New Comprehensive Study Reveals Infants Need Mothers
11/28/2005 11:15:00 AM
By Rhonda Robinson
Why is the concept that children, especially infants, need their mothers such a hard concept for us to grasp? This is not a new idea.
Perhaps the reason it is such a foreign concept, is that the last three generations of mothers have been misled, if not lied to-and we bought it.
In the "it takes a village to raise a child" world we live in, mothers are told "you need to get away" rather than "your baby needs you." While most mothers could use a night out, most really don't want to be separated from their infants for any length of time.
Yes, moms get frazzled at times. That does not't mean they need another job. It means they need a nap, and a long bath...alone.
The real damage to children and mothers alike, has come from the notion that children are better off being in an institutionalized setting learning their abc's, rather than in their own homes with mothers who love them.
There are always those families for whom mom working is necessary. I am not condemning the mother who has to care for her family. The crime is not that she has to work; the crime is in telling all mothers that this is the best lifestyle for them and their children, simply to relieve their guilt and keep them working. If you follow the money, its not going home, it's going into the tax base.
In the most comprehensive, ongoing child care study to date, researchers studied the effects of preschool on young children's behavior and emotional development, and discovered what should have been obvious--and as natural as hearing a baby cry.
What they found however, shocked them, and the results are flying in the face of what feminists and liberals have been selling for years.
The new study from University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University found a direct link to the amount of hours a child spends in daycare and problems in kindergarten, such as defiance and aggression. The study revealed that children who spend more than 30 hours in daycare, while learning their abc's, also got high marks in "cruelty," "explosive behavior," and "demands a lot of attention."
 The study began in 1991 and will conclude in January 2007, as the children move into ninth grade. Researchers say that their findings have been surprising. Among the most unexpected findings, was that white, middle-class and well-off children who spend six or more hours a day in a preschool setting suffer the most in terms of emotional growth. They found the earlier a child enters preschool, the slower the social and emotional development. "Our results for the intensity of attending a center program-measured in hours per week and months per year--are worrisome..."
The problem is that when the "village" stepped in to "raise a child" it pushed mom out the door. Mothers have been comforted with words like, oh she will be fine, as she's leaving a tearful child with out-stretched arms.
Those words ring hollow in light of the Harvard Longitudinal Study that found "daycare children are significantly disadvantaged in later life by the inability to form psychological attachments. The younger the age at which children are put in daycare the worse is this effect."
The problems children are having in schools, the social and emotional issues that have escalated are baffling to the professionals that are trying to help them.
Our legislature passed the Illinois Mental Health Act of 2003 (read more HERE), primarily on this faulty foundation that children who are being cruel, hitting and throwing things, hurting one another, being disobedient, defiant and unwilling to learn, are in need of state intervention, turns out they need their mom.
The degree of the anger and rebellion seen these very young children have professionals concerned, yet no program can replace a mother's arms, kiss, or discipline.
Babies have not changed since the dawn of time. They still have the same needs. They come to us helpless. They are in need of food, warmth, and the need to be loved, and not just bonded into a family but also encompassed by it.
As we have pushed aside the very people uniquely qualified to care for the cradle of humanity, we find a generation of children born into society with severe emotional defects. Rather than placing children back into the arms of their mothers, we prescribe medication for "detachment disorder" and "oppositional defiance disorder," so they can function in school.
To overlook the role a mother plays in the life of a child is like a doctor over looking the role of nutrition when treating starvation.
 Rhonda Robinson has spent the last 18 years in grade school, as a homeschooling mother of nine. She and her husband of 29 years live in Douglas County in central Illinois.
Rhonda Robinson's website is www.across-the-fence.com. Rhonda also pens her perspective as a weekly columnist for the Greater Illinois News Group on the current social, political and parenting issues shaping the family, and is a news correspondent for the Illinois Leader.
With disarming humor and thoughtful insight, Rhonda is a popular women's conference speaker on the art of mothering in a post-Christian culture.
Her work regularly appears in The Link, and Illinois Family Institute and Changing World Views.
You can contact Rhonda via email: rhonda@across-the-fence.com
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