“I cannot
think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
~Sigmund Freud
“A
mother’s nurturing love arouses in children, from their earliest days on earth,
an awakening of the memories of love and goodness they experience in their
premortal existence... Because our mothers love us, we learn, or more
accurately remember, that God also loves us.”
~M. Russell Ballard
Parental roles are essentially
unique. The perfect family arrangement has a father and mother; the father
providing protection and the mother providing nurture.
Now, in many cases in our world,
we face situations of broken, single, and multi parent, families. In some cases
there are no parents. So, whilst we speak in terms of father being protector
and mother being nurturer, we can safely assume, for the purposes of those
without the complete parental set, that protection
and nurture are two vital components
in the upbringing of children. One parent or one guardian, particularly where
they see parenting as their life calling, can provide both more than adequately.
The ideal is that the father
provides protection and the mother provides the nurture. But, differing family
situations can very adequately compensate.
A Father’s Protection
Father is a rock for the entire
family, not just his children. That is God’s purpose and design for the man of
the family, despite our culture weakening the importance of father and husband in
the family. When a father is a rock for his wife and children, and even a rock
for the mother of his children if they are separated, the entire family prospers.
The father, as a rock, actually
mimics the Fatherhood of God.
As God is a rock in all believers’
lives, so is the father to be a rock for his family. He must do whatever he can
to be the model of stability and protection. When he achieves this it has a
significantly positive impact on his children. They feel safe. When a husband
loves his wife, especially in sacrificial ways, the children feel safe.
A Mother’s Nurture
Interesting, isn’t it, to think
that love predates our births? Love is part of our biology. We came from God
and we go back to God, and in the middle, during our mortal lives, most of all
we identify with, and yearn for, the loving nurture of our mothers.
As a father’s protection is safety
for a child, so too is a mother’s nurture.
And if we can conceptualise a
Motherhood aspect of God—the love of God manifest in a mother—we can see the
rank importance of a mother’s role in providing the nurture children so
desperately seek after. When children are loved they feel safe.
Children who feel safe, and grow
up safe, prosper in safe independence.
***
It would not be right to end an
article like this without a word of empathy for those who missed out on the
better portions of a father’s protection and/or a mother’s nurture.
These, in sum, may be the source
of all our significant hurts; those that recur through our lives by the
processes of transference. In other words, much of our anxiety and negative thinking
is generated from incorrect mental and emotional scripts written from a lack of
protection and nurture when we most needed it; as children.
***
The greatest gifts we can give
children are a father’s protection and a mother’s nurture. For single parent
and no parent families there is much hope if protection and nurture are front
of mind and close at heart for the parent or caregiver.
Children who grow up to be safely
independent in their world have been blessed with two gifts: protection and nurture—both in abundance.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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