Mothers should always be with their children until they are 3 years old

[abacucat]

This is what one parenting "expert" is recommending in the name of attachment parenting. And he does mean mothers, not fathers. AIBU to think this is a load of rubbish? Babies and toddlers are not damaged as is alleged, from spending time apart from their mother.

www.drmomma.org/2010/07/mother-toddler-separation.html

It would be nice to think so, and I was lucky to spend all the time at home with my children when they were tiny, but not everyone can do that. Times have moved on!

More guilt feeling articles. Fuck right off. I went back to work when my son was 1 because I was lucky enough that my boyfriend supported me.
Working part time has saved my sanity, I could not be a stay at home mum, and I'm not ashamed of this, fantastic, if it works for some people but not for me. In fact I'd be depressed as arse if I couldn't work and would be a terrible mum as a result.
Funnily enough I co sleep with my child who is 3 years, 4 months but still feel cross about this article.
I also needed to come back to work as I couldn't afford to lose my job, job security is quite important to me too as I'd like to be able to feed my family and have a roof over my head!

If you can do it and want to there is some truth in it ! I did, but would they have turned out any differently if I hadn’t ? Will never know.

Surely it is quality time over quantity of time you spend with children that counts! An hour of attentive communication can be worth much more than 10 hours of keeping them occupied.

It's a bit late to stop it now, but I'm not sure why this thread has become entirely about SAHM vs WOHM. If you're a SAHM who ever leaves the kids with anyone else for a few hours - even their dad - then you're also failing according to this man!

I think there’s a lot of truth in it - despite that being an unpopular perspective. I think the odd hour or two is fine but overall, little ones are better off with their mother.
I think swapping babies and toddlers between separated or never together parents is very damaging to their emotional health. I think being dumped in the institutional care of a nursery up to 10 hours a day is damaging. I understand some have to do it to survive but an awful lot do it for themselves. I really don’t understand why you have children if you don’t want to raise them yourself.

Then again I think children out of a long standing committed relationship, preferably marriage is not in the children’s best interests.

Stopped at the word 'he'!!

A man wrote this piece of horseshit? A man?

Well, he can fuck off.

😂 at the title alone. I can't even face rtft. He's a cunt.

If nursery is so damaging to children, why are there no quality peer-reviewed studies proving it?

Judgemental, much @CherryPavlova?!

A good or outstanding nursery is not "institutional care". It's a nursery not a neglectful Romanian orphanage.

What's your reasoning for why it must be mothers that must stay with children till they're three? Why aren't fathers suited to looking after their own children? Are you equally outraged by fathers who work long hours/work away and never see their children?

I just read that article and it's batshit crazy. Attachment theory proper also has sod all to do with 'attachment parenting', which is frankly a load of pseudoscientific justification for reactionary claptrap.

Mothers shouldn't leave their babies for more than a short time till they're 3??? How on earth does this loon think people with more than one child manage? And why insist on calling toddlers 'babies'? There's SUCH a world of difference between a (say) sub-6mo infant and a 2yo.

Personally I've no beef with anyone who wants to do attachment parenting style stuff if that's what works for them as a family, but writing doomy articles about how you'll raise damaged children if you don't is both utterly without scientific basis and also, if written by a man, utterly fucking outrageous.

(I've been off MN for years and just had to log back in to huff about this ridiculous article )

I’m afraid a good or outstanding nursery is better than an inadequate one but remains, by definition, institutional care.

Mothers simply because of the practicality of feeding and the time needed to adjust physically post birth. Mothers because a family surviving on maternity pay is quite tough and it’s more logical for the father to continue in full time work during the second and subsequent pregnancy and postnatal period.

Father’s, of course, should assume full responsibility as parents but babies need one strong, consistent, closely bonded relationship and that is usually the mother.

Manatee Totally agree. And I have met parents who call cots prisons and refer to the bars on the side. It is batshit crazy.

Institutional care is strictly accurate as nurseries are organisations set up to provide care. But it has strong overtones of neglect and being uncaring, which is why it is a very emotive word to use.

Babies and toddlers need an adult/adults who love and care about them. That is all.

Total and utter crap. Expert, my arse!

Unless shared parental leave works for you, and you choose to mix feed or formula feed.

I'm not suggesting that it should be the norm for women to go back to work at a few weeks post-birth. But nothing you've said means that fathers are unsuited to shared care, or being the main care giver whilst the child is under 3.

You wrote "being dumped in the institutional care of a nursery up to 10 hours a day is damaging". The use of "dumped" is emotive and implies that parents who use nurseries don't care about their child. The use of the word institutional is meant to imply that nurseries are dreadful places where the children are treated badly. Don't try and pretend otherwise. It's judgemental nonsense.

The usual emotive crap comes out.... Yeap, a nursery might be institutional by definition, but why use the word ‘dumped’? You’d only use that word if you’re instinctively judgemental about parents who use nurseries. Why not use a neutral term... ‘placed in’ rather than dumped??

I return to my original point many pages ago: there is a thinly veiled resentment in views like this. As if it’s just about acceptable for a mother to work just so long as you can convince yourself there is some damaging downside: that the children of working parents must do less well at school, or be less happy, or less close to their parents. It must really grind these people’s gears to know there is no evidence to back this up.

If you want to stay home for 3 years providing 1 on 1 care for your child then fine- do it. Just don’t feel you have to justify your choice by claiming that other people’s children are any less emotionally healthy and happy as yours

In traditional tribal societies babies and toddlers spend up to 50% of time with other adults. Indeed there are theories that women land men live beyond child rearing age, so that they can help raise other children. The idea of a mother spending all her waking time with a child is a historical aberration.

I really should have hidden this thread..... It has all the tick boxes to make me want to slam my head on my desk:
Professional overstepping their professional expertise and qualifications to proclaim 'expertise' in areas that they have poor knowledge and training (Dr Wootan is a medical Dr- the sort that treats chicken pox and sprained ankles- he is neither a board accredited psychiatrist nor psychologist. As such his professional doctorate will have offered no training in attachment theory, developmental psychology or anything else relevant to the topic)

Random quoting of pseudo science/pop psychology to justify points of view.....

Gender stereotyping (god forbid a man could be a caregiver)

Misunderstanding completely what attachment theory is and isn't and how to create a secure attachment (overly involved parenting can actually lend itself to anxious/avoidant attachments)
As an antidote to the above please feel free to read this (long but thorough) piece written by a developmental psychologist...
here

Thanks Hettie.
And yes there is so much bollocks written about attachment theory.

@Hugemanatee glad its not just me

read the article its really rather good at questioning the link between attachment parenting and secure attachement

This notion is not only wrongheaded and historically/culturally blinkered. It is IMO yet another person's "knowledgeable" opinion based on absolutely nothing. Alas, such opinions seem deeply ingrained in the culture at the moment.

And yet, evidence points to some very clear positive benefits of having a working mother. From a 2015 study: The study, which surveyed 50,000 adults in 24 developed countries, found that "daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles, and earned higher incomes," reports Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times.

And while working mothers didn't influence the careers of sons, they did influence their attitudes toward domestic labor. Men raised by working mothers spent more time on household chores and childcare.

www.businessinsider.com/study-working-mothers-and-career-success-2015-5

Now I absolutely believe that SAHPs can be excellent role models for their children (a point also made by the article linked above). But I also think it's important to be aware of research like this.

And I am the OP. I posted it to say - fucks sake look at this pile of shit. Not to have anyone actually take it seriously!!!!

I fucking wish creating emotionally stable well functioning children was as easy as mothers staying at home.... If only

Another study has shown that current working mothers spend more time with their children than SAHMs of previous generations did. So one has to wonder: which would you choose? A SAHM who spends less time with her children or a WOHM who spends more time with them?

(I know which one I'd choose.)