Jacci, mother of one ✷Georgia, mother of three ✷Molly, mother of one with #2 on the way ✷Lisel, mother of 4 ✷
Karen (Mom), mother of 6.
Our greatest ambitions were to become wives and mothers, and we did it!
My mother was a teenager during the women's rights movements of the 60's. She remembers hearing their rallying cries for freedom from the oppression of motherhood. She heard slogans such as "Renounce your martyrdom. Become a liberated mother-a woman, not a mom."
I'll be forever grateful that she didn't listen.
My mother was raised by a stay-at-home mom, and so was I. I couldn't be more proud. Now that I live in that realm, I have a real understanding and a genuine appreciation for all that it entails. I think Elder Jeffry R. Holland said it best as he quoted a young mother. "How is it that a human being can love a child so deeply that you willingly give a major portion of your freedom for it? How can mortal love be so strong that you voluntarily subject yourself to responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety and heartache and voluntarily keep coming back for more of the same? What kind of mortal love can make you feel, once you have a child, that your life is never, ever your own again? Maternal love has to be divine. There is no other explanation for it. What mothers do is an essential element of Christ's work. Knowing that should be enough to tell us the impact of such love will range between unbearable and transcendent, over and over again . . ."
Over and over again. It's true, and there is an intriguing parallel to be drawn between the scars that a mother acquires in bringing a child into the world and the scars that the Savior acquired when he gave his life for each of us to bring us eternal life. That is one thing that those women of the feminist movement had right. We sacrifice, and we do so willingly and without regret.
It really is true that out of our greatest sorrows comes our greatest joys. Who, having lost a child to death or estrangement, can imagine the joy they might feel at seeing that child again, safe in your arms? The bulk of society will never come to value the self-sacrifice that motherhood requires. There isn't room for that in that large and spacious building.
Within the LDS church, mothers have been praised as: divine, next to the angels, partners with God. President Thomas S. Monson taught that "One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service are as one." Indeed, mothers are the power that binds together the human family.
Throughout the decades of motherhood, my own mother has used and expanded her vast talents, increased in knowledge, wisdom and experience, and she continues to teach, protect and love her children and grandchildren with a perfect, unconditional love that is not bound by mortal constraints. She is everything to us. She is mother.
In "Successful Marriages and Families" they cite some very interesting studies about mothers and I'll highlight a few of them for you.
- "the way a mother interacts with her child, her maternal sensitivity, is the strongest, most consistent predictor of her child's cognitive, social, and emotional development (p.132)."
- "Mothers seem to have a special ability to sensitively modify the stimulation they give to their infants. Through finely tuned perceptions, they match their infants' intellectual and emotional state and provide the optimal 'chunked bits' of positive interaction needed for the child's developing brain."
- "Numerous studies have demonstrated that the quality of a mother's relationship with her child is associated with her child's social interactions and behaviors across development (p.133)."
Women are ideally suited to become mothers. God designed them that way. I don't know about you, but I've always considered it an honor. Not all women are blessed with children, you know?
It must be said that mothers would not be able to do their jobs as effectively as they do if it were not for their husbands who work so dutifully to provide the means for them to stay home. I am grateful that my own husband always provided enough for me to stay at home with our children and even in his death continues to do so.
When parenting, it is prudent to follow the counsel that the Lord has provided through commandments, guiding principles, scriptural examples, and the counsel of latter-day prophets and apostles. Now those are some great arrows to have in your quiver. Family is truly what the plan of salvation is all about. (SMF p. 103)
What if you keep the commandments, teach guiding principles, relate scriptural examples, follow the counsel of latter-day prophets and apostles and your children still don't turn out the way you'd hoped? This selection brought me great peace.
"Certainly the way individual children respond to their earthly environments is greatly influenced by their spiritual identity and the spiritual gifts cultivated in the premortal realm. . .
Indeed, each individual displays different interests,
personalities, and behavior, which come from biological blueprints provided by parents as well as each child's own spiritual predispositions, talents, and desires. These spiritual traits interact with genetic individuality in ways that have not yet been revealed, but are often observed in daily interactions in the home . . . (Hart, 2008).
In other words, you are not the only parent or the only teacher that your child has had. In truth, some part of your child "came that way," some of it was learned from you, and some of it was learned elsewhere. Only if we raised our children in an isolated environment free from any and every influence outside of our own, would we be able to effectively claim credit for who they are. But that doesn't sound right, does it? There's that one thing called agency . . .
In "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" it described some of the parent's responsibilities. "Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations."
As parents, we are stewards. The children in your stewardship will one day be grown and hopefully they will each become Gods and Goddesses. What can you teach them today that will bring them closer to that heavenly potential? What can you teach by example, by precept that will allow them to become all that they're destined to become?
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