Archive for the ‘Baby’ Category
Fatherly Roles
In the early weeks of the new baby’s life especially, a father can share household responsibilities, being sufficiently supportive and perceptive to see what needs to be done and pitching in to do it. By exercising some control over the number of visitors and the time they are allowed to stay, taking over household errands and performing routine tasks, such as getting some meals and cleaning up after them, doing the laundry, and running the vacuum cleaner, he can help provide the serenity and order that will give the family’s home life a semblance of normality in a time of stress. However inexperienced he is at child care, he can learn within a very short time to be skilled at and to enjoy changing, bathing, and comforting the baby, and if not feeding her, performing the important after feeding task of burping.
Though you will find your child reacting to her father differently as the child grows-your eighteen month old, for example, will enjoy roughhousing with Daddy, but when in trouble will very likely turn only to Mommy-the effect of a close, nurturing relationship with a male figure is good for both boys and girls. The popularity of Fred Rogers for nearly twenty years on public television’s Mister Roger’s Neighborhood indicates how enthusiastically children react to caring presence of men in their lives.
Besides lending a hand around the house and accepting some of the responsibility for the care of his child, the new father often takes the traditionally male responsibilities very seriously. He may feel the financial burden of a third member of the family very strongly, especially if the mother’s income has been important and she does not plan to return to work in the near future. And he may envy his wife her opportunity to stay home with the baby as much as she envies his being able to get out every day.
Men who participate as fully as they can in the birth of their babies and who continue to share the responsibilities of home and children, find the rewards great. Their lives take on a new dimension; their marriages are strengthened and become more meaningful. Fathers can "mother" too, and those who choose to accept that responsibility, are today the norm, not the exception. Reports of surveys bulge with statistics. Here are just a few: Eighty-five percent of fathers are present during their wife’s labor; fifty percent during delivery. Ninety-six percent help with baby and child care; eighty percent do not refuse to change diapers.
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Parent-Infant Bond
Given the opportunity, parents and babies naturally form a strong relationship with each other. This relationship is often called the parent-infant bond. For the parent, this bond is woven of love and responsibility. For the infant, it is his first-and perhaps most important-relationship.
Psychoanalysts have theorized that a first love relationship a baby experiences with a parent sets the stage for all later interpersonal relationships. They contend that if you don’t have this necessary relationship in your formative years, you won’t be able to love as an adult. A number of psychologists and psychiatrists have found support for this view. For example, John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst, studied children growing up without parents in the first years of life; these children often had problems relating with others and forming bonds later in life. From such studies, psychologists have recognized what parents knew all along-how important sensitive, responsive, and consistent parenting is to the healthy development of a child.
However, it is also important to point out that babies may not have to be with their parents all the time, despite the current emphasis in Lamaze classes and parents magazines on the position that there is a “critical period’ for parents to bond to their babies. Supporters of this position state that parents who are separated from their newborns after birth will have difficulty forming that essential parent-infant bond. Citing studies conducted with animals, they point out that mother mice will often refuse to care for their young if they are separated right after birth. Fortunately, humans are not mice, and more recent research suggests that human mothers generally quite able to go on to be good mothers even if they have to be separated from their babies as a result of prematurity, illness, or other reasons.
Nonetheless, positive changes have occurred because of recent recognition of the process of bonding. Many hospitals have dramatically humanized the way in which parents and babies are treated… Parents are allowed greater contact with babies, particularly in intensive care nurseries. There, parents can now often participate in the feeding, handling, and general care of their babies right away, instead of waiting until their infants are released from the hospital.
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