In countries like the UK, Australia, and NZ, warfare and soldiers are glorified all year long, decade after decade, with billions of dollars spent on media spin, war memorials, and monuments; whereas motherhood, mothers, and Mothering hardly ever get recognition, funding, or monuments built in their honor.
From early childhood to old age, Mothering Matters!
Below are EXCERPTS from the late Dr. Peter Cook, MB, ChB, MRCPsych, FRANZCP, DCH, child and family psychiatrist 1927-2017 and author of Mothering Matters, Mothering Denied, and Early Child Care: Infants and Nations at
Risk (Melbourne: News Weekly Books, 1997).
“Evidence that good mothering matters, both for the individual and for society, is steadily growing. More reports from the Early Child Care Network of the US National Institute for Child Health and Development (NICHD) increase concerns about early childcare and its effects on young people. Some 25 top US scholars co-ordinate this multi-million dollar study, following more than 1000 babies from birth, to compare the effects of maternal care with various alternatives. Fathering is important, but this article is about mothering.
But in 2002, the NICHD Network reported in American Educational Research Journal (39, 133-164) that, although higher quality childcare was associated with better cognitive performance at four and a half years, the more time during these years that these children had spent in any type of non-maternal childcare, regardless of its quality, the more assertiveness, disobedience and aggression they showed with adults, both in kindergarten and at home.
At school one year later, they continued to be more aggressive and disobedient, not just assertive or independent. So non-maternal childcare, whatever its quality, is associated with important risks.
The NICHD researchers warned that even modest adverse effects on behaviour can have serious social consequences when large numbers of children are affected.
NICHD studies also found that when children spent more time in childcare, their mothers displayed less sensitivity when interacting with them at six, 15, 24, and 36 months of age. Sensitive, responsive mothering through the early years was the best predictor of social competence at six years, which in turn predicts schooling success.
Early childcare also precludes longer breastfeeding, which, besides better health, leads to significantly higher IQs in adults. For example, those breastfed for 9 months, averaged 6 points higher IQ as young adults, Journal of the American Medical Association, May 8, 2002.
Mothers are more likely than fathers to encourage assimilative and communion-enhancing patterns in their children.
Immense, costly, long-term damage is being done to each generation because of the high cost-of-living pressures that force women back to work shortly after giving birth; fathers who don’t support the mother staying home with their child/children during the early years; or, if split up, demand equal time to evade paying child support; and governments diverting tax funds from mothering programs to massive military Budgets.
Undoubtedly, they will pay a high price later in life. Plus, this short sightedness will damage a country’s long-term economic future.