Raising Generation PAX: Peace Begins With How We Parent, from the Very Beginning Wet Set Gazette Summer 2007 column
Most of us would subscribe to the goal of a peaceful, ecologically sustainable world where our great-grandchildren can thrive. But if a savvy business executive were to assess the feasibility of that goal, she would survey our current approaches to pregnancy, birth, and parenting, compare them with the latest human development research, and conclude that we are off course in our strategies for reaching said goal. A glance at our neuropsychological health statistics would support her conclusion: A new joint study by Harvard and the World Health Organization finds that the U.S. suffers the highest rate of depression (9.6%, meaning more than 9 out of every 100 people) of 14 the surveyed countries, including war-torn Lebanon (6.6%) and poverty-stricken Nigeria (0.8%). Anti-depressant use in preschoolers has risen steadily over the past decade. Youth suicide has become the third leading cause of death in American 15-24 year olds, and has doubled in the 5-14 year old age group.
We are steering the wrong course. Dotty Coplen writes in Parenting for a Healthy Future, “The more we understand about the future consequences of what we are doing, and the intent that goes with the action, the more successful we will be in caring for our children with our own purposes and goals of parenting in mind. Parents need to decide together what they believe to be a healthy human being.”
I propose that a healthy human being has the heart to embrace and exemplify peace, the mind to innovate solutions to social and ecological challenges, and the will to enact those innovations. Here are three ways in which parents can cultivate these qualities in their children right from the beginning:
Commit to Joy During Pregnancy: A pregnant mother’s state of mind is her baby’s entire universe. Her depression or unremitting anxiety (not the occasional stressful days that are simply part of life!) communicates to the baby that it is going to be born into a dangerous environment, and its nervous system develops accordingly, brain cells actually adapting to function in an unsafe environment. The implications of this for society are immense. Babies of stressed mothers develop unconscious coping and survival skills like hyper-vigilance and hyper-reactivity. They suffer decreased sensitivity in brain chemical receptors that allow them to experience pleasure and satisfaction. This makes sense: if you’re in a dangerous environment, stopping to smell the roses leaves you vulnerable to attack.
A vicious cycle can begin early and spiral insidiously downward as the child grows: the baby is hard to soothe, which is frustrating for Mom and Dad; this generates a spectrum of strong feelings within them, which further activates the baby’s heightened “antennae” for threat, makes him even more agitated, and may lead to subtle or outright neglect or abuse by exhausted, exasperated parents. With no positive interruption of this negative feedback loop, the child has limited opportunity to internalize the self-regulating capacities developed through healthy attachment; once the toddler is a “handful,” there likely are consequences to “make the child mind,” punishments whose shame-based action further thwarts peace-oriented brain development, hardwiring it instead to thrive in a threatening world. Later, the child’s “impulsivity” gets labeled, and his sense of alienation—from himself, from others, from Life—grows.
A primary piece of fetal learning involves the maternal heartbeat: development of key brain centers organizes around the drumbeat of the mother’s heart. If she is generally centered and peaceful—feeling connected, loved, happy to be pregnant—her heart will drum a rhythmic, regular beat. If she is under constant stress, her heartbeat will be dys-rhythmic and irregular. Her baby will be irritable and difficult to soothe. Frequently experienced stimuli become familiar, and familiar (even if it’s negative) becomes comforting, so we gravitate to it. We all know people who “feel at home” with chaos!
Thus, a pregnant mother’s joy is a fundamental prenatal “prescription” for peaceful babies—and grownups! When joy seems out of reach, you can coax it towards you: smile, say an inner “thank you” for some blessing in your life, breathe mindfully. Invite the imagination in, dream noble qualities for your child, envision her luminous unfolding. Joy will likely surface.
Nurture Relationship & Connection: The research is conclusive about the critical importance of bonding and attachment for the development of an individual who feels connected to self and others, is capable of empathy, and has what we call “EQ” (emotional intelligence—considered a more potent ingredient for life success than IQ.) Bruce Perry simplifies the complex neuropsychological relationship between bonding and conscience to this simple calculus: People equals pleasure. When bonding and attachment unfold as nature intends, the connection between a mother and her baby remains unbroken after birth; she tends (with father and later, a few close helpers) to the baby’s cries and coos in an engaged, responsive way. Over the course of the critical first three years, not only does this child learn myriad important lessons as a foundation for a healthy self (“I’m effective in the world,” “I can trust others to be there for me,” “I make people happy,” and so on) but her brain also hardwires the association, People = Pleasure.
It is this People = Pleasure association that underlies “civilized” behavior. A child who is securely attached to his parents is deeply motivated to behave in harmony with them. This becomes a positive feedback loop in him which gradually expands outward to include the wider world in the category of “who matters to me.”
[Sidebar: As I write this on the sorrowful day of the Virginia Tech shootings, it strikes me as virtually impossible for someone who has experienced harmonious early connections to carry out such a cold-blooded act. The very word “cold-blooded” refers to the reptiles which lack the (mammalian) brain structures dedicated to emotion, attachment, and empathy. The brain of a child whose healthy need for relationship is thwarted will hardwire to function more reptilian-like. Such an act as took place on that campus is heinous, but, with all due respect to the pundits, most likely not senseless and incomprehensible. A complete history of the gunman, from conception through age 5, will be most telling.]
So why, in the face of all the research, does standard hospital protocol separate mothers and babies right after birth, during the most critical window for bonding and initiating the attachment process? Call me Oliver Stone, but as they say, follow the money: The baby in a nursery bassinet bonds to (and quickly finds familiar, and thus comforting) plastic, noise, bright lights and bustle… rather than to the tranquil, intimate, skin-to-skin comfort of Mom. Such babies are primed to be consummate consumers, more spokes in the wheel of the GNP. (They may also become healthcare professionals and policy-makers who perpetuate what is familiar, and mothers and fathers who unconsciously agree to reenact familiar birth scenarios …)
Cultivate Peace in Yourself: Joseph Chilton Pearce says, “Our children cannot be who we tell them to be… they can only be who we are.” Whenever possible, take the opportunity to embody the peace you want your child to manifest one day. Choose words that are kind, beautiful, meaningful and clear. Children learn unfortunate lessons of cynicism (a subtle violence) when their parents pleasurably criticize friends, acquaintances, politicians. Children take our cues about how to treat themselves, others and the environment—with compassionate care or mindless disregard. They absorb the inner and outer atmosphere we create.
Be peace for them, and for their future world.