A new study, Mother’s Love Can Prevent Illness in Middle Age, at Brandeis University now suggests that, “…a mother’s love expressed each day keeps the doctor way, most particularly in mid-life.”
When examining children from poverty-stricken situations, researchers learned, and not too surprisingly, that these children grow up to become adults who suffer from numerous chronic illnesses. And yet there are those children who, despite coming from poor backgrounds, experience good physical health and mental well-being.
Why?
Bucking what I would call a trend that pervades medical research, these doctors explored the backgrounds and past histories of adults who achieved success in health but who grew up in poverty, and learned that while,”…many of the health problems in midlife, including metabolic syndrome, can be traced back to what happened in early childhood, that [t]he stresses of childhood can leave a biological residue that shows up in midlife...,” so too, “… among those at risk for poor health, adults who had nurturing mothers in childhood fared better in physical health in midlife…” leading them to conclude as Professor Margie Lachman, author of the study, writes “…Perhaps [the success in achieving good physical and mental health despite “…being at risk for poor health…[resulted from]…a combination of empathy, the teaching of coping strategies or support for enrichment.” Mother’s Love Can Prevent Illness in Middle Age
Empathy.
Coping strategies.
Support for enrichment.
A mother’s love is all these things.
And more.
Knowing that you are special, valued and needed grants any person, especially as a child and a daughter, something that no medicine or amount of money can provide or replace.
In this way, the findings rendered by researchers at Brandeis University highlight the importance of supporting all mothers, poor and wealthy in finding ways to become more present to the needs of our children before they demonstrate signs and symptoms of our emotional absence.
In a culture where citizens and institutions emphasize work and accumulation of wealth, and where ascertaining the basic necessities of life cost a small fortune, all of us can easily descend into believing, and rather unconsciously, that lacking a trust fund in which to dip our fingers and secure these necessities, along with the various accoutrements society demands we provide our children–iphones, their own personal computer, ipads, ipods, televisions, designer shoes, etc–we lack what it takes to parent well.
And yet parents who possess tons of education and money to boot demonstrate no more adeptness at being emotionally and physically present than those with less of both factors.
Despite the freedoms rendered women through its efforts, the feminist movement of the United States has lead and left many women to believe that lest we possess a brilliant and lucrative career, we possess little of what it takes to raise a girl into a successful woman of the 21st century.
It also encourages our daughters to see outside accomplishments at the expense of developing a rich internal life and that forms the basis for any substantial success a person might hope to achieve and maintain.
The essence of parenting is love, and commitment to your child/children and most importantly communicating this love and commitment in a way that the child understands, imbibes and integrates into their living, thinking and being as they grow.
No relationship demands and if received and cultivated, flourishes brightly when these elements are given and present than that of the mother-daughter relationship.
When a mother conveys her love and commitment to supporting and seeing her daughter through life, we affect not simply our daughter, but any children to whom she might give birth.
The legacy of love we extend to our daughters stretches from generation to generation.
This is not to say that we should not love our sons.
A mother’s job is to love all her children.
But it is our daughters who hold the capacity to bear children and in so doing, maintain the continuance of the human race upon the earth.
Continual verbalization of empathy towards our daughters, combined with demonstration of various ways to cope with life’s demands–those from dealing with unfriendly cliques in junior high school to how to deal with a superior whom you feel is out to get you, and may very well envy you–says to our daughters in clear and certain terms, “Your mean more to me than all the world and any amount of money. You have enriched my life immensely. Without you my life would lack so much meaning.”
Everyone wants to know that she or he matters.
How much better the world would be if all our daughters and girls presently living knew this.
Hug your daughter today and tell her you, love her.
Change the world today, and say what she and her presence in your life means.
Let her know no one can replace her.
Breathe in the healing your words conveyed.
Peace and blessings.