Be it the growing power of rights over duties, feminism over traditionalism, or simply a society that makes it economically feasible to parent as a never-married woman, there is hope that the trend is turning around

It was a symposium on same-sex marriage that cold January day in Vermont, but on the subject of marriage generally, Patrick Fagan’s power-point presentation went much further. There, on a large screen, a bar graph demonstrated how for psychological health, wealth and other optimal outcomes for children, a biological mom and a dad in an intact marriage did the best job.

At the opposite, bottom end of the graph, well past the married stepfamilies, the divorced single parents and the co-habiting couples, was the never-married single mother, whose grim prospects included grinding poverty, little hope of a future marriage and children with behavioural problems that too often led to a life of crime and yet more unwed pregnancy.

The debate among top American academics is over, the distinguished psychologist, one-time presidential appointee on the family and now a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council in Washington, later told me in a telephone conversation. Though if any doubt remains about the importance of an intact family in a child’s development, a study undertaken by Swedish social scientists and published by Acta Paediatrica in March buries it once and for all. Their systematic review of fathers’ involvement with children from the time they are newborn to the time they are young adults spanned 24 papers from 16 different longitudinal studies from a variety of countries. It concludes that “father engagement reduces the frequency of behavioural problems in boys and psychological problems in young women; it also enhances cognitive development while decreasing criminality and economic disadvantage in low (socio-economic status) families.”

If the United States more generally represents the traditional family and Sweden less-traditional families, the debate about the arrangement that best meets the needs of children would indeed appear to be over: kids need both mothers and fathers. But can the developments of the past half-century be reversed? In that time, the never-married single mother has been Canada’s fastest-rising parenting demographic. And why did these developments occur in the first place?

There was a time when an unwed pregnancy meant a shotgun wedding. It wasn’t the best start to a marriage, but it secured social and other obligations for the child from his parents. It also provided him with a sense of his genetic and social origins — that is, a sense of his identity — and clear role models upon which to build his future behaviour.

The existence of shotgun weddings didn’t preclude what sociologists and Statistics Canada now call lone-parent or one-parent families. These have been an established feature of Canadian familyhood for some time and have included widows, the divorced or separated, as well as never-married mothers. In 1951, for instance, 13.9 per cent of families were lone parents, a figure not far removed from 2006 figures at 15.6 per cent, although, significantly, they fell to 8 per cent between 1951 and 1966.

The difference between then and now is the altered composition of the lone-parent cohort. In 1951, only 1.5 per cent of lone parents were never-married, whereas 30 per cent were divorced or separated and 66.5 per cent were widowed. By 2006, and despite the availability of birth control, abortion and adoption services, the proportion of never-married, at 29.5 per cent, and divorced or separated, at 49.5 per cent, had increased dramatically.

Why?

Conventional wisdom says poverty is the primary cause of never-married mothering, but increasingly evidence suggests both poverty and never-married mothering are symptoms of a deeper problem.

“Although there are many exceptions,” writes Anne-Marie Ambert in a 2006 paper on one-parent families for The Vanier Institute of the Family, “over half of women who bear children alone not only create poverty … but come from poverty.”

The professor emeritus of sociology at York University adds that, in any case, “less than 50 years ago, the poor were not so likely to produce as many one-parent families as is now the case.” And even today, the poor do not uniformly inhabit one-parent families, while the rich do produce one-parent families via divorce and occasionally through intentional single motherhood.

Values, beliefs and morality are also factors, she says, beginning with an ethos of individualism that emphasizes rights rather than duties. This, coupled with an ideology of gratification, particularly sexual and psychological, meant procreation became increasingly separated from marriage even as women, often conspicuously unprepared for motherhood, were encouraged to keep and to bond with their newborns as a “right.”

Add impoverishment, and such adolescents may feel they have little to lose and even something to gain by engaging in unprotected sex.

In 1999, similar views were expressed by Maggie Gallagher, an American author and president of the Institute of Marriage and Public Policy. “What has changed most in recent decades is not who gets pregnant, but who gets married,” she wrote in The Age of Unwed Mothers. If a good marriage is unlikely and if marriage isn’t an essential support to motherhood anyway, she argues, it is hardly surprising adolescent girls decide to become pregnant. “If it is not marriage that confers special meaning to the sexual act, then perhaps it is her giving the gift of unprotected sex, or making a baby.”

British journalist Melanie Phillips agrees that the collapse of marriage is behind today’s changing family fortunes, but she blames “gender” feminism as its primary cause. By viewing marriage as the principle instrument of oppression by males of females, she says, gender feminism marginalized men from their roles as husbands and fathers while its radical agenda has become the stuff of public policy. Meanwhile, fear of appearing judgmental about its consequences has led to moral paralysis on the subject.

Her book, The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, argues that any explanation based on economics — for instance, that a lack of jobs makes young men unmarriageable or that too much welfare makes it too easy for young women to be single mothers — is only a small part of the puzzle. The missing piece is the change in girls’ sexual behaviour and the collapse of social stigma. “The legalizing of abortion and the availability of contraception, along with the changes in social attitudes, brought about the end of ’shot-gun’ marriages by which unmarried sexual incontinence had previously been regulated,” Phillips says.

Fewer men wanted to marry women who, they felt, brought their pregnancy on themselves, while women who did want to marry and have children “found their bargaining position had been undermined since men could go elsewhere for sex without responsibility.” And while men seek sexual favours, it is women who — unless they are being coerced — have the power of selection.

To be sure, mistakes are a factor — but abortion and adoption services exist to address these. Coercion is also a factor in very disadvantaged groups, as is a hyper-sexualized media and celebrity culture that feeds peer pressure and promotes sexual activity.

If women were engaging in more-adventurous sexual behaviours, does that mean men were feckless cads? Not entirely, says Phillips. “All societies struggle with the problem of attaching men to their children,” she writes. “This is almost always solved through marriage and legitimacy, which is very important in establishing paternal certainty, the most important precondition for paternal investment.” Moreover, she says, family life socializes young men, who must get jobs and settle down. It also contributes to the development of kinship, the primary structure that supports individuals.

But now, “marriage has been weakened, divorce has got easier and no stigma is any longer attached to children born outside of wedlock. The result has been a snapping of the bonds that have tied men into family life.”

In Canada, as elsewhere, liberalized divorce laws were adopted by the end of the 1960s. In Britain, says Phillips, they turned marriage into an institution of contempt and “just a piece of paper.” Divorce produced “damaged children (who) grew up into embittered adults incapable of lasting attachments and deeply mistrustful of the institution whose failure had let them down so badly.” The non-existent or low-commitment requirements of lone parenting or co-habitation became a better option than a perceived “bad” marriage while “no-fault” divorce laws that also gave women custody of the children and most of the family assets bestowed “the seal of social approval upon families constructed around the absence of the father.”

In a recent blog item on The Spectator’s website, Phillips discusses the murder of a 15-year-old and the life of her mother and others with several children by several men. An affluent, complacent and materialistic Britain has created an underclass, she writes, “where successive generations of women have never known what it is to be loved and cherished by both their parents … How can such women know how to parent their own children?”

Similarly, and in the U.S., where 37 per cent of pregnancies are those of unwed, mostly black and Hispanic mothers, commentators describe a de facto caste system based on the marriage gap. In Canada, the proportion of Aboriginal single mother families is twice as high as other Canadian families.

Yet reasons for hope persist. According to “Crime, Drugs, Welfare — And Other Good News,” published in last December’s edition of Commentary magazine, American college graduates are marrying and staying married for the sake of the children, while the number of Canadian fathers who have joint custody of theirs now rivals the never-married mother as Canada’s fastest rising parenting demographic. Abortion and fertility rates among the young are declining.

Many lessons, too, are emerging from the trials and triumphs of the sexual revolution, among them that if feminism’s biggest mistake was the marginalization of men, so, too, has it given women greater control of their sexuality. And that means tremendous power to re-order their lives, the lives of their families and to turn the situation around.

Source: Canada.com, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/5uo7oe

Pity the mother of Mother’s Day.

“I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit,” Jarvis complained, dismissing greeting cards as “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.”

Anna Jarvis wasn’t too lazy to write letters. They were the greatest weapon in her campaign to create Mother’s Day.

According to Katharine Antolini, historian and board member at the International Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia - site of the first ceremony in 1908 - legend has it that a 12-year-old Anna overheard her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, tell her Sunday school class of her wish for a day to commemorate mothers for their contribution to all fields of life. The elder Jarvis was well-known in Grafton for her charity work with local mothers and her efforts to use motherhood as a healing tool for the community divided by the Civil War.

When Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, Anna began her campaign for a Mother’s Day, tirelessly writing letters to politicians, businessmen and religious leaders. She even enlisted the backing of retail giant John Wanamaker, who financially supported her campaign.

By 1908 she had succeeded in arranging two ceremonies for Mother’s Day: a large one in the auditorium of Wanamaker’s Philadelphia store, at which she spoke, and another one at her mother’s church in Grafton. She sent 500 white carnations to be distributed to mothers in the congregation.

The idea became a movement, and the following year, Mother’s Day services were held in 45 American states and Canada and Mexico, the symbol of the white carnation already entrenched.

Still, Jarvis wanted more: she wanted a national proclamation. She continued her lobbying, sending letters year after year to the governors of every state reminding them to make the proclamation.

Unusual for a middle-class woman at the turn of the last century, Jarvis had worked in the advertising department of a life insurance company and “she knew a thing or two about marketing and copyright,” says Antolini, who is writing her PhD dissertation on Anna Jarvis.

In 1912, Jarvis incorporated her own association, trademarked the white carnation and the phrases “second Sunday in May” and “Mother’s Day”. She was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.

Finally, in 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for the observance of Mother’s Day. Other countries followed, including Canada, which made it official the following year.

It was quickly apparent to Jarvis that she had created a monster. Greeting cards became a popular way to say thank you to Mother, photographers advertised Mother’s Day portraits and sales of chocolates and candies spiked every year in May.

You might think it would be enough to make her weep, but Anna Jarvis was made of sterner stuff. She threatened to sue.

“How many of these suits made it into court, we don’t know,” says Antolini. “But she was fearless. She would write letters to anyone she felt was misusing Mother’s Day and remind them that she owned the copyright.”

She nursed long-running feuds about who was the true founder of Mother’s Day, and was criticized for ignoring the work of poet Julia Ward Howe, who had instigated a Mother’s Day for Peace, observed in June, decades before Jarvis began her campaign. She would protest wherever she felt wronged, even in the store belonging to John Wanamaker, who had been so crucial to the success of her crusade.

An assistant told a story about going to the tea room at Wanamaker’s store one year at Mother’s Day. When Jarvis noticed a ‘Mother’s Day Salad’ on the menu, “she ordered it, dumped it on the floor, got up and left,” says Antolini.

In 1923, Jarvis threatened to sue New York Governor Al Smith over his plans for a large Mother’s Day celebration. She clashed with the American War Mothers Association over their use of Mother’s Day in their fundraising campaigns, so they dropped the apostrophe.

She even attacked Eleanor Roosevelt in 1935, accusing the First Lady of “crafty plotting” to abuse Mother’s Day by using it in fundraising material for charities trying to combat high maternal and infant mortality rates, “the expectant mother racket,” as Jarvis called them.

This is where her own mother would have disagreed with Anna Jarvis’s vision of Mother’s Day, says Antolini.

“Anna, who was never a mother, saw motherhood through the eyes of a child - she celebrated the reigning force in the household, the one who gave life and was the centre of your world as a kid.

“Her mother envisioned motherhood beyond the traditional sphere, and wanted it honoured for the way mothers improved the community.

“Anna had her vision, her mother had another, the florists and the politicians had another,” says Antolini. “Perhaps it’s so successful because it’s open to continual reinterpretation. I think that’s the beauty of it, although Anna is probably spinning in her grave at that thought.”

Indeed, Jarvis spent her considerable inheritance and the rest of her life fighting the commercialization of “her” holiday. It was a losing battle. Anna Jarvis died in 1948, bitter, blind, partially deaf and completely penniless in a Pennsylvania mental institution.

So on this Mother’s Day, 100 years after it all began, think of the Jarvis women. Think of Anna, and make a donation in your mother’s name to an organization that supports mothers in all their endeavours.

Or give Anna Jarvis what she fought so hard to create - a day with no shopping, no donations, no greeting cards. Sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, and write a love letter to your mother. Tell her what she means to you, what you love about her. Don’t fret if words aren’t really your thing - she already knows that, and will value the effort all the more.

If it’s too late - if the brunch is done and the shrink-wrap is already off the patio furniture - write the letter anyway.

Which do you think your mother will treasure for the rest of her days? It won’t be the patio furniture.

Source: Vancouver Sun, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/3n8eyn

In a world of feminism and women’s rights, mothers are devalued and underappreciated. With the feminist movement, we as women have demanded equal (but favored) rights, control over our bodies and careers, and have learned a profound revulsion at becoming a mother. Feminism tells us to take reproduction into our own hands - i.e., prevent it - because it will ruin our goals.

Major landmarks in the feminist movement include the legalization of birth control and abortion - both devaluing human life and our own sexuality. The exclusive clique of feminists denounce women who choose to hold their sexuality sacred and do not define “sexual liberation” as women finally being able to sleep with as many men as they want with as little emotion as possible.

In America, the ability to prevent pregnancy has overwhelmed society, so much that women who choose to have more than two children become stigmatized and outcast as religious fanatics. Women who choose to have children in their 20s are deemed unmotivated and intellectually worthless.

The society feminism has created hurts women. It has brought women into a further double bind - working women are selfish and bad mothers; stay-at-home moms are unmotivated and anti-feminism.

I thought feminism was about choice. No, in a feminist world, you don’t get to choose.

Feminism denies the right of a woman to actually have a child and have as many as she wants. In China, where abortion and population control are widespread, women fight for their right to bear children and be mothers. So why in this “modern” country, where women supposedly have freedom, do we continue to dictate what we, as women, must be in order to be a complete woman?

Women’s studies teachers, who often don’t have any children, have informed me time and time again that being a good mother is simply impossible. They even admit that this society drives women to be bad mothers. Their reasoning, however, is flawed. Society sets standards too high and makes it inevitable that women will fail as mothers, they say. But if women failed so often as mothers, why would we be aghast at the mothers who kill their children? Why would that be so rare? Ask almost anyone to describe the perfect mother and they will give you the characteristics of their own mother - not exactly a failure. Ask daughters who was the most influential person in their life and they more often than not will say their mothers.

A high standard of mothering was not created arbitrarily as feminists think. It was created out of experiencing that kind of motherhood. It’s the discouragement of feminists that encourages women to detest something that truly makes women special - the ability to nurture and carry human life within us. Feminists then must hate Mother’s Day.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, OH
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/EDIT02/805110375/1090

Over the last decade or so there has been mounting concern about the effect of television and videos on young children.

A huge increase in television programmes now available which are particularly aimed at young infants has occurred, despite warnings from experts that children younger than 2 years should not watch any television at all.

Along with the plethora of such programmes has come more and more evidence of the potential adverse effects of television exposure on young children.

Researchers in the U.S. are now saying because infants in low-income families are watching television or videos, with a supposedly ‘educational’ basis, their mothers rarely speak to them.

Lead author Dr. Alan L. Mendelsohn says many of the programmes marketed as educational have limited data to support such claims and these claims were even less so if no co-viewing with a parent took place.

Dr. Mendelsohn and his colleagues set out to measure the verbal interaction between mother and infants associated with media exposure and maternal co-viewing; to do so they carried out an analysis of 154 low socio-economic status mothers-infant pairs who were taking part in a long-term study on early child development.

It was revealed that over one 24-hour period, 149 of 154 mothers reported that their 6-month-old infants had a total of 426 exposures to television or videos.

These included 139 exposures to educational programs for young children; 46 to non-educational programs for young children; 205 to programs for school-aged children, teenagers or adults; and 36 to unknown programs.

The researchers found that of those 426 television and video exposures, mothers talked to their infants during only 101 of them.

They say their findings support their hypothesis that interactions were most commonly reported in association with educational content, especially programs that had been co-viewed; however half of the exposures consisted of programs not intended for young children.

Even when they were intended for young children they did not involve frequent interactions when they were co-viewed.

The researchers say the findings are important, because parent-infant interactions are associated with long-term developmental-behavioural outcomes and they say verbal exchanges happen more often with reading and playing with toys.

The researchers say given the large amount of media exposure and low verbal interaction, more research is called for to determine whether such media exposure is of benefit to young children.

They say programs with educational content were no more likely to be co-viewed than were other programs and the research does not support the development of infant-directed educational programmes on the basis that they increase co-viewing and interaction.

The study is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Internal Medicine.

Source: News-Medical.net, Australia
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=38136

Study ranked countries based on access to health care, education and economy

Canada ranks 20th out of 146 countries in a survey of the best and worst places to live for mothers and children, according to U.S.-based humanitarian organization Save the Children.

The group issued its ninth annual State of the World’s Mothers report Tuesday, ranking countries according to mothers’ and children’s health, education and economic status.

Canada’s ranking slipped to 20 from 15 last year, but not because of changes within Canada, says Susan Rooks, spokeswoman for Save the Children Canada.

“It’s because a number of other countries improved spending on early childhood education and secondary education,” Rooks told CBC.

Nordic countries came out on top while countries in sub-Saharan Africa dominated the bottom tier. Sweden tops the list, followed by Norway, Iceland and New Zealand while Niger ranks last among countries surveyed, just ahead of Chad, Yemen and Sierra Leone.

Survey criteria included:

* Lifetime risk of maternal mortality.
* Percentage of women using modern contraception.
* Skilled attendant at delivery.
* Female life expectancy.
* Expected number of years of formal schooling for females.
* Ratio of estimated female-to-male earned income.
* Maternity leave benefits.
* Participation of women in national government .
* Mortality rate for children under 5.
* Percentage of children under age 5 moderately or severely underweight.
* School enrolment ratios.
* Ratio of girls to boys enrolled in primary school.
* Percentage of population with access to safe water.

The gap in availability of maternal and child health services is especially striking when comparing Sweden, at the top of the list, and Niger, at the bottom. Skilled health personnel are present at virtually every birth in Sweden while only 33 per cent of births are attended in Niger.

A typical Swedish woman has almost 17 years of formal education and will live to be 83. Modern methods of contraception are used by 72 per cent of Swedish women, and only 1 in 185 women will lose a child before the child’s fifth birthday.

In Niger, a typical woman has less than three years of education, and the life expectancy of a girl born today is only 45. Only four per cent of Nigerian women use modern contraception, and one child in four never reaches the age of 5. At this rate, every mother is likely to suffer the loss of a child during her lifetime.

200 million children without basic health care

In a separate survey, the group also ranked 55 developing countries according to children’s access to health care.

It found more than 200 million children lack basic health care according to a recent survey of developing countries that estimates six million of those who die every year could be saved if they had access to such services.

The children and health care survey found the Philippines ranks first and Ethiopia ranks last, with more than 80 per cent of Ethiopian children under age five not receiving basic lifesaving care.

The group defines basic health care as a package of lifesaving interventions that includes prenatal care, skilled care at childbirth, immunizations and treatment for diarrhea and pneumonia.

“A child’s chance of celebrating a fifth birthday should not largely depend on the country or community where he or she is born,” Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children, said in a release.

Although some countries are doing a good job of reaching all children with basic health care, a closer look shows disparities. The poorest Filipino children, for example, are 3.2 times more likely than those from wealthier families to go without basic health measures, according to the report.

In 12 of the 55 countries, the poorest children are three or more times more likely to die than the richest children. These countries include Azerbaijan, Brazil, Bolivia, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and the Philippines.

Peru has the widest gap in child death rates between the rich and poor. The poorest Peruvian children are 7.4 times more likely to die than the richest Peruvian children.

The report calls on governments around the world to close the child survival gap by stepping up commitments to deliver basic health care, especially to the poorest children in developing countries.

Source: CBC.ca, Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/06/survey.html

Prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding appears to give children a cognitive advantage over formula-fed kids, increasing IQ by three to four points on average and boosting later academic performance, a Canadian study suggests.

The research by McGill University is not the first to link the method of infant feeding to brain development, but the size and the design of the study lends weight to the idea that breastfeeding actually causes an increase in intelligence.

“Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,” said lead investigator Dr. Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at McGill.

Kramer and his team evaluated about 14,000 children in 31 hospitals and clinics in Belarus starting in 1996, following their progress until they were 6 1/2 years old. Half the mothers were exposed to an intervention that encouraged prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding (experimental group), while the other half continued usual maternity hospital and out-patient pediatric care (control group).

Mothers who visited a facility promoting breastfeeding in the former Soviet country were more likely to feed their infants only breast milk at age three months (43.3 per cent versus 6.4 per cent in the control group) and at all ages through 12 months.

By the time children reached an average age of 6 1/2, those in the breastfeeding group scored higher on tests measuring verbal intelligence, non-verbal intelligence and overall intelligence. Breastfed children also performed significantly higher academically than formula-fed children, found the study, published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The children’s cognitive ability was assessed by IQ tests administered by their pediatricians and by their teachers’ ratings of their performance in reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects.

“I think that what this says is your average mother in a developed country like Canada who succeeds in breastfeeding for the duration and the degree of exclusivity achieved by the women in our experimental group … can expect her child to be a few points higher in IQ.”

The average jump in IQ is not so crucial when it comes to the individual child, Kramer said. “But if you consider for the whole population shifting the mean (IQ score) up three or four points, that means fewer difficulties for kids at the lower end and more Einsteins and Mozarts at the high end.”

Still, Kramer stressed that women who are unable to breastfeed or choose not to for a variety of reasons should not feel guilty or worry their child will be less intelligent as a result of being formula-fed.

“I think this (prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding) is a goal that’s achievable by the vast majority of mothers,” he said. “Those who cannot - and there are some who cannot - and there are some who could but don’t want to, have other ways of stimulating their children and improving their IQ, like reading and playing with their children.”

“And it might even be that the effect that we’re seeing is not something in the (breast) milk but has something to do with the nature of the contact, the physical contact or with what transpires between the mother and the baby verbally or emotionally at the time of the feeding, and that maybe is transposable to other feeding modes.”

Putting the study’s findings into context for parents, Kramer said “the difference of three or four IQ points is not going to make a difference between a child finishing school or being a success or a failure.”

“This is not the difference between mental retardation and a genius.”

Commenting on the study,Dr. Jack Newman said that while the research does not prove without a doubt that breastfeeding raises intelligence levels in children, there are sound reasons for believing it could.

For one, breast milk contains naturally occurring omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and a compound known as insulin-like growth factor I, all of which have been linked to increased cognitive ability.

“It may be the breast milk itself, although it could be all the things that are associated with it,” he said, referring to the physical and emotional contact inherent in breastfeeding.

The co-founder of the Newman Breastfeeding Clinic and Institute in Toronto also said many women who are unable to breastfeed feel terrible guilt, but he believes too often they have been failed by the medical system.

“Whether every mother can successfully breastfeed is an issue, but in fact most of the mothers who have difficulty with breastfeeding shouldn’t have problems with breastfeeding,” he said. “Most mothers produce plenty of milk and if they got the help and the advice that they should be getting they would not ‘fail.”‘

The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, although a mother can continue to breastfeed along with giving solid foods until the child is two years or more.

Source: The Canadian Press, TORONTO
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmevM3DMQG78F-YAQcLYU4FdwOrg

Parents should be paid to spend time with their children to stop toddlers as young as two being sent to schools and nurseries, a leading head teacher has said.

Clarissa Williams, the new president of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that parents were being separated from their children too early.

“Why do we feel the need to send children into an education environment at the age of two? Are parents so distrusted that we want to separate them from their children at the earliest opportunity?” asked Ms Williams, the head of Tolworth Girls School in Surrey.

Speaking at the NHT annual conference in Liverpool, the head said parents should be rewarded financially for staying at home, playing with their children, reading to them and bringing them up well.

“There needs to be a contract between the receiver of the benefits that if they stay at home to do quality things with their children, they will be rewarded.

“Lots of mothers stay at home and deal with a single income and we should respect that.”

Ms Williams said some young children reacted badly to intuitional settings, echoing research that suggests that putting toddlers in nurseries for a long amount of time can lead to aggression.

“Lots of children react well to nurseries, others are more anxious and that manifests itself in their behaviour, said Ms Williams.

The head suggested that child allowance as well as benefits should reflect the effort parents put in with their children.

The proportion of working mothers has risen steadily over the last decade.

Thousands of babies are now looked after by nurseries. Government vouchers giving free child care places to 3 and four year olds have also led to a rise in the number of children in pre-school settings.

Children in the UK also start formal education at age 5, much earlier than the rest of Europe where 6 or 7 is the norm.

In her speech Ms Williams also criticised school admissions.

She said choice was limited “mostly to those able to exercise it.” She suggested that allocating secondary school places by lottery could be fairer.

The controversial distribution of school places by ballot has been adopted by Brighton and Hove, several schools in Hertfordshire and a few in London.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/4oce7j

Mums can improve their kids academic performance by encouraging them to read more, says an expert.

Sharon Darling, president and founder of the National Centre for Family Literacy has suggested that incorporating a daily reading habit is essential for childrens future academic success.

Many moms wonder what they can do to help their children be successful in school. The answer is surprisingly simple, said Darling.

Many of the things parents do with their children as they work, play, read and talk together have an impact on the skills needed to become a confident and competent student.

Singing songs, making up silly rhymes, talking about what you see, pointing out letters and words in the environment and reading together are just a few activities parents can do, she added.

Creating reading rituals by setting aside a special time and place every day so that they enjoy stories without interruptions.

Moreover, cuddling closely with your child to foster a sense of security can actually eliminate stress that scientists believe produce hormones, which blocks learning.

Mealtimes can be the best opportunity to enhance learning skills.
Various programs have shown success in incorporating mealtime with literacy. In Southern California, the McDonalds Family Mealtime Literacy Nights have resulted in parents using its strategies and materials at home to improve literacy skills.

You can talk to your kids while driving across town or on vacation and looking for signs with words that begin with the same letters as childs name. Each person remembers what the other items were and adds an item that begins with the next letter of the alphabet.

Use techniques for reading that have been proven to increase effectiveness in reading time, providing sound effects to capture their attention, making connections between the spoken and written word because hearing sounds in words is a basic skill needed for reading, talking about the story to reinforce comprehension and memory skills and reading again and again as it helps children recognize and remember words.

Source: Thaindian.com, Thailand
http://tinyurl.com/6oy4zr

Science has finally caught up with what mothers have been saying for years: they are super-women with super-powers thanks to an influx of hormones during pregnancy and labour to enable them to cope with the demands of child rearing.

Neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains are rewired during that period, making them faster, more robust and less stressed than before.

Professor Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, Virginia, found the lifelong transformation is caused by an influx of hormones, including estrogen and oxytocin, to the brain.

The revolutionary findings could lead to a new world of chemical therapies to transform “bad” mothers or those who are not maternal into “super mums”.

Professor Kinsley said, if females with a deficit of the brain chemical oxytocin can be identified, then “when they are first interacting with the baby you can give them a boost of oxytocin at a critical time”.

Sydney career woman Kim McGee supports the study results.

She said she was never “overly maternal” and had no burning desire to have children. However, two babies later, she has surprised herself at how much more efficient and smarter she has become.

“Even my husband says: `You’re very different’,” Ms McGee said.

“In a way you have more energy as you have two other people who are solely relying on you.”

Ms McGee said caring for two young children was hectic but she had learned to juggle it with full-time work in the finance industry.

“I think that the more women have to do, and the bigger the challenge, the more successful they are at it,” she said.

Professor Kinsley’s research was inspired by his wife’s ability to automatically tackle new tasks with the birth of their daughter. His wife went from being “ambivalent” about children to becoming a “super mum”.

“It was some biological change,” he said.

Laboratory tests on rats showed that the “reservoir of hormones” released enhance a mother’s ability to care for and protect her offspring.

These improvements in behaviour last a lifetime until a woman is in her 80s, he said.

“Our work is showing that, when a female becomes pregnant, her brain is changing dramatically. This is an important developmental period in her life.”

In the experiments, young mother rats showed better maze negotiation skills and memory, and decreased levels of stress and fear.

Professor Kinsley said it suggests the power of motherhood, of how it makes the brain more plastic and flexible, enabling it to respond to the demands of survival.

Dr Karleen Gribble, of the University of Western Sydney, said the influx of oxytocin during labour decreased a woman’s stress levels, making her more responsive to the baby.

“Mothering changes your brain, and part of the way it is changing is via the impact of a hormone like oxytocin,” she said.

Dr Sarah Buckley, who has researched the impact of oxytocin on mothers, said the hormone “reorganised the structure of the brain”.

“A lot of things women do in early parenting such as breastfeeding and holding the baby helps to keep oxytocin being released in a mother’s brains,” Dr Buckley said.

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,23603717-5007185,00.html

Psychologist explores how our ability to function in adult relationships is directly connected to our mother factor legacy

Clinical Psychologist Stephan B. Poulter demonstrates in THE MOTHER FACTOR: HOW YOUR MOTHER’S EMOTIONAL LEGACY IMPACTS YOUR LIFE (Prometheus Books) that most of us will never understand the complex legacy imparted by our mothers or its far-reaching impact on our lives. The initial bond formed at birth becomes the foundation from which our emotional development, communication style, and personality type evolve through adulthood. No other relationship in our lives has the potential to shape us like the one we share with our mothers, and the more we understand the emotional components of it, the more choices and opportunities for relationship change and personal growth will be available to us.

Poulter defines the mother factor as our emotional development, functioning, and ability to form meaningful relationships in family life, in social life, and with intimate partners. It is an emotional template started with the mother-child relationship that influences our feelings of frustration, love, fear, and hope; our mothers’ style of parenting as the template for our emotional disposition and our core sense of who and what we are in the world; our emotional functioning as consciously and unconsciously shaped by our mothers.

The mother factor can work for or against us. Poulter shows that in order for it to work for us, we must understand the pervasive influence of our mothers. By focusing on our mother factor from many different angles and perspectives, Poulter strives to give us a more complete view of our own legacy. Once we have these new and crucial insights, we will have the personal power to make different choices, to let go of old self-defeating patterns, to take new and positive action, and to have a deeper sense of fulfillment.

“This entire investigation into your mother factor is for the sole purpose of gaining new, valuable insight and clarity, which will open more options to your life,” Poulter explains.

He also explores how our emotional connections in adult relationships are based on the “style” of our mothers. Poulter defines the five styles of mothering as:

* The Perfectionist Mother- whose family must look perfect in every way

* The Unpredictable Mother- whose ups and downs can create lifelong anxiety and depression in her son or daughter

* The “Me First” Mother- whose children come second or last

* The “Best Friend” Mother- who’s now in vogue but can wreak havoc

* The Complete Mother- who provides guidance and shows compassion to her child

THE MOTHER FACTOR makes clear that no matter what type of mother we have— and most mothers are a combination of the above—her style of mothering affects our lives in ways that should not be ignored. Through an investigation of the strengths, insights, and liabilities that derive from each mothering style, Poulter seeks to help us transcend the mysterious anger, anxiety, depression, and shame that we feel and achieve the kind of relationships we deserve. Dr. Poulter demonstrates how the internalized “rulebook” we inherit from our mothers is a very powerful force, as well. These unspoken rules govern our work, relationships, emotions, separation, and independence. Unless we become aware of the rules that guide our behavior, thoughts, and beliefs, we won’t have the ability to make our own choices.

Dani Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and President of The S.T.E.P. Group (School Placement and Educational Placement), says THE MOTHER FACTOR “brilliantly captured the reality that although we are products of our mothers’ legacy, we are not prisoners. Dr. Poulter not only offers insight, but also provides the tools to escape the fate of falling into maladaptive patterns. I would recommend this book to the masses, as we are all in relationships today that have been influenced by our mothers.”

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Stephen B. Poulter, PhD (Los Angeles, CA), is the author of three previously published books including THE FATHER FACTOR, which was praised by NEWSWEEK and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, among other publications, and received widespread attention with author appearances in ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel FOX & FRIENDS. He has practiced as a clinical psychologist specializing in family relationships for twenty-four years.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/pb-hym042308.php