‘Babies’ is in theaters now and I enjoyed seeing it. But it seemed odd that the movie showed so little parent-child interaction. Without much apparent help or support from their parents, four babies from different parts of the world — Namibia, Mongolia, Japan and the US — make it through their first year, each one, at the end, triumphantly taking their first steps.

Will there be a movie ‘Parents’? That will be more difficult to put together but more instructive, I think.

I would like to see more of the kind of research like that described by Liz Szabo in USA Today May 10.  Seth Pollak of the University is Wisconsin-Madison tells us that there are biological effects in children from mothers’ soothing, both physical and verbal, even hearing their mothers’ voices over the telephone. Pollak’s research was on girls and their mothers.  I’d like to see research on dads and sons, dads and daughters as well as mothers and sons.

The icing on that cake will be more research to demonstrate how parents can be soothed and comforted so that they are better able to pass the feel-good stuff on to their children of both genders.

Today, May 15th, is International Day of Families, a good day to remind ourselves of how powerful and positive our actions as parents can be. Pollak was quoted: ‘It’s the kind of thing that should make parents relax a little bit.’ I am all for that.