Thanking Mothers

Mothers are under more pressure today than they have ever been. That’s why Dads4Kids is initiating a “Thanking Mothers” CSA TV Ad campaign scheduled for release in the lead up to Mother’s Day on 13 May 2018. Unfortunately, the amazing sacrifice that mothers make is often invisible to Dads and children.

Mothers are not appreciated as much as they should be in the broader community either. The team at Dads4KIds want to change that and give credit where credit is due. The mothers of Australia, and of the world, deserve our whole-hearted applause and appreciation. Let’s all join together in a massive vote of thanks for mothers the world over.

Dads4Kids CSA TV 1:24secs: “Thanking Mothers”

Rudyard Kipling said, “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers”. But a relatively recent study shows that mothers are very much human. Mothers are struggling and need our support more than ever.  

The Daily Mail said, “Being a mother is apparently not like it was in the good old days. Today’s parents yearn for the golden age that their own mothers enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s, researchers found.

 Mothers have less time to themselves and feel under greater pressure to juggle work and family life than the previous generation. As a result, 88 per cent said they felt guilty about the lack of time they spent with their children.

 The survey of 1,000 mothers also found that more than a third said they had less time to themselves than their mothers did – just three hours a week or 26 minutes a day. And 64 per cent said this was because they felt they ‘had’ to go out to work, while nearly a third (29 per cent) said they were under constant pressure to be the ‘perfect mother’, the report found.

 Other findings showed social networking and parenting websites, as well as technology such as Skype, were important in providing help and support among female communities. Kate Fox, of the Social Issues Research Centre, which conducted the survey for Procter & Gamble, said: ‘With increasing pressure on mothers to work a “double shift” – to be the perfect mother as well as a wage-earner – support networks are more important than ever.’

 It comes as a separate report examining childcare in the leading industrialised nations found that working mothers in Britain spend just 81 minutes a day caring for their children as a ‘primary activity’. Mothers who stay at home, on the other hand, manage twice as much time – more than two and a half hours – looking after their offspring, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

 Critics say the pressure on women to work long hours and leave their offspring in the hands of nurseries or childminders, is putting the well-being of their children at risk.”

 To switch to the inspirational, I would like to quote from Dr Jordan Peterson whose recent book “12 Rules for Life” has been number one for the last 3 months on Amazon and has only just recently dropped to number 2. I have just finished reading it. In due course I will give you a full account of this very broad ranging and intellectually invigorating book.

Dr Jordan Peterson is a passionate supporter of men, women, mothers, fathers and children too. I would describe him as something of an intellectual mystic and this beautiful excerpt towards the end of the book highlights the great importance of motherhood and the great danger we face if we do not treasure mothers properly.

 To honour your wife as a Mother of God is to notice and support the sacred element of her role as mother (not just of your children, but as such). A society that forgets this cannot survive. Hitler’s mother gave birth to Hitler, and Stalin’s mother to Stalin. Was something amiss in their crucial relationships? It seems likely, given the importance of the maternal role in establishing trust – to take a single vital example. Perhaps the importance of their motherly duties, and of their relationship with their children, was not properly stressed; perhaps what the women were doing in their maternal guise was not properly regarded by husband, father and society alike. Who instead might a woman produce if she was treated properly, honourably and carefully? After all, the fate of the world rests on each new infant – tiny, fragile and threatened but, in time, capable of uttering the words and doing the deeds that maintain the eternal, delicate balance between chaos and order.

To stand behind my daughter? That’s to encourage her, in everything she wants courageously to do, but to include in that genuine appreciation the fact of her femininity: to recognise the importance of having a family and children and to forego the temptation to denigrate or devalue that in comparison to accomplishment of personal ambition or career. It’s not for nothing that the Holy Mother and Infant is a divine image – as we just discussed. Societies that cease to honour that image – that cease to see that relationship as of transcendent and fundamental importance – also cease to be.

Lovework

Show your children the ad and get them (and you) to practice saying thank you to mum because we all must “become the change we seek” as Mahatma Gandhi was wont to say.

Yours for Thanking Mothers

Warwick Marsh

PS: If you would like to help us in our mission to promote these important ads on Facebook and encourage mothers in their noble calling, please make a DONATION NOW.

 

By |2019-03-05T01:44:00+10:00May 4th, 2018|Dads, Families, Marriage, Other Topics|0 Comments

About the Author:

Warwick Marsh has been married to Alison Marsh since 1975; they have five children and nine grandchildren, and he and his wife live in Wollongong in NSW, Australia. He is a family and faith advocate, social reformer, musician, TV producer, writer and public speaker.

Warwick is a leader in the Men’s and Family Movement, and he is well-known in Australia for his advocacy for children, marriage, manhood, family, fatherhood and faith. Warwick is passionate to encourage men to be great fathers and to know the greatest Father of all. The Father in Whom “there is no shadow of turning.”

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