You don’t appreciate your own parents until you have your own children.
The famous native-American quote comes to mind, “Don’t judge any man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins”. Maybe we could change the quote for Mother’s Day to something like this, “Don’t complain about your mother until you have changed two months of nappies and been woken up every night for 60 nights in a row”.
Most men only begin to appreciate their wife, and the mother of their children, when they watch helplessly as she goes through the pain of giving birth to their first child. Their appreciation goes to new levels with the ensuing period of sleep deprivation that is often shared unequally. I wish I could say that I helped the mother of my children as much as I should have when my children were young, but unfortunately the reverse is the case.
Mothers are important. Mothers are valuable and mothers need to be appreciated. What you are reading is something I have written in the past but it could have been written yesterday hence my passion to share it with you. We all know there is a war against fatherhood waged by elite political forces, but there is also a commensurate war against motherhood, which is more subtle, but just as insidious and damaging. That is why Dads4Kids is passionate to support motherhood.
Dads4Kids often runs Mother’s Day Community Service Advertisements on TV as its way of waving the flag for motherhood.
Mother’s Day is a very important day of the year. I encourage you to celebrate your own mother and the mother of your children. Motherhood needs our continued support as does fatherhood. We need to champion motherhood and mothers all year round.
Dr Peter Cook put together his brilliant e-book for this purpose, ‘Mothering Denied – How our culture harms infants, women and society’. Steve Biddulph’s introduction is hard to argue with and highlights the importance of mothers to their children and to our society.
Every era in human history has naturally assumed itself to be the most modern, progressive, and advanced. There is no deeper myth in our history than the myth of progress, the idea that things get better. It may well be our most dearly-held illusion.
Just recently, with the growth of technologies that can look inside the living brain, and video camera that can watch the tiny movements and gestures of mothers and infants, we have realized that in our basic assumptions of Western industrial life, we were terribly wrong about something very important. We thought that minding babies was a casual, inconsequential thing that could be left to underpaid teenagers, or done in bulk with one person to five babies or ten toddlers, without any problem.
It now appears that mother-baby interaction, in the first year especially, is the very foundation of human emotions and intelligence. In the most essential terms, love grows the brain. The capacities for what make us most human—empathy, co-operation, intimacy, the fine timing and sensitivity that makes a human being charismatic, loving, and self-assured— are passed from mother to baby, especially if that mother is herself possessed of these qualities, and supported and cared for, so that she can bring herself to enjoy and focus on the task.
Just as we were wrong, in our industrial culture, about almost everything related to sustainable and happy living on this earth, we were wrong about childhood. It is entirely possible that in our civilisation we have been getting worse, as parents, for many hundreds of years. Of course these are dramatic, sweeping overstatements. But the trends are there.
Peter Cook is a doctor who has specialised in psychiatry and has been working in the field of child and family mental health for decades. In this book he has created something of great value. He summarises much research, making it accessible to those who wish to know more, as he draws on over half a century of thinking and learning about human infants and their mothers and fathers.
I’d like to say read and enjoy, but it’s more a case of read and weep. Or better still, read this body of work to find confirmation and a spur to put love back at the top of the list for building a human race that is still here in a century’s time; because if we don’t learn to love our babies, our earth, and each other, very fast, we will disappear. It has already begun, and there isn’t a moment to lose. Steve Biddulph
If you want more proof about the importance of mothers download ‘Mothering Denied’ at our website: http://www.fatherhood.org.au/mothers_motheringDenied.html
Lovework
Let’s begin a year-long celebration of mothers and motherhood this Mother’s Day because without our mother, we wouldn’t be here now.
Yours for championing mothers
Warwick Marsh
PS: If you have been reading this newsletter for any length of time you would know that I believe in the power of prayer. Maybe it’s the very fact that what I talk about week by week in this newsletter, I am unable to carry out because of the war against fatherhood waged by elite political forces and the commensurate war against motherhood. It is this very sense of powerlessness in the face of the struggle to preserve motherhood, fatherhood, marriage and family and thus build a better future for our children that drives me to my knees. Make of that what you will, but I firmly believe in prayer and I am pleased to announce that we are in the middle of six days of prayer & fasting for America, but not only America, Australia too, and families in general. See info here.
I would also greatly appreciate your prayers for the Train the Trainer Summit at Stanwell Tops from the 13 – 15 May 2016.
NOTE: Extension for applications to become a Good to Great Trainer and attend the Train the Trainer Summit at Stanwell Tops – NOW closes Monday night 2 May 2016. Click here for more info.
One last prayer and action point: The Greens/Turnbull alliance has moved to change the Senate voting laws that will effectively destroy the voice for sanity in the Senate, effectively destroying the minor parties. The new laws are unfair, unrepresentative, undemocratic and un-Australian as I show on this recent video. I am speaking at a protest rally in Martin Place at 2PM on Sunday 1 May 2016. As I understand the High Court is at least taking the constitutional challenge in the peoples’ writ seriously, so we seem to be in with a chance. The High Court will be hearing the case 2-3 May. The High Court will also be looking to see if people are genuinely concerned. High Court judges are interested in politics as much as they are law. Write a letter to the media and get on social media. Let your voice be heard. For more info: www.3mv.net.au
Beautifully said.