Insight, Meditations and Reflections

Mothers wield incredible power over their children.

Mestrius Plutarchus, popularly known as Plutarch, the Greek historian, wrote about Coriolanus whose life highlights one of the most dramatic shows of this mother power. 

Coriolanus, a Roman Senator, was banished for attempting to subvert the Roman Constitution.  In exile, he teamed up with an enemy of Rome and set out to conquer the city.

All attempts to persuade him to stop the planned attack failed. Then the women of Rome appealed to his mother and wife to see if they could change his mind. Coriolanus, the treacherous general, melted before his mother’s plea.

Mothers possess incredible power over their children. Scientists have just begun to unravel the nature and effects of this subtle power. Here are three important discoveries they have made in the past fifty years.

• Bernard Asbell wrote a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he was doing research to understand two of the President’s traits, he found studies that showed a link between the anguish a child suffers when separating from its mother and that child’s fear of death.
  
• Lloyd Silverman and Joel Weinberger found out that the statement “Mommy and I are one” aids in human motivation when embedded as a subliminal message.
  
• Professor Michael Meany and his team at McGill University in Montreal found out that a mother’s care affects the child's neurological behavior. Children who received more affection from their mothers have the area of the brain that promotes attention and memory more developed than the control group. A mother’s affection does matter.

Thank goodness for loving mothers and mother figures in our lives!