The power and value of the Mother

One role in life I have never felt capable of attempting but one I remain in awe of is that of the MOTHER. Today I want to acknowledge the power and value of the Mother. All of us had one. Some are one. Some yearn to be one. Some like me have long known we are not cut out for it. I really do stand in awe of the women who create human life and then go about nurturing that life to independence and a full contributing life of its own, so often whilst juggling the challenges of adult relationship and work. Some mothers are ‘naturals' and they make it all look so easy, some struggle hugely and have to work at it, others are just not suited to it at all and suffer through it, but all are huge influences in a child's life. Further, I believe all mothers want to do a good job and to say someone is ‘a bad mother' is probably one of the worst things a mother could hear - she does her best even if she is under resourced herself. (Note: I know men also have a huge role to play in the raising of children and they are often under supported, misunderstood and under acknowledged but that topic deserves it's own attention in another issue!)

While we aim resources at more prisons, boot camps for troubled teens and so on, why are we not looking more closely at giving mothers what they need to create environments for their children in which they thrive and flourish? Instead we seem to pile on the pressure to be in the ‘workforce' so there is enough family income to survive - and pay for others to care for their children, (often in large groups). Sure, many women I know who are mothers feel they would go mad without the adult environments they work in but somewhere things have gone out of whack. Women need better quality support across the board, especially in the first few years of their child's life.

Parenting is arguably the most important role on the planet. We have enough research now that tells us what we intuitively know, that the very early stages of life set the foundations for the child going forward (a child learns more and faster in the first 18mths of life than the rest of the life put together according to the experts). Why are we not focusing more resource on this period? What’s more, why not give mothers the personal development education they need to work through their own ‘leftover issues’ from childhood so the models they offer their children are even more effective than the ones they had?

Remember the old saying “Educate a woman and you educate a generation”? We have come a long way in educating women for sure, but there is more education needed about the dynamics of child development – every mother is an early childhood educator but some educate from ignorance. Rather than blaming women for not knowing any better why don't we support them to learn and value themselves and their role more. Surely we can all help with that by the way we treat mothers?

Mothers raise boys, who grow into men. Mothers raise girls who grow into women. Mothers teach boys how to treat women and girls how to be women. Children either adapt to what was modeled to them, or rebel against it. To grow into healthy adults with a sense of esteem and worth, children ideally need someone to love them, like them and believe in them. All children love having someone to look up to, to aspire to be like, to ‘show them the way'. With these things intact in the family (whatever form that family takes - and there are many), the whole society can grow in diversity and tolerance, compassion and respect.

While we need to find solutions for our current troubled youth and adults, surely it is worth some forward thinking to consider the future societies we are creating every day that babies are born - every day a baby is born, so the future is born. We will not eliminate the problems on this one until we eliminate the kinds of role models and environments that create them.

“We tell children how to be and they keep mirroring what we are. Children learn by example. If we are to raise happy, intelligent children we must bring to wholeness the models they are following.”

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Making resources available for parents to provide those environments that help children flourish could be a helpful (for the individual and the whole) focus of our attention, not from dogma or rigid applications of self righteousness but from principles that can be used as pointers on a path. Parents can be guides on a path rather than enforcers of rules.

One key in my view is to educate parents, help them ‘compost the crap' from their own histories and thereby interrupt the patterns that foster dysfunction and low self esteem, and to teach them what builds a robust and resilient fully expressed contributing human that uses the best of themselves to serve the wider community.

I dream of a day when all parents know who they really are and how the human development process works. Everyone does the best they can with the resources they have. If we want that ‘best’ to be even better we need to add more resources. My moot is that those resources would over time lead to us needing less and less prisons, less and less need for money to deal with social problems, child abuse would be an anomaly, a thing of a distant past…every child sacred, every one a gem, and the responsibility of parenting seen as the most valuable role on the planet (which it undoubtedly is!).

To all the mothers out there I honour you. To my own mother I say “Thank you (again) for having me!” Don't wait for Mothers Day to pause and consider all your mother did for you. Appreciate her for what she gave you - whatever her resources…she did her best in her circumstances and likely deserves a medal!

And that's it….from my view.

Make it a great month,
Amanda xx