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

[ailbhe]

Well, when I leave Linnea with someone else, I have no idea what happens, but when I don't, I know that she sometimes wants my company, and sometimes plays for hours alone (up to two hours at a stretch). Often she plays in the same room as me, while I do something entirely different.

I do know that Rob spends proportionately more time actively interacting with her than I do when he's got solo charge, but less overall.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Which sounds about right to me. But I have an aunt who used to literally follow her kids around and insist on entertaining them and, now, she has a 13 year old and a 7 year old who cannot entertain themselves (even together with a game) for more than 20 minutes at a time. That's being with your child taken to extreme.

[ailbhe]

If I had as much energy as your aunt I'd cook better :)

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Eek! Mine are twelve and two instances of almost-eleven and perfectly able to entertain themselves/each other with or without me around. I wouldn't have taken the job if I'd been at all uncertain about that. (Though they have both my work number and my mobile number and know which nearby adult to call in which circumstances, just in case)

[bookwitch.livejournal.com]

This sounds perfectly healthy to me.

I posted recently about feeling guilty when I have to do housework instead of playing with my daughter. Some people responded as if I NEVER LET THE CHILD HAVE A MOMENT'S PEACE. She plays by herself plenty.


And I can tell you, even when I feel like I just HAVE TO HAVE TIME AWAY, after a while I start missing her.

I think it's perfectly healthy.