Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Why you are your mother

Somewhere in the ever-growing list of apologies to my Mother, I am making a point. (It's subtle, but it's there.) The point is that my Mom knew what she was doing when she was raising me and that she showed me lots of love and support every day. Those are just a few of the reasons I find myself incorporating some of the things she did into my own parenting style.

But maybe that is inevitable.

Research published in the European Journal of Public Health suggests that our mothers have a profound impact on the way we parent our children. Almost 150 families were watched while parents interacted with their children. Those observations were then compared to the self-reported interactions parents received from their own Moms and Dads. The results showed that parents with affectionate Mothers tended to have a more positive parenting style with their own children. So, a Father observed to be very affectionate with his son, for example, was found to have memories of his own Mother being very affectionate with him when he was a child.

But wait, you ask...what about Dads? How did a Father's behavior influence his child's parenting style? Well...all I can say is that the sample size used for the study was fairly small, so the results on how much a father influences your parenting behavior seems to be negligible. (Sorry, Dads!)

This study doesn't reveal that Moms are more important than Dads (no non-traditional families were incorporated into the study, for example), or that one style of parenting is better than another. It just shows that Moms are influencing us for a long time after we leave the nest.

Thanks, Mom!

What's a fond memory you have of your Mother from when you were little? Share with me in the comments.

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