Some discoveries are fittingly described as “startling,” “unanticipated,” or “astonishing.” But here’s the result of a 35-year Harvard study that surely surprised nobody: Children who sense they are loved are healthier as adults.
Eighty-seven Harvard men were followed into middle age. Those who were healthiest at age 55 had written at age 20 that their parents cared deeply about them. Their peers who were suffering from such illnesses as heart disease and hypertension at 55 had written parental assessments 35 years earlier saying that their parents were more distant, less loving, and frequently unjust.
The link between health and love on the one hand or disease and inattention on the other was independent of such key risk factors as family history or smoking.
Another report I filed away almost a year before this one tells the same story from a very different starting point. It said that almost 70% of juveniles and young adults in long-term correctional facilities did not live with both parents growing up. It also reported that growing up in a fatherless home is judged a contributing factor in as many as three of four teen suicides and four in five teen psychiatric admissions.
All this combines to say that the children, grandchildren, or other valued young people in your life need your time and attention. This is not about buying them stuff, said the Harvard psychologist making the first report cited above. It’s about accepting the child’s perception of their relationship with you as the truth, and behaving so your child may experience you as just and loving.
Don’t take something so important as rearing children for granted. Don’t leave it to your mate to supply what only you can give. As C. Everett Koop, former United States Surgeon General, has said: “Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.”
Rubel Shelly The FAX of Life