motherhood

Home Power – The Solution to Social Ills 

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Society, with all of its innovations and intricacies, has lost the vision of home power. With social and political upheaval happening around the globe, parents wonder how to raise up a new generation of people who can set things straight, get society back on track toward goodness, diplomacy, truth, and healthy problem-solving. The solution to these modern problems lies in truths that were fully understood in the past and taught through home power.

Gaskell wrote, “The home is the epitome of society and government.” Whatever happens in the home is what ultimately happens in society. Does this mean that our homes are encouraging social contention and war? Or, maybe, is it that the world’s social and political wars have crept into our homes and shaken the bonds of love, affection, truth, trust and acceptance that should exist there to provide a stable, calm foundation no matter the troubles? What happens to the upbringing of our children if the world raises them through the media in our homes instead of getting life training through the home-training of parents? 

Home Power

Samuel Smiles said, “…home-training includes not only manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and character molded for good or for evil…From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life, afterward issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion.” 

Homes have the power to cure or canker society, to corrupt, control, or curtail law. Homes form and open hearts, create stable or slippery foundations, and catapult family opinions into the public sphere, whether true or false, emotional or logical. When we seek to problem-solve the social ills around us, why do we look first to law and legislation, when we should be looking first to home culture, self-culture, and true power; home power? 

Could it be because focusing on improving home culture and self-culture requires taking personal responsibility, self-control, and consistent work, and that law and legislation are just about controlling others and placing blame? The hardest work we ever do is to work on improving ourselves. Healthy homes teach and exemplify self-improvement as the means to happiness and success. 

Home power is a true power. No matter if the home produces moral or immoral opinions, good or evil children and adults, it still has the power to form them. Home power reaches into the formation of thoughts, ideas, morals, character, manners, civility, spirituality, connection, problem-solving, skill development, relationships, habit formation, and condition of heart. 

“Thus the home may be regarded as the most influential school of civilization…” said Smiles. “…civilization mainly resolves itself into a question of individual training, and according as the respective members of society are well or ill trained in youth, so will the community which they constitute be more or less humanized or civilized. The training of any man, even the wisest, cannot fail to be powerfully influenced by the moral surroundings of his early years.“ 

Nurture and Culture 

Consider mothers. From the earliest moments of a child’s life, mothers encircle their child in the arms of affection and love. They protect from harm, instruct in virtue, and correct vice. They form language through songs, stories and simple conversations. They create thought and action habits through living with the child. They socially introduce the child to the world, and set protective boundaries to keep the child steered in their desired direction. 

Mothers nurture. To nurture is to strengthen, nourish and correct. Mothers are not afraid of telling their child “no” and teaching their child that frustration, pain, mistakes, sadness, stress, and loneliness are part of life and can all be overcome. Through love, mothers allow their children to learn and stumble and bounce back again and again as they master their first steps and their social catastrophes. Without the nurture of mother, a child misses what only a mother can give. The heart and confidence of a mother. 

Consider fathers. Throughout all the phases of development and life, father sets the ultimate example for success or failure for his child. He is the person in the child’s life that offers a special kind of acceptance that confirms to the child that they are socially acceptable and valuable despite their failings and struggles. Through father, the child sees their ability to progress. 

Father establishes a culture for living that either compliments or contrasts to mothers. If complimentary, then the child has a firm compass for future success. If contrasting, then the child must test mother’s wisdom against father’s example and choose for themselves. This can be difficult, and some children fall from mother’s teachings. 

Father gives his child a larger view of life by not being the designated nurturer, but still engaging in nurturing and protecting. Fathers protect by setting an example and living virtuously. They point their children toward truth through wisdom, but mostly through the way they live their lives. Children usually set their life bars to the bar that their father set for himself. 

Family culture is unique to any other culture. This is why people are always intrigued to learn about other people’s upbringings and why people often share their upbringings for context in conversations. The method of nurture and the home culture for the family ultimately create the foundation for the child, and that foundation is formed much younger than many people realize. Before the child can fully converse they already know how to socially engage and what priorities matter most because of the nurture and culturing of mother and father. 

Grandparents are also a key part of the nurturing and culturing of children. They offer a second witness to all the teaching from the parents, or they offer another view of life, depending on if the virtues of parents and grandparents are the same or different. Healthy bonds with grandparents give the child a generational view of life and identity that provide the child with increased confidence, wisdom, and purpose throughout life. Ideally, they are also a voice of truth that can reach a child during difficult times when a child may be turning against the ways of their parents or need another wise opinion. 

Solving Social Problems

In order for the social ills of today to be turned around, society must focus on home power. It would be naive for us to believe that all the problems are coming from outside our homes. The way we best engage with the outside influences is for us to exercise our home power. Do we take it all in or not? We can choose. 

When we put our focus on parenting and grand-parenting in deliberate ways and we set boundaries, teach skills, and correct and instruct our children when needed, then we are acknowledging that we are more powerful than some family exploiting voices want us to think that we are. We can choose to have positive or negative effects to our home power, but the home power is constant. Homes do form people. They are that powerful. It’s just the parents who realize this fact that end up having results that can strengthen society, instead of taking society of track. It’s never too late. The world is never too far gone. But, to right the ship and put things back on track, we have to acknowledge and strengthen real power; home power. 

Strengthen your home power by learning the not so known secret for parenting success, here. 

Marriage, Motherhood, and the Destructive Intersectional Lens

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This year at the Commission on the Status of Women [CSW], at the United Nations, the topic of discussion was finding solutions for global poverty. While some of the family and motherhood organizations came up with good solutions for teaching entrepreneurialism, networking, and developing life skills through training programs and micro-lending solutions, many global NGOs and diplomats suggested solutions that would dismantle the family and decrease marriage.

They advocated for more abortion services to be provided and paid for by governments since, through a socialist lens, it is cheaper to pay for abortion services than for births. Others also looking through a socialist, anti-family lens seemed to care about women in poverty when they said that mothers, wives, grandmothers, and children caring for parents should all be called “unpaid workers” and should be paid for fulfilling family responsibilities, but is that message really honoring wives, mothers and grandmothers? 

These seemingly caring messages can be confusing to listeners if they don’t recognize the true value of family relationships and marriage and the miracle of life. The paid worker suggestion insinuates that roles and relationships in family have the same value to us as money or employment. The reason motherhood and nurturing are so valuable is because it comes without price, and is priceless to society.  No one can financially compensate a person for their love and sacrifice for another. Therefore, when love and sacrifice are given, they are more valuable than any paycheck would ever be. Paying a mother to be a mother would ultimately lead to the exploitation of motherhood. When a person gets paid for motherhood, then a mother becomes a birther and children or services become transactional, not the life-giving, most influential support that they really are when done with a mother’s love. 

When motherhood becomes nothing more than “unpaid work”,  then we promote financial entitlement, lose the whole family unit by focusing on work transactions, and simultaneously disconnect children from their mothers by taking a mother’s supreme status away. A woman’s children would represent money to her. That’s objectification of children and women. 

Marriage is rarely talked about in a positive light at the CSW conferences. Most marriage references refer to child-marriage and how unnecessary marriage is for a woman’s happiness. Ironically, most people discussing marriage are unmarried people. 

Obviously, a person doesn’t need to be married to live a fulfilled life or to find happiness, but marriage and family have led to stable, selfless societies since the beginning of recorded history. When a man and a woman sacrifice for each other and their children by honoring a marriage covenant, the children have greater outcomes and society stays more service-oriented, instead of self-oriented. 

The University of Virginia sociologist and director of the National Marriage Project, Brad Wilcox,  says that data proves that marriage helps all children. He said, “Marriage benefits children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds,” (Fox News, Kendall Tietz “Marriage Promotes White Supremacy According To White University Professor”)

Pat Fagan, Anne Dougherty, and Miriam McElvain from the Marri Research Institute give “164 Reasons to Marry”, including lower abuse rates, more sexual fulfillment, and less drug abuse and better grades for children in school.  

The Intersectional Lens

Many voices at the United Nations are looking through an intersectional lens as they try to solve complex global problems. Viewing problems through an intersectional lens leads to polarization and blame instead of empowerment and problem solving. 

Intersectional theory was invented by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, a critical race theory and civil rights activist. The theory suggests that certain people, with certain identifiers such as being married, not married, employed, unemployed, religious, non-religious, or being a certain race are indicators of how much a person is oppressed as a victim or is an oppressor. The theory is very rigid and doesn’t allow for a person to declare that they are not a victim or an oppressor if they don’t want to be one. Once they have be categorized through the intersectional lens, then they are socially, physically, and morally stuck. 

At the United Nations the conversations have adopted the terms intersectional and intersectionality to create more victims and oppressors. While discussing widowhood and inheritance rights problems in Africa, which are big problems for women, the WHO organization said that we need to take an intersectional view of these women and therefore give them more access to abortions. It’s true that rape of widows does often happen, but to declare them victims and to just provide abortions gives them no way past their problems. True empowerment shows a person a path away from victimhood, not toward it. 

Take Aways 

The conversation at CSW is always vast and impossible to monitor completely, but what I saw this year convinced me, more than ever, that our families really are the most powerful groups in society, and that we must value them and protect them. If we keep family, marriage, and motherhood in the forefront of our minds and conversations, then the next generation has a chance to see past the false, disempowering intersectional lens that is being presented to us all. 

Family relationships and the organic organizational structure of family bonds has always had the power to throw those who would oppress individuals on their heads. 

Talk to your children and grandchildren about how much family means to you, about stories of family members from the past, and about how the principles in family life, like marrying and having children can lead them to great purpose and fulfillment. Simple conversations can bring a needed light in our darkening world. 

Strengthen your family bonds and better solve family problems by learning self-government 

May Is For Mothers

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There is an attack on motherhood. However, May, the month of flowers, birds, and life, the month that reminds us of all that we are grateful for, brings our hearts back to the simple, yet powerful lessons of our mothers. Lessons of gratitude, strength, work, and love, that mothers teach, need to be honored. May, the time of light after the spring storms, is the perfect time to remember the light that mothers bring to our lives and our societies. So, this year, people all over the planet are using the hashtag #MayisforMothers as they post photos, videos, and notes of gratitude for the power of their mothers and being a mother. 

Since the 1970s, motherhood and the fundamental role of mothers has been philosophically, and socially attacked. The social messaging about motherhood is that it’s a drudgery, considered undesirable, lesser than any paid vocation, and even a sign of oppression or a mental condition. For example, when I was pregnant with my fourth child, I heard some female college students talking. They concluded their discussion with this assumption: “a person who chooses to become a mother must be mentally disturbed.” Thankfully, despite the negativity surrounding motherhood as a chosen life path, people still choose to become mothers, they love being mothers, and are empowered by their chosen role as a mother.

The Power of Mothers 

Why is motherhood under attack? Because it’s the most powerful social, spiritual, physical, psychological, biological, and political position a person could ever hold, and dedicated mothers who are “all in” know it. Mothers and grandmothers who don’t buy into the negative messaging about motherhood, but quietly accept the responsibility of raising the next generation of people to be good, honest, brave, hardworking, kind, loving, and true are given overwhelming proof of the power in honoring motherhood as they see the people that they’ve molded go against the negative cultural trends of the day. I like to think I’m one of those people. Thanks Mom!!! 

When motherhood came under attack by the feminist culture of the 1970s, suddenly women all over the planet felt that it was time to bring the power of motherhood to the discussion table. Women flocked to the United Nations and social events to articulate the power of motherhood while other women tried to gain public platforms to tear down motherhood and dishonor the impact a good mother has on all of our lives. Those battles continue to be waged in the same social arenas. However, mothers aren’t fighting back, because they truly don’t have the time or the stomach for battles. This battle against motherhood that has been waging for quite some time has now become more intense. Mothers are now considered to be obstacles to get around for those who desire the power to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation of children. 

The Greatest Threat

Currently, parents are presented in public forums as dangers to children. This idea then presents support for the assumption that children must be rescued from their parents. To gain perspective of what is happening, it is useful to look to the past. Historically, the act of stealing children or sacrificing children has been one way forces of evil have exercised dominion over families and nations. Think Hitler, Mao and the child sacrifice rituals to evil gods in ancient times. Parents, specifically mothers, were forced to give up their children for some perceived societal good or to a false god in order for the ruling powers to gain greater control over the hearts and minds of the people. To these rulers, children were considered materials, like money or animals, owned or transferred by adults for their purposes to control. If parents, specifically mothers, are continually marginalized, then who will protect the children and preserve their identities as valuable individuals? What will the future of society look like?

Mothers are the gate keepers for freedom, and virtue. They nurture these qualities in the hearts and minds of their children. If mothers stay close to their children and raise them well, then freedom and virtue, both in our society and in the lives of our children, can be maintained. A mother’s influence is too strong for a total societal takeover if she is allowed the power to maintain her place at the helm of society; raising her children. This is why motherhood, fertility, holy intimacy, family structure, identity, and the parent/child bonds are being attacked from every possible angle. All of the attacks are attempts to steal the hearts and minds of children from their mothers. 

Mothers are the greatest threat to those who design and scheme for ways to control or change society. Mothers, who hold the heart strings of all of her children and teach them who to trust and not trust, who to listen to or not, are the big stumbling block for the dark enemies of the family. 

Love Over Money

Motherhood is an unpaid position. That is precisely what gives it such power. A woman mothers her children because she wants to, not because she is getting paid. Payment to mothers would cheapen their role as a mother. And, even though people have tried to pay mothers off for their children and “service”, most women will not sell the hearts and minds of their children for money. Motherhood isn’t about gain. She doesn’t mother for herself directly, even though there are obvious indirect benefits to motherhood. Mothers do what they do because of love. Money is never going to be more valuable than love. Love is too strong. It’s that strength that gives mother such great power; a power that threatens would-be power-seekers and can’t be taken or fabricated. 

In a time when motherhood is more important and more attacked than ever, it’s time for a new motherhood movement. Women from around the world held a summit about this issue recently and determined that May is for mothers (#MayisforMothers.) No matter where we all are in the world, let’s post all the great things about mothers and grandmothers. Without mothers and grandmothers, we wouldn’t be who we have become. Let’s share stories of power and purpose and the impact for good that come from mothers. Motherhood is under attack because it’s powerful all by itself. Motherhood doesn’t have to fight back. A virtuous mother is moving the needle toward greater goodness just by doing what she does and as a nurturer and example of love to her children and grandchildren. There is nothing more powerful than a mother who knows how much power she has! 

Spread the word that #MayisforMothers 

And, if you or your organization is interested in being part of the next Woman Watch Network Summit, please contact here for information with the subject Woman Watch Network.  

The Hopeful Mother

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The whole idea of motherhood is an implication of hope. Her business is about raising the next generation as she keeps an eye toward the future and the possibilities for her posterity, which fills her heart and mind with all sorts of ideals. Wouldn’t it then be strange, that mother in keeping to her duty would shun any idealizing of her own role with her being a causal agent in the child’s life? It is only my broad observation, but there appears to exist in the younger generation a sort of intellectual snobbery toward an ideal. An ideal is simply a vision of possibility.  I guarantee my life circumstances in so many areas, like most on the planet, have fallen short of an ideal clung to, but it has been the very  vision of the ideal that has fueled a  hope within, which in turn has moved me to better action, especially as Mom. I’ve always liked the title of President Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope. It implies to me a boldness of expectation in achievement of an ideal others might otherwise scoff at, but let them scoff.  I am grateful my faith affirms an ideal for motherhood.  A word like noble reminds me that although motherhood is universal, it is for no common purpose. Innately it stands dignified and principal. This truth transforms my monotonous and sometimes difficult tasks, though reality means not necessarily in the moment. Noble work doesn’t have to feel noble, and feeling one way or another does not diminish the reality of its importance. Angelic is another word that is often associated with the work of mothers. Why not when the work of angels is to minister, proclaim truth and stand in the trenches as warriors.  I need these ideals. They audaciously sustain my hope in me as a Mom, because when circumstances feel or truly are less than ideal, I know motherhood never is, never was and never will be.  

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