Blame The Mommy Wars For The Ongoing Mizzou Insanity

Kids who don't learn to self-regulate become angry, emotional wrecks.

Lots of keyboards have been mutilated in efforts to explain why college students are so darned oversensitive. Talking like them is like crossing a sea of trip wires. The Mizzou and Yale events are only the most recent in a long series of absurd outrages. My colleague Rob Tracinski rightly places an onus on school administrators and professors; but I wonder if another source also exists, a much more primary source. In short, I wonder if it’s fair to assign some blame to our nation’s mothering crisis.

The plain biological reality is that children develop their base of emotional security particularly through a secure attachment to their biological mothers from in the womb through the first three years of ex-utero life. They also learn their interpersonal habits from watching their mothers (and fathers, but mostly mothers) handle stressful family situations.

Children who have less-sustained interactions with their mothers in their early years (and in general) are more likely to be nervous, agitated, and hard to calm down.

Even children who have, thankfully, not been subject to overt neglect, have a very strong and human need for “felt safety.” In short, one of the major things that happens during a child’s crucial first years is learning, through thousands of episodes where he gets frightened or angry or sad and mommy comforts him, that when bad things happen, he will be okay.

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