There has been a monumental change in human evolution.  A new balance has emerged over the past decade which sees father’s more and more involved in the raising of their children from infancy.   With this newly found balance, children born today have a greater chance of psychological health than ever before.

As has been said before me, It takes a village.  However, most of us in the modern western world don’t have a village.  At most what we have is a mother and a father, and hopefully, a grandparent or two or four.  But the core is, a mother and a father.

In conversation with my sister recently we were remarking on how involved her son in law is with the raising of his son; a story I hear regularly about new parents. Father’s today are changing diapers, getting up at night for the feeding of the infant.  At the very least, they’re supporting their wives in the daunting task of caring for an infant.  This was not the case when we were raising our children.  Father’s at that time followed the example of their father’s before them; they went out in the world and left the raising of children to their wives. No matter how good a mother is, their child also needs a father.

Whatever the gender of a child is, to be balanced, the feminine and the masculine principles need nurturing, and sooner works better than later since the first three years form the core of identity.

Most of my work as a therapist is reparenting; simply put, the problems an individual faces as an adult usually arise from some aspect of early development that is missing.  Though it’s true that abuses in childhood cause problems, what is more often the case, is that one or more areas of development got skipped.  When both parents are involved in raising the child, there’s a better chance that one of them will be able to compensate for the limitations of the other, raising the possibility that the child’s needs will be attended to. It’s has also been said that it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.  I would be out of a job if that wasn’t the case.  But it’s so much easier to do it right from the start and do away with my job.

As parents today are taking more responsibility for the health of their child; as they’re taking their jobs seriously, I’d be glad to see the end of the need for so much reparenting.  But that time has not yet arrived since there’s so much cleanup to do for the failures of the last generation.