A Shout-out to the Mothers and Fathers in our Family

    We have just passed the time each year when we celebrate good motherhood and good fatherhood.  So I say “A big positive shout-out, my praise and thanks, to the magnificent mothers and fathers in our Lewis family.”  You are doing so very well in establishing and maintaining strong, loving and united homes in which our family members thrive, feel the bonds of love and their own exceptional worth and value, and are inspired to achieve their highest potential.
    In a recent article by Jenet Erickson, she notes “If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s... needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal... [There is]...something powerful in the design—mother and father—devoted to something larger than themselves, nurturing the children their love brought into being... The ideal context for [their] development was a married mother and father parenting together.”
    I loved Jenet’s detailed description of a mother-infant relation and of the relative differences in the mothering and fathering relationships with the children:
    “I recently sat beside a new mother. Her infant, just six weeks old, was still struggling to nurse and bottle-feed. His utter dependence struck me. He gazed directly into his mother’s face, locking his eyes on hers. In spite of seeming to have literally no real capacities, it was clear that he recognized her. She was his entire world. For a second, his mouth broke into a smile, and I watched her exhaustion give way to radiance.
    “Like all infants, his primary task was to search out a face—wired to seek the one whose heartbeat and smell and voice he already intimately knew, whose blood and organs and bones built his. His fetal cells will circulate in her body long after he has grown into adulthood. The bond they were primed to form is an intuitive extension of their biological connection.  
    “For the next year of his life, they will communicate through emotions, eye to eye, body to body. She will regulate his inner world by intuitively synchronizing herself with his inner state, then upregulating the emotion, doing what he cannot yet do for himself. In the process, their bond of emotional communication will lay the foundations for his emotional awareness, personality, self-regulation, and capacity for intimacy.
    “He will also connect with Dad, especially as he becomes a toddler. Their bond will look different, more playful, and physical. When Mom holds a ball in front of him, she might describe its color and shape; when Dad takes it, he is more likely to play with it, maybe even bop him on the head with it. Mom and Dad will do much of the same things—nurture, guide, teach, feed—but they will also offer distinct orientations. Dad will be more likely to encourage independence and risk taking; Mom more likely to build assurance and emotional understanding, the one he will go to for comfort. She’ll likely correct his behavior more often, but when Dad corrects, he will hold the line, enforcing boundaries and communicating authority. Dad is the one he will rough house with while he learns how to handle strong emotions and relate to others in regulated ways. But Mom is likely the one he will want to talk to about his day.
    “Together, they will offer him a fuller and more complete understanding of himself and the world and how he can navigate its complexity with assurance and capacity. When he calls out “Dad,” the voice that responds will assure him that needed protection, guidance, and help are close. His call for “Mom” will bring a different, also essential, form of soul-nourishing protection, help, and guidance.
    “There is something irreplaceable in this complementary design...”
(“How Parents and Children Benefit from Fidelity to One Another,” Jenet Erickson, PublicSquare Magazine, June 12, 2024, https://publicsquaremag.org)
    I have written more about the nature and importance of the father-child relationship  (See Chapter 18 “Some thoughts about Male-Female Marital Roles and Relationships” in The Higher Law, the Temple, and Families, pp 109-121).  For additional study, I also strongly recommend a pair of chapters in Bruce Hafen’s book Covenant Hearts, #18 The Moral Influence of Women, and #19 The Moral Influence of Men.  
    God bless you all.