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

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

I think that, if an otherwise reasonably mentally healthy mother doesn't want multi-hour breaks from her baby, it's probably a sign that she has a good support system.

I wanted breaks from my 10 month old. Not overnight breaks, but multi-hour breaks. I was also the primary person in charge of him 24/7 with very rare exceptions and didn't really have any sort of social network.

I think it's impossible for some people to understand that a primary caretaker could get the relaxation that she needs while still being near the baby.

[ailbhe]

"I think that, if an otherwise reasonably mentally healthy mother doesn't want multi-hour breaks from her baby, it's probably a sign that she has a good support system."

Or an easy baby, or both.