Mothering Matters

 

Abstract

Mothering Matters

The sources of love, and how our culture harms infants, women, and society

Although the word ‘mothering’ has become politically incorrect, the facts of life remain unchanged. Five different lines of evidence now converge to show that there is a natural, biologically-based, best-fit pattern of human mothering, and it includes breastfeeding, carrying, secure attachment, mutual rewards, enjoyment, and empathy—meaning a mother’s sensitivity to her baby’s feelings and an ability to respond accordingly. Mutual playfulness and joy help to sustain healthy development if the environment is supportive and meets basic human needs. These five lines of evidence coming from different directions and disciplines, each supporting the same conclusion, give it greater validity.

Part One: Five lines of evidence for natural, 'best-fit' mothering

Firstly, by considering the direct maternal pedigrees of each person alive today, we can deduce some important facts about human beings and human nature, and the characteristics that must have been essential for the survival of all our maternal ancestors, as they lived in tribes of hunter-gatherers, and each baby girl successfully passed her genes on to the next generation. Through this process we received our genetic inheritance, and we cannot change it.

Secondly, there is much evidence that only human breast milk perfectly matches the needs of human infants. This has far-reaching implications for healthy development, including helping to achieve full intellectual potential.

Thirdly, secure and unfailing bonds of attachment between a mother and her baby have been essential for the breastfeeding and survival of all mammals. Disruption of these attachment bonds—being life-threatening—normally causes acute distress, and if prolonged, it can be damaging. For most of the time that humans have lived on earth, the support of other females in the group, and preferably that of the father also, has been necessary for survival.

Fourthly, the hormones and brain activities involved in human mothering are now known to be much the same as in other mammals. The patterns of normal mothering behavior that are common to all mammals depend on the same parts of the basic mammalian ‘maternal brain,’ but they require the right conditions to function well.

Fifthly, there is increasing evidence that disrupting natural mothering behaviors and relationships can cause harm in a variety of ways, leading to disturbed development, especially in the capacities for healthy and empathic emotional relationships.


Part Two: When the environment does not match early needs

Disturbed development can arise when departures from natural patterns of mothering create environments that fail to match the biologically-based needs of mothers, babies, and very young children, in ways that disrupt important biological mechanisms that are based in the human genome. Such ‘eco-genetic mismatch’ can be especially harmful during pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood. This mismatch often stems from teachings and practices that neglect human needs and arise from ignorance and misconceived ideas about the nature of the human infant. However well-meaning, these can lead to disturbed development and a variety of emotional and physical disorders.


Part Three: Conclusions and what can be done

To put into practice some steps towards more healthy families and to improve their physical and emotional mental health, it is important to distinguish the needs of children nearer school age from those of infants. An infant’s primary need is for nurturing and early mothering within a supportive environment that preferably includes a loving father and an extended family and/or social group.

To achieve this, we should seek to create societies that are in better harmony with the human biological ‘givens.’ We cannot change these ‘givens,’ and we would therefore do well to accept them. This involves supporting healthy mothering, breastfeeding, and attachment, with generous maternity leave. Models exist that offer many benefits—even for ‘the economy.’ To promote health and wellbeing in young children, their mothers, and society, we must work with Nature, not against her. Prevention is better than cure. A healthy mother-child relationship is a love affair that needs the right conditions to flourish.

Infancy cannot be re-run later.

© 2011 by Peter S. Cook. This Abstract may be reproduced in full, as above.

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The first edition Mothering Denied is available in pdf form for download. Please respect the copyright and rights of the author.

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Introduction 

To meet requests for a convenient paperback, it presents an expanded and thoroughly revised version of Mothering Denied: The sources of love, and how our culture harms infants, women, and society. That book was made available from April 2009 as an A4 size e-book, for free download from the bottom of this page. It is now superseded.

Mothering Matters is a sequel to Early Child Care – Infants and nations at risk, which was also published by Freedom Publishing (as News Weekly) in 1997. It was recently named as one of the “Books of the Century” in a list compiled by a non-violence organisation, on a German website http://www.violence.de/BOOKS_OF_THE_CENTURY.html


Mothering Matters is a much better book than Mothering Denied, and it is probably unique. It is not a book about how to raise children, as there are many of these, but it seeks to present for the general reader a modern understanding of what is going on in good, natural mothering, and why the mothering of infants in their earliest years is deeply different from fathering. From this it describes the conditions that best help a mother and baby achieve their potentials for good physical and emotional health throughout life, and how fathers can support and share in the joy of these experiences. 


Part One shows how there are now five different lines of evidence that converge to establish some basic facts of life about human infants and their mothering – infants here meaning  children aged up to about two-and-a half years. This evidence shows that there is one basic, natural, healthy, best-fit pattern of early mothering for our whole human species, and since it is laid down in the genome and biology of each mother and her infant, we cannot change it. This pattern includes breastfeeding, carrying, attachment, mutual rewards, enjoyment, and empathy – that is, a mother’s sensitivity to her baby’s feelings and her appropriate response. Playfulness and joy help to sustain healthy development if the environment is supportive and meets basic human needs. These lines of evidence derive from logical deductions about our line of maternal ancestors, and from recent evidence about breastfeeding, mother-infant attachment, brain-hormone activities during mothering, and major studies into the later effects of early non-maternal child care.


Part two describes how healthy development can be disrupted by misconceived ideas, and it describes and critiques how two familiar ideas have sometimes had deeply unhealthy effects on the mother-infant relationship in Western cultures. One is ancient and religious, about the inherently sinful nature of human infants; the other developed as an outcome of the misconceived path taken by some branches of feminism in the twentieth century, through relying on the ideology of cultural determinism. Some details of how this ideology originated in a hoax are traced, and it describes the little-known fact that three of the major figures of modern equality feminism – Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, and Simone de Beauvoir – each recanted their earlier views and later admitted that they had been wrong. Yet, despite inherent contradictions, the early childcare “industry” and its advocates continue to largely determine government policy in many countries.


Part Three suggests how our society could better support healthy mothering and fathering, and it outlines ways that we, as a society, could better understand, design and organise the environments in which families raise children. The theme of the book is that a normal mother-infant relationship is a love affair that needs the right conditions to flourish. Infancy cannot be re-run later.


Mothering Matters is designed to be reader-friendly, and it can be read at many levels. Thus it has a four-page Synopsis, followed by the Main Text with footnotes and references. Finally there is a full Summary, followed by some Notes offering details and evidence in selected areas.

Dr Cook's latest book has been recently updated and the new version is available now from

Freedom Publishing,

35 Whitehorse Rd,

Balwyn,

VIC,

3103,

AUSTRALIA

Tel +61-3-9816088

Fax 61-3-98160899


By Dr Peter Cook
Foreword by Steve Biddulph

Copyright © 2011, Peter S. Cook. All rights reserved. 
ISBN 978-0-977-569-93-9


Mothering Matters is an updated, expanded and revised second edition that replaces Mothering Denied of April 24, 2009.