In the novel Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackery wrote, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”*
From giving birth to toddler years, childhood illnesses, teenaged shenanigans, you’ve dealt with a gamut of a child’s predictably unpredictable challenges while also being a veritable fountainhead of love.
It was in a training by a psychologist on the topic of “family of origin” that I was first exposed to detailed information about other, sometimes non-traditional families and how they impact the child.
One memorable part of the training covered research about children in high-risk, low socioeconomic status areas. Due to biological parents’ absence by death, addiction, incarceration or other scenarios, a grandmother often ends up raising the child. The conclusion of all the research utilized by the presenter that day was that a pro-social grandmother raising the child was amazingly beneficial to the child. Although it wasn’t technically the biological mother or father raising the child, the outcome was just as good as if they had.
This point was further reinforced for me a few years later as I was getting certified to administer the Ohio Risk Assessment System (ORAS) and the Texas Risk Assessment System (TRAS). I was employed by the local probation department then, and as a counselor, assessments were an important part of my job.
Probation has a fundamental question to answer: Is this person likely to complete probation, and whether they do or don’t, are they likely to commit new offenses? Having a plan to reduce the risk of recidivism is a benefit to the individual, probation, and the community.
When the University of Cincinnati was developing the ORAS in the early 2000s, they had a pool of 1800 people from whom to gather information.
One of the fundamental conclusions of this research was that having good family support as a child significantly reduced the likelihood of recidivism. And the research was clear: Whether the child was raised by biological parents, grandparents, same-sex parents, stepparents, etc did not matter; if that child had supportive, pro-social parent figures, the likelihood of multiple criminal offenses dropped dramatically.
PLACE has had few detractors. I will admit that I was surprised the day a new person came to group and admonished me in the Zoom chat for allowing stepparents to participate. I explained that all parents count. Furthermore, excluding them would mean excluding my own wife, who helped me raise my children.
You probably have estrangement on your mind as you read this. Be that as it may, in my heart of hearts I believe that if you’ve raised a child who is independent, capable, and finding their way in young adult life, it’s you that Thackery wrote about. No matter what variation of family system existed as you raised them, the plan from the day they were born was almost certainly for that child to grow up and leave the nest. If that departure was not in specific accordance with your plan, I would posit that you’ve succeeded nevertheless, mother and fathers.
PLACE celebrates you, and I hope that you can remember to celebrate yourself as well.
[*Yes, I do recall that this line was paraphrased in the movie The Crow, as spoken by the title character; quoting Thackery seemed to be a more authoritative choice.]
