The very first thing is the common myth that the second income will be oh-so-highly needed. In reality, after taxes and deductions, only about 2/3 of the gross amount of that income will come to you as pocket cash. Of that money, you will need to figure in the cost of things to maintain that job such as costs of transportation, clothing, and costs of meals (you can’t bring your lunch everyday if a coworker or boss asks to go out to eat), plus any additional costs that could be job-related. So for someone like me, who would be just beginning a career while having a baby, the money I would get for a starting salary (just out of college and inexperienced) job is just not worth the cost of putting my baby in child-care. My disclaimer here is that I am by no means saying that I would never work—I am specifically talking about the baby’s first 3-5 years.A fun side-note is that my education I am getting now would not be “wasted” by staying home to raise my baby, seeing as my education studies parent-children relationships.
Moving on…
The next issue centers on why the first five years of life are the most important. This is incredibly interesting to me as I have had the opportunity to research this in child and family studies. The theories of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth on Attachment, commonly known today as the “Bowlby-Ainsworth Attachment Theory,” is the leading theory used today in understanding relationships. And where, you ask, does this begin to matter in a person’s life? It begins to matter the day the baby is born and is the most crucial the first 3 years of the baby’s life. In these years, the baby’s PRIMARY need is to be meaningfully attached, specifically to the mother. The mother’s accurate attentive care is important because during this process the child is forming mental representations of self and others that will serve as a filter for understanding and perceiving future relationships and social interactions. The severity of a need for a mother to be emotionally, maturely, and psychologically prepared to be attuned to the baby’s needs is seen through this theory. As the theory proposed, the way a child’s needs are responded to, and the time manner the child is responded to, will directly construct how the child abstracts assumptions about their self and others. This is where the idea of attachment styles comes in.
A secure attachment style is ideal and this is a situation where the child’s needs are accurately and consistently met (I won’t get into the other styles, since after all; you didn’t come here for a class lecture). The attachment style affects the FORMATION and maintenance of relationships. In other words, the mother-child relationships set the stage for the rest of your life in how you cope with your relationships you have today. The quality of security children experience in their attachment relationships is thought to be internalized in the form of working models called Internalized Working Models (IWM). These IWM are thought to be closely related to representational models of the self. For example, if a child’s needs for comfort are frequently rejected or ridiculed, the child may come to develop not only a model of the attachment figure as rejecting, but also of himself or herself as unworthy of love and attention. The IWM charges the infant’s understandings about one’s lovableness and worthiness and about one’s trustworthiness. Basically, the connection between the mother and the child is IRREPLACEABLE. This is why they say that you cannot spoil a baby in the first year of life. The whole cry-it-out thing is scarily unhealthy for the baby—because in this the baby’s needs are not being met and therefore forming an IWM that reflects this. After about three years old, the child’s IWM is relatively stable and at this point the child is pretty resilient in situations that counteract the security that has already been established by the loving care of the mother.
So my next point is about why the secure relationship is needed specifically from the mother. The mother is the primary caregiver (in most situations) for the baby and thus they come to know that their primary source of relief will be from the mother. This is why infants/toddlers may cry around a stranger but be instantly calmed by the presence of the mother. This gets me so excited to have a baby one day and know that I will be that security and that comfort that they desperately seek. All babies will show behaviors such as clinginess to the mother or neediness for the mother. The way the mother reacts in these situations are not all the same. A mother who is accurately responding to the child’s needs adjust their pace and behavior in accordance to the baby’s behavior. However some mothers have difficulty responding in a loving, attuned, consistent way and are inconsistent and usually detached. They will respond by doing things like mock the baby, stare down at the baby, speak sarcastically, hostilely reject and just be harsh in general. Why does the response of the mother even matter? If you’re feeding the baby, changing the baby, and letting the baby sleep, should that be enough? Absolutely not! It matters because it forms the infant’s classification of attachment and their IWM they will use for the rest of their lives.
A quick example of what accurately perceiving needs looks like:
Mother number one is breastfeeding and as she sees her baby look up at her and drop the nipple out of her mouth she begins to speak sweetly to the child. The baby continues to stare up at the mother and the mother continues her sweet remarks in a soft, loving voice. The mother realizes that as long as the baby is staring up at her she must meet the baby’s needs.
Mother number two breastfeeds her child and also notices that the baby looks up at her. The mother’s over the top interaction and over-exaggerated facial expressions is obviously not of interest to the baby who looks away. In response the mother moves her head in front of the baby forcing the baby to look as her amps up her performance. The baby looks away again and the mother is not taking this as a cue to lower her behavior; rather she continues until the baby is closing her eyes to avoid eye contact with the mother.
Why do I bring this up? Well it’s obvious that both of these mothers have good intentions (just as I am sure many child-care workers do), however it is the job of the mother to accurately perceive what it is the baby really needs and sometimes the cues are so subtle (like a look in the eyes) that it takes someone who puts a lot of attention into the relationship to perceive.
This brings me to the last point, (sigh, I know, this has been quite a rant), the issue of child-care at such a young age. Even if I do everything I can to be the most loving and fulfilling mother for my child, meeting their needs the quickest and best I can; their attachment classification and IWM can be counteracted by a childcare center. This means that if I were to drop my 2 year old off at daycare and the caregivers cannot give him or her attention they need in a quick amount of time or in an appropriate way, the child will construct their ideas of relationships off of this, rather than off of the care I have been actively trying to give. (Scary huh?) The BEST care of infants and toddlers is a loving, caring mother. However, I have to note that it is important that the mother is doing what they want to be doing because that will also affect the child. Lucky for me, I desire to be a stay-at-home mother and I cannot wait to do everything I can for my baby so that he or she will form secure mindsets about their sense of self-worth and their ideas of the people around them.
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