Thank you, mothers

Today at 1 p.m., women around the world are encouraged to gather themselves and their families and stand for five minutes in silence to reflect on ways to improve the world. Many will read aloud Julia Ward Howe's “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” written in 1870.

But many of these women already improve the world simply by being a mother.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the way babies are cared for by their mothers determines not only their emotional development, but also the biological development of the child’s brain and central nervous system. New data is emerging from a multitude of disciplines including neurology, psychology, biology, ethology, anthropology and neurocardiology to show that a mother’s love acts as a template for love itself and has far reaching effects on her child’s ability to love throughout life.

Alan Schore, an assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA School of Medicine, says “The child’s first relationship, the one with the mother, acts as a template, as it permanently molds the individual’s capacities to enter into all later emotional relationships.” Other experts agree.

But the bond between mother and child is not only about proper brain development -- it's an affair of the heart. Our hearts and brains are hardwired for love, and from infancy to old age our health and happiness depend on receiving it. And it's a two-way street in which both mother and child benefit. It is interdependence in its simplest form. Behavioral scientists have long established that our advancement as a society depends mightily on how we interrelate. Interdependence is a concept that is well understood in Eastern cultures, but it is sometimes downplayed in our modern Western culture.

We embrace independence, individuality and freedom more than any other culture, and rightly so. But the reality is that we are not entirely independent of each other. The wise King Solomon wrote that "Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established." Modern translation: No one is an island. Our plans succeed when we build healthy relationships with others, and realize that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Mothers are proof of our interdependence with each other in the microcosm-- a part of what makes us created in the image of God.