Empower Women to Save the World

“The U.N. Population Fund estimates that 215 million women worldwide who desire modern contraceptives are deprived of them. Access to contraceptives would reduce unintended pregnancies by more than two-thirds, from 75 million to 22 million per year, and save $5.1 billion in pre- and postnatal healthcare.”~Sierra Magazine

The number one way to empower women is to give them access to contraception

Half a million young people in this country are on anti-psychotics. 3 million children are on ADHD meds. Dr. van der Kolk from the University of Boston states, “Neglect and abuse of children is America’s number one problem.”

To understand the current state of childhood in the US, we must look at birth and the circumstances surrounding the way in which we enter the world. This conversation, at its core, is a look at women. Women are the way in which we enter the world, and over genetics and DNA, our environment determines our health.

Let’s start with what Dr. Gabor Mate calls, “The Destruction of Childhood.”

The current status quo is set up in such a way that mothers are often stressed. Unless you have plenty of money and a supportive partner, no doubt your pregnancy will be riddled with cortisol, the stress hormone, and this lays the pathways in the brain of your young, starting in the womb.

Even if you do have money and a partner, you likely will not be in a position to stay home and rear your young, you will have six weeks maternity leave, and then you must hand your child over to the care of a stranger.

Upon birth, to fully develop in our brains and be capable of empathy, connection to self and others, compassion, maturity and have a social sense, the condition physiologically that is required for this, is the presence of non stressed, caring, attuned, available care givers.  This is no longer the norm in post industrial capitalism.

To have healthy and thriving children, support women

With current maternity leave in the US at six weeks, for the first time in history, children are being raised by non-family members.

The demands of a capitalistic society driven by consumerism and productivity is that our children are no longer being cared for adequately.

More and more women, now 50%, have post partum depression. Men are now experiencing this too. Families are stressed, riddled with bills and guilt and the need to find a way to work and care for their young.

Dr. Gabor Mate declares that the rise of Autism, which limits the ability to emotionally connect, can be linked to this current cultural phenomenon. Children, away from their parents all day, no longer cared for by their tribe, but isolated from familiar, nurturing adults, are left with developmental limitations.

Human beings are one of the only animals on the planet that are not fully developed at birth. We require a nurturing environment to continue proper development.  The hormone related to this is dopamine, the feel good hormone required to live. It is an essential life chemical that drives us, gives us incentive. Without dopamine, rats in a lab did not eat. Even though they were hungry, they had no incentive to eat and thus died.

Without proper community, family, tribe, touch, and attunement from those we love, we human beings are unique in that we will not fully develop to our potential. Our ability to connect and thrive is stunted by the current construction of the modern-day world.

We no longer live where we work, nor do we attend school where we live, we are scattered and disconnected and stressed, which has birthed the epidemic of our children exhibiting ADD, a disorder where one has impulse control, or we have ADHD, physical hyperactivity, or we have mental disorders. Half of American Adolescents meet criteria for mental disorders. Half.

Instead of addressing the issue at its root- the deconstruction of childhood, and family, we are treating the symptoms and drugging our children.

A Native American proverb says, if you want to know how a culture is doing, ask, “How are the children?”

Well, my dear friends, they are lacking a primary life sustaining hormone, their brains are underdeveloped, and they are being drugged by the droves.

As Gabor Mate says, “The conditions in which children develop are corrupted.”

All these issues could be rooted out if we were only willing to truly go to the root of the problem. Women need health care, choice, and freedom over their own fertility. If we set up circumstances so that we have unwanted pregnancies, mothers with limited access to health care and support, we create and perpetuate this issue, where our children and our women pay the price. Empowering women empowers children, and thus transforms the way in which we live and thrive.

There is a fantastic article from Sierra magazine that hits the nail on the head, so to speak. To solve the world’s problems we need the following:

1. Access to Contraception.
2. Literacy
3. Comprehensive Sex Education
4. Gender Equality- give women power over their own fertility
5. Dynamic Development

Please, if you do nothing else, read this article. This is a SOLUTION.

 The solutions to our problems are simple. Empowerment of women is the way of the future. It starts there, so that we can influence the way in which children are conceived, and thus alter the fabric of the world, via wanted, well-nurtured children with healthy, happy mothers and families.  It’s all about women because if it’s all about women, then it extends to being all about children, the earth, family, tribe, because women create and nurture life. It is who we are.