The Breadwinner or the Nurturing Mother

This article is dedicated to our late mother “Chandra Perera-Gunaratne” who balanced between motherhood and her profession as a Montessori teacher and entrepreneur – for her dedication to us, her courage and her generosity

Sri Lanka boasts about the foreign exchange income earned through the labour of our women overseas.  Yet, we do not place much importance to the social cost of this.   Sri Lanka will face a major epidemic of social misfits into the future as so many children are growing up in a motherless home.    Intuitively, we all know the crucial role a mother plays in a home.  Now, science is proving this further.

Our limbic brain requires social interaction to grow healthy.  It has been proven over and over again that a baby will not survive without the mother’s or another permanent care giver’s loving touch and care.  There is a process of limbic nourishment and regulation that happens with the baby through proximity to the mother.  This is called limbic resonance akin to a cell phone connection where two signals meet.  Therefore, the mother also has to be in tune to read the baby’s needs and wants and respond accordingly.

Human beings are a combination of open and closed loop systems.   As babies we are totally open loop and get all the emotional nourishment from the mother.  The foundation a mother provides with her love and care shapes us into emotionally balanced adults.   With time, the child will become independent, but close human relationships will continue to nourish the limbic brain throughout life. 

This emotional nourishment gives us our self esteem and confidence while stabilizing our physiology too, so we stay healthy through our life.  

Our Motherless Homes
With the mother absent, our next generation growing up without that special love will be handicapped both psychologically and physically.   The social esteem of the nation will suffer as a result and hamper progress in balancing humanity and development.   Globalization exacerbates this as we now have to interact and compete with the outside world, whether its business, sports or politics.  

So, I wonder whether the rule the Sri Lankan government brought into restrict overseas work for young mothers with children under one year is well founded.  

I am generally averse to regulations like this and this is an infringement on our freedom and fundamental rights.  However, is the decision to leave a child to make money an informed one ?.  

Does everyone know the long term implications of this abandonment ?.  

Then, of course there is the traditional Sri Lankan man, who generally stays aloof from the nurture of children and other responsibilities of running a home.     

When the man is left alone he may not be ready for the responsibility, which may have been taken for granted when the mother was around.  So there are other social issues such as the man’s confused role, alcoholism, violence and abuse that have resulted in many motherless homes.

The Allure of Independence
The foreign employment carrot is a compelling one for women for many reasons.  As such, this issue is also more complex.   In addition to money, it’s the allure of an overseas job or maybe liberation from a stifling life in a village or a difficult marriage that make mothers leave.  However, my point is, if awareness is created and people are educated on the impact of their absence on their immediate families and the larger implications on the entire nation’s social fabric, will these mothers make a different decision ? 

While, I am ambivalent about the ruling to restrict certain mothers from leaving their homes, I also wonder whether it is alright in the larger interest of society.  That is why this issue needs a dialogue from both the male and feminine point of view.  

The scientific fact of limbic regulation between the mother and child also applies to urban families where both parents follow a career path.  So this dialogue has to widen its scope to both urban and rural families.

How the Brain Works
The human brain has formed in three stages as a part of the mammalian development process.  

Reptilian is our primitive brain, to take care of basic functions such as breathing, eating when hungry, sleeping and keeping all organs working.  

Limbic brain is our emotional centre enabling us to manage them and the relationships with people and the world around us.  We nurture and protect our young, form our close knit relationships but also play mind games and manipulate each other through our limbic brain.

Neo-cortex is our rational brain which enables us to live our daily lives, based on the mostly superficial sensory information we get.  Science is yet to uncover the deep workings of this part of the brain.  So far we know that our ability to reason, speak, write, plan and strategize comes from the neo-cortex.

We also know that the neo-cortex action works from the limbic base.  So the basic imprint or the foundation of how we act comes from the limbic brain, based on our moral fabric and values.  These get imprinted in us through a combination of the limbic nourishment we get from our mother and other loved ones complemented by the example of their behavior.  So, the neo-cortex is driven by the limbic conditioning we have.

Who we are now, our beliefs and our actions is based on the balance between the reptilian, limbic and the neo-cortex parts of the brain, but very much based on a limbic imprint which our mothers and other loving relationships give.

The Reptilian Sri Lankans
When I look around now, whether its politics or driving on the road or running a business, many people seem to be acting from their reptilian brain.  With the reptilian brain, we take what we want – never mind the consequences.   So, we have become akin to a crocodile, which only has a reptilian brain and no limbic or the neo cortex function. 

When a crocodile gets hungry, it eats anything that is around including its own offspring.   When we humans have a malnourished limbic brain, we become reptilian, selfish, not think about the consequences of our actions – so it becomes a dog- eat-dog world.  

We seem to have gone the reptilian way partly because of our conditioning and nature.  Over 500 years of Cartesian conditioning based on a mind /matter split allows us to separate man from nature.  So, man in the centre uses the rational mind to develop materials that will make life comfortable in a selfish manner.  

Lack of proper limbic conditioning has moved us to become reptilian.  So, we have the rich world taking more and more, eating its own, whether it is other human beings, justified as different nations, races and religions or nature around us, whether it is destroying our habitat or polluting the earth.  On top of that, the establishment has brainwashed us to separate the mother and child at birth, not to breast feed infants, to keep them in separate rooms, all things to sever the limbic connection.  Is it a wonder, that we have become reptilian ?.

The economy our Sri Lankan mothers feed is this same Cartesian one, so it is based on money and little humanity.  

The Symptoms and the Solution
I work in many rural schools and administrators are frustrated by the poor self esteem, depression, the violence and a lack of interest amongst the new generation.    All these are symptoms of a greater problem – our motherless homes.  

Now that we know the root causes for this social predicament we need to find practical solutions.  

Scientific research shows what we as humans intuitively know about our interconnectedness, especially the mother – child bond that is crucial to developing strong and balanced adults.   Therefore, we must honour this nature’s need, in the way we educate people, run business and lead the country. 

So, I propose, we focus on this root cause, create a dialog first and shape our national policies to ensure that the role of the mother gets recognized as the foundation for a well balanced society and give it the respect and recognition, both socially and economically.  

This will be the investment we make for a society which is intellectually, emotionally and spiritually balanced.   This may even lead to a more peaceful and a happy world for us and the new generation.