So what's the issue?

[ailbhe]

I 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?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Why? Because I, the person saying that, do want to leave my child for more than a day, and I feel guilty about wanting to, so therefore I'm going to make it so that I'm right and everyone who feels differently than I do is wrong, and so I don't have to feel guilty.

Rather than just accept that it's okay for me to feel that way, and leave the child in capable hands for a day or two, and it's ALSO okay for someone else to NOT feel that way.

'Cause it's very hard for a lot of us humans to accept that other humans may be different than we are and yet not have anything wrong with them. Therefore, we have to define "difference" as "wrongness", so that we can make ourselves be right.

[rmc28]

I think you've pretty much got it there. The idea that different things work for different people seems surprisingly hard to get across.

I have no idea how I'll feel about wanting to be away from my baby, but I guess I'll find out.

[ailbhe]

"they'll talk your methods down until they feel sure they're doing it right"

Apparently I knew all this years ago but have forgotten.