The importance of a mother's role

‘After a 10 year immersion in thousands of scientific papers in neurobiology, psychology and infant development, Dr Alan Schore (Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA) concluded that the child’s first relationship, [usually] the one with the mother, acts as a template [and]….permanently moulds the individual’s capacity to enter into all later emotional relationships.’

Gasp. Wow. I found that research nugget when I was trawling through the Centre for Social Justice Website. It’s a scary but awesome finding that the mother has a ‘permanent’ influence on her child, and that ‘all later emotional relationship’ are modelled on the primary connection that a child had with his/her mum. My final comment would be that this research certainly begs the question as to why my generation of women and the previous generations since the 60s have been told that motherhood is a phase in their lives and above all else if you are a woman, you cannot and should not give motherhood time and energy. This is an insult to the value of mothering; the period of time that a mother gives intensive care may be relatively short compared with how long the influence of that care will last. And true to this research, it lasts a minimum of a lifetime.