Roots of Empathy PART 2

MARY GORDON was interviewed by JUDITH NELSON at the Spirit of Humanity Forum in Iceland in 2019. In part 2, she shares experiences from her own childhood to demonstrate how empathy develops in children.

- JUDITH NELSON

Q: You talked about the generations and their effect on children. How important do you feel generations are – families, cultures – in helping children grow up in a safe society or safe place?

Well, children grow up in families. Lucky children grow up in communities. But not every family is part of a community, and your safety net only goes as far as your community net. So families do have the ability to give children what they need to grow up, which is unconditional love, recognition. Society is only as safe as the way we support our families.

I always look at: What are the policies in place? How do you cover vulnerability? The most important relationship in life, which is pretty much a template for every other relationship, is the parent-infant relationship. What are the policies that allow that relationship to be nurtured? Do you have a parental leave policy? We have some participants here from the United States, one of two countries in the entire world without a parental leave policy.

So here we have a gap or a disconnect between what we know from research, the policies we make, and the programs that happen. I think if we recognize the capacity of every person in a democracy to participate in a meaningful way, we need people to stand up and claim their rights in the society – the right to belong, the right to have a voice. And you develop those things in the family.