EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was written for Parenting for Excellence (Volume I, No. 4), an educational newsletter published by The Stelle Group. Through its subject is “mothering” and culture, we believe it is important information for all adults.

 

 

The mothering children receive defines the world for them, gives them their identity, and sets the pattern for their relationships with other human beings.

 

The kind of mothering a generation of children re­ceives is the greatest single determinant of the quality of the culture that generation produces as adults.

 

 

MOTHERING BY MOTHERS — AND OTHERS

 

Optimally the mothering a child receives is from that child’s biological mother, begins before birth, and is consistently attuned to that particular child. Some­times the mothering function is performed by the father or by someone else other than the biological mother. And sometimes this alternative mothering, if consistently, lovingly present during the first several years after birth, is effective in facilitating the child’s healthy development.

 

The fathering function is important—extremely im­portant in fact. It is, however, a different function.

 

 

MOTHERING DETERMINES

THE QUALITY OF CULTURE

 

Perhaps in some history class somewhere you heard the story too—about the Chinese mothers. Historians were puzzled over how China was able to maintain its unique culture intact during the hundreds of years it was being continually conquered by foreign invaders. Why didn’t the cultures of the conquerors come to dominate—or at the very least to distinctly alter—Chinese civilization? Finally scholars discerned a reason. The conquering soldiers settled in China and married Chinese women—who were thoroughly trained in mothering and in their role as purveyors of Chinese culture. The children of these unions may have had a mixed genetic heritage, but the cultural heritage they were given by their mothers was purely Chinese.

 

Those generations of Chinese mothers clearly demon­strated the power mothering has to affect history, but the lesson seems to have gotten lost. Our culture’s truism, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” is generally regarded as merely a nice bit of sentiment. So is Saint Augustine’s challenge, “Give me other mothers, and I will give you another world.” Yet abundant research in psychology and history is beginning to verify the truth of that sentiment.

 

Psychoanalyst and historian Lloyd deMause, in The History of Childhood, concluded that the central force for change in history is alteration of the per­sonality of generations of children due to changes in parenting modes. A supporter of this concept, his­torian Glenn Davis, studied the differing patterns of parenting used in rearing four American presidents and became convinced that those parenting patterns were predictive of major national social thrusts asso­ciated with the four men!

 

Another strong stand for the significance of mother­ing is found in Selma Fraiberg’s book Every Child’s Birthright: In Defense of Mothering. In it, a statement with surprisingly practical ramifications is made. Economist Harold Shapiro, chairman of the Depart­ment of Economics at the University of Michigan, is reported as stating that optimal development in a generation of a nation’s children is reflected in future productivity in that nation’s labor market! And most of the rest of Fraiberg’s book is a carefully supported explanation of how this optimal development in childhood is dependent upon optimal exercise of the mothering function—or proper use, in other words, of that cradle-rocking hand.

 

If Chinese mothers determine what cultural con­sciousness pervades their country, if the parenting of presidents shows up later in national social move­ments, and if the quality of mothering affects a nation’s future productivity, then perhaps that old truism needs only slight amendment to become a simple cause-and-effect statement: “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world of the next gener­ation.” And perhaps Saint Augustine’s statement is not sentiment at all but rather a logical description of reality.

 

MOTHERING SETS THE PATTERN

FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT

 

Although historians and social scientists have carefully traced how patterns of parenting affect society, their conclusions are eventually rooted in what psycholo­gists have studied even more thoroughly—the impact of mothering on individual development.

 

The effects of early mothering, and its lack, have been studied at length by Margaret Mabler, John Bowlby, and Rene Spitz, among others. The highly respected work of all three shows how crucial a reliable mothering presence is to every aspect of a child’s growth. Their work also indicates what many other studies show as well, that that presence alone is not enough; the way a mother is present to her child affects the child’s overall development—sets patterns for all future growth.

 

For example, in The Roots of Love, Helene Arnstein reports that Drs. Sylvia Brody and Sidney Axelrod conducted a fairly simple-sounding study of how mothers feed their babies. Films were taken of feeding sessions when each baby was six weeks, six months, and twelve months old. Analysis of the films and tests of the babies revealed amazing significance in this very mundane process. Some babies experienced a pattern of happy feeding times, while other infants usually exhibited unhappiness during feedings. At the end of a year, those babies who had had generally pleasurable mealtime experiences showed, “a much greater capacity to wait, to concentrate, to learn, to solve problems, and to anticipate and expect pleasure from people and things than did the babies who had experienced anxieties and tensions during their feedings.”

 

When these same children were studied at the time they entered grade school, their intellectual, emotional, and social development still mirrored the patterns of interaction established between mother and child during that first year of life!

 

Well, have we found them, then? Are those much sought basic requirements for intelligence and mental health as simple as relaxed mealtimes and a reliable mothering presence?

 

We are learning more each year about how to help children maximize their potential. How the brain works, what the essential stages of growth are, and how the physical and mental relate, these are only a few of the factors in child development that are being studied by scientists and put to use by parents in this generation. The details are intriguing and valuable. But probably the most powerful effect of the research is its recurring theme: that the patterns for how children will actualize their potential are intricately and closely bound up in the kind of mothering they experienced. And the kind of mothering given a generation of children provides the shape of the world those children fashion when they become adults.

 

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The Stelle Group has accepted Saint Augustine’s challenge . . . with a modifier. “Give me better mothers, and I will give you a better world.” The Department of Education has established Mother-school, which is designed to teach mothers to educate their young children. We believe that by encouraging and educating our mothers to provide a stimulating, balanced, and uplifting environment for their children, we can, indeed, create a better culture... a better world.

The Editor

 

 

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