Dr. Mariolina Ceriotti: "To fully understand motherhood and fatherhood, they must be seen together".

"You cannot talk about femininity without talking about masculinity. To understand the two fully, you have to see them together," said Mariolina Ceriotti, an Italian physician, child neuropsychiatrist and psychotherapist, at a lecture organized by the Master's Degree University in Marriage and Family of the University of Navarra.

The expert, a member of the Italian Observatory for Childhood and Adolescence, and consultant to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life; stated that the great challenge for men and women is to reach the meaning plenary session of the Executive Council of their identity, and emphasized the importance of self-knowledge. "In the first 20 - 25 years of a person's life, love of self needs to be developed in order to become a rich, competent and vital person. Motherhood and fatherhood are the movement that makes us have the capacity to care about others, they nurture generosity," she said.

In the session entitled 'Erotica and maternal: a journey into the universe of women', Ceriotti pointed out that to understand this universe, the differences between the masculine and the feminine should be analyzed, understanding the different as a positive aspect that "conveys the idea that each has something of its own that it brings to others, and with this, there is mutual enrichment".

"We have a revolutionary goal ahead of us: to make the masculine and the feminine flatter each other, to understand and learn from their difference". To this end, the psychotherapist analyzed some of the differences between the two. One of them, she explained, is the way they give life. She recalled Aristotle pointing out that "the feminine is that which can engender within its body, and the masculine engenders outside of it. However, neither can generate life without the other". This fact, according to Ceriotti, conditions the way in which both parties "see and are in the world".

The expert highlighted the role of the woman as "decisive": she is the first educator, the one who carries the child in herself, the first to transmit her emotions, she raises him, financial aid him in his first stages of life and leaves a very deep imprint that cannot be cancelled".

On the other hand, Ceriotti pointed out that in the past, the dimension of women had been divided between the maternal woman, dedicated to caring for the family, and the erotic woman. The important thing, she said, is for each woman to find "a balance between both parts," so that she can help to keep that vision together.