BECOMING A PARENT – ANOTHER WAY TO SEE AND PREPARE FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE
FATHER LION OR FATHER WOLF? by Danièle Starenkyj ©2015 www.publicationsorion.com
Many civilizations, including our own until the 1990s, have systematically distanced the father from the birth, thereby hindering the father's attachment to his child.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead explains this ancient phenomenon as follows: societies that require men to leave their homes to build them know very well that if new fathers could take care of giving birth and raising their children, they would be so "hooked" that they would not leave their homes to go to war.
Indeed, fathers, just like mothers, have an immense capacity for attachment to their children. This attachment helps fulfill a fundamental human need: the hunger for a paternal presence, a presence that promotes the development of both boys and girls.
Numerous studies have established, beyond any doubt, the unique contribution of fathers in the lives of their children. Indeed, if mothers mother their children, fathers father them. Mothers and fathers are both competent educators, but their competence is always expressed differently.
The baby knows this well, as he can distinguish between his mother and his father from birth. Surprisingly, he physiologically reacts differently depending on whether one or the other approaches him to pick him up. While waiting for his mother, the baby's heart rate and breathing rate slow down, while while waiting for his father, they accelerate.
At a very young age, babies understand that their relationship with their mother is soft, gentle, and verbal, while with their father, it is jovial, playful, and physical. Fathers love to play with their children, and each derives great pleasure from it. Who doesn't remember the father playing horse with his little one clinging to his back?
It is claimed that from six months, a baby whose father actively cares for him is better cognitively developed, more sociable, and more resilient in the face of stressful situations .
In researching the various ways in which paternal behavior is expressed in animals, scientists have observed that it is mainly manifested in monogamous animals: certain fish and amphibians, in the majority of bird species, but also in mammals including the wolf and the beaver, both of which are faithful to their females and raise their young with care and tenderness.
Biologists' observations are unanimous: species that form long-term couples are those in which the greatest paternal investment is found. Volatile mammals, and particularly polygynous mammals (multiple females for a single male), exhibit greater neglect of their young, more abuse, and more accidental death. In fact, we are talking about the infanticidal lion and the monogamous wolf.
Ironically, the king of beasts is extremely cruel to the lion cubs of the females he has taken over and who are not his own, while the wolf protects its young, ensures that the mother and cubs are fed, defends the cubs against predators, plays with them, and even takes care of their grooming.
An education shared equally between the father and the mother allows the child a deep attachment to his father, whom he perceives as different from his mother in every way. And this well-perceived difference helps him to differentiate himself in turn from his mother, and to develop a proper sense of his individuality. It allows him to have, when the time comes, the strength of happy detachment.
Let us respect the equal role of men and women in the life to come, which is coming, and which has come. Let us realize the need for their mutual involvement at all stages of life to promote its full development.
Because if there is a place where man and woman are equal, it is in the face of the life they have given together.
Danièle Starenkyj © 2015 (To explore this theme further, see the book BECOMING A PARENT – Living a New Paradigm, Orion, 2014)
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