Social responsibility to support new parents must follow demise of Isis Parenting

"Where I live (Paris) women are very lonely when having a baby. Is it the same in the US?"

A French journalist posed this question to me in an email interview two days ago. My verbatim response:

"Social isolation and often along with that postpartum depression are problems here in the US for new mothers.
There are mother- baby groups to try to address this issue, but not nearly enough."

Now, in our Boston communities and other places in the US, there are a lot fewer.

The economics of the sudden demise of Isis Parenting, a private retail company,is described in the Globe article today. But as my colleague at the Freedman Center at MSPP (Massachusetts School For Professional Psychology) that also runs mother-baby groups, said in reaction to the announcement by Isis, "you cant make money running mother-baby groups." 

A harsh tweet derides the company for catering to the wealthy with high end products. But in the absence of a system of social support of new parents, what choice is there? 

Isis offered what D.W. Winnicott termed a "holding environment" for new parents. Not just a physical space, but a community of relationships. This fact is reflected in a collection of tweets about Nancy Holtzman, vice president of clinical content and e-learning, at #thingsnancytaughtme.

Another way to describe what Isis offered is a "secure base:" In my book Keeping Your Child in Mind ( that was just released in France, thus the interview with the French journalist) I describe the extensive research evidence for the role of this secure base, both for parent and child, in healthy emotional development. 

John Bowlby, describing the essential role of attachment relationships in survival, spoke of a child’s need for what he called a “secure base” from which to explore the world and grow into a separate person. He also recognized the need for a mother to have a secure base of her own in order to provide this security for her child

In our culture extended families, that in past times might have offered that "holding environment" or "secure base," are often fragmented by distance and/or divorce. If one parent, usually the father, works very long hours, a new mother may feel very much alone. Isis parenting helped these parents not to feel alone. 

The United States lags behind significantly in support of new parents, as represented by a highly restrictive parental leave policy. A recent BBC article described an alternative approach in Finland: 

For 75 years, Finland's expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It's like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates.

Not only does this gift offer material help, but also an official recognition by the government that new parents have an important role to play and deserve to be valued and supported.

President Obama has recognized the need to invest resources in early childhood, and developed an Early Childhood Initiative. This is an important step in the right direction. 

But this will not help the families in the Boston area, who are now on their own with the loss of Isis. What can we do on the local level? It is my hope that government agencies, foundations and others who are in a position to support the kind of services Isis offered, that almost by definition do not make money, will step up to the plate to help fill the void. It will be an important investment in children, families and our future.

Childhood trauma: stories that must be told

My 51st birthday is approaching. My father is 87 years old. Yet it was not until this spring that I learned details of the story of his childhood in Nazi Germany, his escape to America as a teenager, and his dramatic rescue of his parents from the concentration camp Theresienstadt when he returned to Germany as a soldier with the United States army.  It took his grandson, my 13-year-old son, to get him to break this silence, when my son requested that his grandfather speak to his 8th grade class following their visit to the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC.

My father's story is one of not only survival, but of triumph in the midst of unimaginable horror. He would never use the word "trauma" to describe his experience.  Bits of the story had emerged at times, in part around my daughter's bat-mitzvah 4 years earlier. But in general he ascribed to Elie Weisel's notion that it was a horror so great it could not be spoken of.

French psychoanalysts Francoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudilliere have a different adage on the cover of their book, History Beyond Trauma; "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one cannot stay silent." They argue that personal stories of war and societal trauma, if not told in words, emerge as symptoms, sometimes as mental illness, sometimes in subsequent generations.

Davoine offers a wonderful example in a story of her own family. She and her husband were on a trip with their young children when she discovered a growth in her abdomen. Despite a fear of cancer, they decided to say nothing to their children and finish the month-long trip. Shortly after the discovery, her son developed severe anxiety around bedtime and refused to go to sleep. It emerged that, being highly sensitive to his parents emotions, as children can be, he was worried, but didn't know what to be afraid of. When his parents explained about the lump, his sleep problem resolved. They write:

Let us imagine, for a moment, the following catastrophic scenario: continuing to play the admirable mother, Francoise keeps the secret. The child would find himself burdened by the cut out truth of the story. Rushing into a hyperactive exploration, or barricaded in a hyperpassive withdrawal, nowadays he might have been quickly diagnosed and chemically brought back to reason.

In my behavioral pediatrics practice, I often hear stories like this from parents, both of major trauma in the form of such things as abuse or death of a sibling, or subtler trauma of having an emotionally troubled parent. At first parents focus on the child's "behavior problem." But in a non-judgmental atmosphere where sufficient time is given,  parents are usually eager talk about their own history, and become curious about the effects of their experience on themselves as parents, and on their child.

For example, a 4-year-old girl  had severe separation anxiety. It emerged that her mother had a miscarriage when she was three, and had never had the opportunity to mourn the loss. Her daughter was worried about her, and so did not want to leave her either to go to school or go to sleep.  A father of another boy with "defiant behavior." had been abused by his own father, and found himself full of explosive rage that came out, against his will, in his relationship with his young son.

In recent posts I have been focusing on qualities a child brings to the relationship with his parents. In our quest to understand a child's experience, this is an essential piece. But equally important is to understand what parents bring to the relationship, in particular in terms of their own unique history. Parent-child relationships are a complex, intricate dance. At times they can be clumsy and full of stepped on toes. But with work and careful attention, they can be transformed back into a dance of joy and grace.

I am blessed by the fact that my father is alive and in good health. I am hopeful that we now have the opportunity to write a book together telling of both his remarkable life, and also how his experience came to be known by me and my children. It will serve as a dramatic example of a story that needs to be told.

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