot of theory and little practice.

And more anguish?

— Yes. We have the feeling that we can control everything: that we can choose which school or which doctor they will go to, that they follow a diet with less sugar or less salt. The reality is that you cannot control almost anything. But this false sense of control generates a lot of anxiety for us.

What have you learned over these years?

— At seven in the evening, the little one hits the witching hour: she cries, cries and cries. When I go out to the street with her, people look at me. And I think: man, what are you looking at? If I could, I would have already calmed her down. Fathers and mothers always do it as well as we can and know how, and the best thing is not to judge.