Martin Henry

Man! Woman is powerful! Wise old proverbs like "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world", once dismissed in some quarters, are bouncing back with a vengeance. At the launch of National Breastfeeding Week last week, the Director of Family Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Eva Lewis-Fuller told her audience that mothers who breastfeed their babies are less likely to raise children who are psychopaths.

Apart from the perfect nutrient balance for sound human development, which Someone very smart designed in His laboratory, the emotional bonding between parent and child from breastfeeding is important for mental stability and well-being throughout life. That same Someone decided that only one of a child's parents would have breasts.

There is a great deal of discussion pressure on 'wutliss' male behaviour and the absentee father in our mama society, and rightly so. But more and more, the wisdom of the ages, against feminist resistance, is being corroborated by contemporary cutting-edge research that there is no gender equivalence in child-rearing in the early stages of human development. A good deal of fresh research, like that of American psychologist David Popenoe, is elucidating the important role of fathers in the development of their children. But even more research is reconfirming the central role of the mother parent in shaping childhood and so adulthood and so society and so the world.

It could hardly be otherwise. Nature has assigned woman the powerful role of carrying the child foetus inside her own body basically as part of her own self. There is an active across the placenta exchange of hormones. Hormones are ultimately going to shape behaviour. So even before birth the mother is deeply influencing the child's emotional and social pathway in ways that a father never can.

Tight psychological bond

The biological bond of mother parent and child, on which the life of the child depends, could hardly not be accompanied by an equally tight psychological bond. And that is why, despite all the 'liberation', the act of abortion has such devastating psychological consequences on the woman because it is not only a profound betrayal of the most vulnerable and dependent of humans but a betrayal of the self. Human laws cannot unwrite the laws of nature and of nature's God.

The enormous social power of woman was highlighted in another news item last week which The Gleaner chose not to bury inside but to carry on its front page, "Colombia's gang wives call sex strike". The women are promoting a ban on sex to persuade their men to give up the gun and violence. Woman manages sex more than men care to admit. And sex runs the world.

The common sense wisdom of the ages on the power of woman as vital shaper of the social order is bouncing back large, sustained by a growing body of research. One writer, way back in the 'Victorian' 19th century, declared, "[the mother] has in her power the moulding of her children's characters .... Next to God, the mother's power for good is the strongest known on earth. The tenderest earthly tie is that between the mother and her child. The child is more readily impressed by the life and example of the mother than that of the father, for a stronger and more tender bond of union unites them."

'Ole dwag' status

A news story run by the Los Angeles Times some time ago, 'Not so Unhappy Housewives' pulled up research data debunking the cherished feminist myth that women who devoted themselves to raising their children as their 'career' have to be less satisfied and more unhappy than their professional sisters out there pushing 'real' careers.

Acknowledging the 'ole dwag' status of too many men [but not nearly as many as popular myth would have us believe], a frank assessment of the state of Jamaican womanhood and motherhood is not very encouraging for the future of a society which already has such serious social pathologies. A 2003 MOH-commissioned study, '... Exploring Adolescent Sexual Behaviour and Reproductive Health' concluded that girls were more prone to wanton sex. It is so easy and convenient to just blame the dutty ole male predators rather than to balance the blame with examining the values and morals of the innocent young ladies.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist.