In the wake of Father’s Day there is a great article on the Ruth Institute blog about honouring husbands. Jennifer Roback Morse talks about the importance for children of seeing their parents loving and admiring each other…
Father’s Day is a day for honoring fathers. But I would like to take
a step back and honor men as husbands. In our enlightened, liberated
era, we have a tendency to overlook men as husbands, since the father
is so often not the husband of the mother. But without some kind of
connection between the man and the woman, there is quite literally, no
child. I’d like to make the case that the most important thing fathers
can do for their children is to love their mother. And likewise,
among the many things mothers do for their children, one of the most
important is that mothers love their children’s father.
As with so many things, our family learned this from our experience
with disturbed children. We encountered a gifted therapist named Nancy
Thomas who taught us that attachment disordered children need a strong
mother figure to whom they can attach. These children don’t really
believe that anyone can take care of them, that the universe is
fundamentally a hostile place, and that they must take care of
themselves. If the child perceives any weakness in the mother, the child
cannot entrust himself to her.
It was my husband who first went to Nancy’s workshop and came back
filled with excitement. “You have to be sure of yourself. You can’t let
the kids bug you. You have to stay cheerful, even when they are
trying to wear you down, because they think it is funny to wear you
down. And my job,” my husband said to me, “is to support you. I have
to build you up in their eyes, so they will respect you. If they can’t
respect you, they can’t heal.”
Read more at http://www.ruthblog.org/2011/06/20/husbands-day/
