I was disappointed to see the tone of "blame the mother" in this
discussion of mothers "abandoning" their babies to go to work. I
absolutely agree that the best place for a baby to be is with its
mother, and that the nurturing provided by a mother provides the
template for natural emotional growth in children - and contributes to a
non-violent, cooperative society.
However, I do not think mothers are making a callous choice to leave
their babies. I think they are responding to external factors. I think
they are responding to being raised themselves in a culture that does
not honor parenting as a valuable contribution to society (if we did,
we'd have paid maternity leave, like the rest of the industrialized
world). I think women are under tremendous pressure to "do it all" - to
have a family, be a mother, and yet also be a "productive" (i.e.
wage-earning) member of our financial society. For many, there is not
access to health care without a job, there is not adequate housing,
there is not a social support network. They see all the women around
them doing this, and so it must be normal. There is not modeling in our
society of optimal parenting - and women just try to do what they
perceive as "normal".
I hope that we will all turn our energies towards changing policy and
changing society to allow women to be recognized for the valuable
contributions of mothering. If you are worried about women abandoning
their babies to go to work, write to your congressperson demanding a
reasonable paid parental leave. If you are worried about women going
back to work so they can have health insurance, stage protests demanding
universal health care. If you think a woman should save up enough to
support a family before having one, fight for livable wages for the
people who teach our children, serve our food, and keep our cities
clean. It's all connected, but the last person who should shoulder the
blame is the mother, who is put into a terrible bind by all of these
forces that she's not even aware of until she holds that precious baby
in her arms and has to leave the child to go to work.
Kirsten Berggren, PhD, RN, IBCLC
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