So what's the issue?
Jun. 13th, 2006 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheI paraphrase: "If you'd rather not leave your 10-month-old baby for more than a day, you have deeper issues." I didn't paraphrase the "deeper issues" phrase, since I'm not clear what it means, but the context implies "problems".
But I've heard this before - that it's unhealthy to want to spend almost all of every waking day with your baby, that wanting regular time away in multi-hour chunks is more normal than not, that not wanting such time is evidence that the parent is weirdly dependent on the baby and fostering a dependent attitude in the child, suffocating and other things I can't remember the names for now. If it's a boy-baby Oedipus comes into things once the discussion gets sufficiently heated.
The bit I don't understand is why it's bad for parents, particularly mothers, to want to spend most of the time with their children, caring for them, not leaving them with a sitter or a carer or similar. How does it hurt the mother? How does it hurt the child? How much time away from the child, leaving someone else to care for it, is necessary for optimal psikerlogical development?
This makes about as much sense to me as the assumption that it's bad for children to be left with an alternative carer while the parents, to pick a random example, go out and earn food money, or study, or take papier mache lessons. Why?
But I've heard this before - that it's unhealthy to want to spend almost all of every waking day with your baby, that wanting regular time away in multi-hour chunks is more normal than not, that not wanting such time is evidence that the parent is weirdly dependent on the baby and fostering a dependent attitude in the child, suffocating and other things I can't remember the names for now. If it's a boy-baby Oedipus comes into things once the discussion gets sufficiently heated.
The bit I don't understand is why it's bad for parents, particularly mothers, to want to spend most of the time with their children, caring for them, not leaving them with a sitter or a carer or similar. How does it hurt the mother? How does it hurt the child? How much time away from the child, leaving someone else to care for it, is necessary for optimal psikerlogical development?
This makes about as much sense to me as the assumption that it's bad for children to be left with an alternative carer while the parents, to pick a random example, go out and earn food money, or study, or take papier mache lessons. Why?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 03:30 pm (UTC)A lot of people might feel that by refusing to leave baby with someone else you are compromising your marriage/relationship and/or missing out on working/socialising/studying/whatever-it-is-they-do.
Other people might feel that by constantly being with a child you deprive the child of the oportunity to socialise with a)other children and b)other adults without your interference. I don't know anything about child psychology though so I've no idea whether they are right. I suspect if the child in question was 10 years then the answer is yes but at 10 months I've really no clue.
Personally I think that it's up to the mother to figure out what will work for her on this front. Most children grow up to become sensible adults who have only a mild dislike for their parents, thusly I suspect that most (obv. there are things which You Should Not Do but they are all terribly horrible things that no sane person would do to their own child) parenting styles work Just Fine.