Posted on 08/07/2018 11:29:05 AM PDT by fwdude
A leading psychotherapist in New York City in the last 25 years has warned that mothers who return to work too soon after having babies are damaging their children’s mental health.
In a video for the New York Post, Erica Komisar revealed how she’s seen an ‘epidemic level of mental disorders in very young children,’ which she puts down to the “devaluing of mothering in society.”
The author of Being There, Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters explained that babies experience a rush of cortisol and a great deal of stress when they’re away from their mothers.
She argued that when working women return from work in the evenings they spend as little as 90 minutes with their babies before they put them to bed — and then find that they are unable to sleep through the night because they’re craving their mothers’ attention.
“Our society tells women go back to work, do what you want, they’ll be ok,” she explained. “But they’re not OK.”
“I was seeing it in my parent guidance practice. I was actually seeing an epidemic level of mental disorders in very young children who were being diagnosed and medicated at an earlier and earlier age.”
“I started looking at the research which backed up what I was seeing in my practice, which is that the absence of mothers on a daily basis in children’s lives was impacting their mental health.”
Referencing research that’s been done since the ‘60s, she said the only thing that reduces stress for babies is when their mothers return from work.
“I still say daycare is my least favorite option,” she said. “You’re taking a very young baby and exposing them to a great deal of stimulation and a great deal of fear.”
“When you take them out of their immediate environment and put them in a group with a lot of stimulation and a lot of people that’s not the natural environment for babies.”
“When we give mothers the option of being home in the first three years we increase the emotional security and reduce mental disorders.”
“On a societal level we need to recognize mothers’ work is valuable work. We emphasize material success and professional achievement, but there is no more valuable or more important work.”
Even though there is a high appreciation of mothers’ work in the homeschool movement, the voice of Erica Komisar, who is a psychotherapist outside the homeschool movement, reinforces the value of mothers’ presence in the lives of their children in their early childhood. She is a voice from the secular world confirming the same warnings that Christian homeschool leaders as Mary Pride have given for decades.
With information from DailyMail.
Science proving what average, normal human beings always understood in the past.
Shocked.
Nobody saw this coming.
Completely unexpected.
bttt
This also seems to be observations and conclusions from ONE psychotherapist in NYC, and maybe it should not be taken as anything else. JMHO
Is it any wonder Autism, ADD, ADHD, etc. are on the rise?
A Letter From The Nanny
...I want to address all of the working mothers, working pregnant women and those considering having children in the future, because I’ll tell them what none of their friends will.
I do not love your children. That’s right. As much as you would like to think I love them and treat them as my own, the reality is I CANNOT love your children. I did not give birth to them. I did not bond with them. I am doing a job for a paycheck. (snip)
https://www.drlaura.com/b/A-Letter-From-The-Nanny/-769837931632511387.html
Hardly.
Agreed. This is true. No other mammal is this heartless to their babies. If you’ve got grandma there, or a long term loving nanny, that does help. But it would be best if it’s mama or Daddy full time with that little one.
What's horrible is warehousing your children in "daycare" centers where who knows who is handling them, mishandling them, or ignoring them. At least at home you have a little more control.
Agree entirely.
I have to say that La Leche League helped me value motherhood and early childhood bonding. I didn’t nurse for years like some of them do, but I got the point that when a kid is bonded, he trusts you and he will cooperate with you. Both of my kids are teens now, but they still actually trust what my husband and I tell them, and they tell us what is going on, pretty much. (I don’t want the gossip and stuff.) They are well-grounded, for their age and personality types.
Blowback: I knew a blind woman who had anger issues because both her parents were blind; it’s part of deaf culture, to prefer to have deaf children. Daycare has taken hold so much in our culture, it’s “where & when” not “if”, if you don’t do daycare (we never did), you will be disapproved.
I noticed this obvious trend when I was working in the print/online world. The women who became pregnant would work until their due date, then rush back to work as soon as they were physically able, as if they were afraid of missing something. I couldn’t help but wonder who was taking care of the baby. Only one former colleague quit working to see to her newborn.
“What’s horrible is warehousing your children in “daycare” centers where who knows who is handling them, mishandling them, or ignoring them. At least at home you have a little more control.”
Agree in principle, but I also worry about trusting one unsupervised person (e.g. a nanny) to watch a child. These days, however, there are multiple options to monitor what they do. That said, having a parent at home is best.
Where is Meryl Streep to yell, “What are we doing to our children!”?
Thank God I'm not the only one who thinks this. A NEWBORN baby, handed to strangers for 8-10 hours a day. I cannot even comprehend.
As if a shrink’s opinion is worth a plugged nickel.
Trolling for $. Just another ploy to get even more kids on pharmacology.
Many nannies in my area (Texas) are fresh-off-the-boat “immigrants,” who bring who-knows-what cultural practices in childcare with them. I’d rather let pet dogs watch them.
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