Pound Pup Legacy

There is a lot of common knowledge about the role a mother has in her child's life. Amazon lists almost 50,000 books written on the subject of motherhood and more than 80,000 on parenting. Many sitcoms have a family setting and deal with parental issues. 2Pac sang to his dear momma and Eminem shouted at her while cleaning out his closet. The mother figure is so old, we find figurines from prehistoric times depicting women, obviously being pregnant, while in modern times artists from Pablo Picasso to Keith Haring still found inspiration in the subject. The world around us is called mother nature. We were all born from a woman's womb.

The subject is staring us in the face, but what do we know about the influence of a mother on the development of a child? Some study has been done, but this is a subject that deserves an entire programme, because it has impact on all of us. What does it mean for a child's development to be separated from its mother? Does it differ if it is through death or by “in vivo” separation? What is the impact on a child's development when parents get divorced and does it differ when living with the father or the mother? Do children of working mothers show different developmental patterns from children growing up with stay at home moms. When a child is raised in an abusive environment is it in the best interest of the child's development to remove it, or should close monitoring actions been instituted?

There is a lot of folklore knowledge on these subjects and guests at The Oprah show or Dr Phil's will gladly give their conclusive knowledge on the theme, but unfortunately we don't know all that much.

In recent years we have acquired technological means in the field of neuro-imaging such as fMRI and MEG and we have made huge investments in the research of neuro-chemical agents. We believe the momentum is there to use these scientific developments to study the age old subject of motherhood. The implications of such a study can be enormous. It will address the position of a mother in a child's life and as such will raise debate on subjects as abortion, adoption, divorce, working women and child placement. We don't want to take position on any of these matters, we want these matters researched such that informed decisions can be made when these issues arise.

Next to that the outcome of such a study can give us an insight into the products of our society. When development went wrong, what is the end result and what should we do? Our prisons are full of people whose development went wrong and though society should be protected from violence, it remains to be seen if punishment is always a necessary and effective way of dealing with it? Are there therapies that can counter-act developments gone wrong, is there effective medication possible in certain cases? A significant portion of modern day society is living under the influence of mind altering substances, whether prescribed by medical professionals or not. Are we treating the right people with the right means? Are people using drugs helping themselves or is it always wrong to do so?

We want it to be our legacy a scientific programme gets started for research into the development of a child. This is a subject much more important to us all than the exploration of space. If we can generate the funds for the expeditions to Mars we must be able to raise the money to research how we raise our kids.