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

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

The only things I can think of that might be bad about it are if the child is made responsible for the mother's happiness by being required to *continue* spending all their time with them, even as they grow up and want to do other things. This is, obviously, totally not an issue with a ten-month-old, but if the mother can't wean herself from her child's constant company when the child is five or ten or fifteen and wants to be adventuring with their friends, there can be problems. I've seen one case of a mother whose definition of 'attachment parenting' obligated her five kids to practice 'attachment childing', and involved major guilt-threnodies whenever they wanted to go anywhere without her.

[ailbhe]

eurgh.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Unfortunately, she found a therapist who agreed with her, and forced her kids into therapy designed to address the "issues that were making them act out by withdrawing from their family." I have to think it's a wonder that the kids are still as sane as they are.

[ailbhe]

Well, the person paying the therapy bills is more likely to be right, right?