Post #13B Neglectful/Uninvolved Parenting Style
This parenting style, it seems to me, is the most difficult to consider. Some of the definitions online assess the benefits and drawbacks for the parenting styles. For this one, Uninvolved/Neglectful they state quite baldly, there are no benefits.
Approaching motherhood, my journal tells me, “I felt I was up to mommying”. And if ‘mommying/daddying’ for someone working and someone taking a full university class load and working part-time, would, as a friend noted, allow us to avoid the diaper stage, so much the better. Would any traces of Uninvolved/Neglectful parenting show up in our parenting?
Riding the sky train to work in ’96, a year before our adoption, I saw a poster without the Uncle Sam pointing finger but catching my notice nonetheless. I don’t remember what was being advertised, but its focus was ‘the new priority’ – job, family, you. Now I truly wonder what organization would want that as a sales pitch, unless it was a bid for irony. And good on me. As I read it, I thought if job did take priority during the week I would try very hard to keep weekends free.
So let me state straight up at the start of this post: only once (as I have said in earlier posts) did we leave him at school day care. Kudos to us.
Then where do the following journal entries fit in?
At the end of our very short parental leave I started back to work, teaching a 5:00 pm class on the first day of the new semester. Dave was taking advantage of some studio time after one of his classes. Lucky for us, still new perhaps to juggling schedules, my mother and sister happened to be visiting or maybe I had reeled them in as they lived only an hour away. Yasik had spent about 2 or 3 hours with my family up to that evening. I was pretty sure he knew they were gift bearers and friendly, and I knew he would be more than safe and cared for by them. But I had no idea what might be roiling in this little heart that had now known 3 weeks of belonging against 4 and half years of insecurity. I made sure he had strapped himself into the bumper seat in the back, my sister and mom took the front seats, I slipped in beside Yasik and we drove off to Vancouver. 5:00 p.m. is full -on rush hour and my school is situated on a tightly organized street. There was only a moment to double park, pop a quick kiss and jump out. My heart holds the memory I caught as I turned to wave good-bye to this little boy alone now in the back, watching me wave and turn away. I remember his confused face, I remember him turning to my sister, I guess hoping for the best. Both she and my mother quickly offered reassurances as they turned back into the street. Of course it was all Ok. He was taken back to our home; my husband picked me up after class and by the end of the evening we were all ‘happy families’ again ( the positive, not the negative connotation).
And so began the daily battle of what we often refer to as modern day parenting: parenting demands pitted against work expectations. Read across the decades; such battles are endlessly recorded. And the underlying motives for such battles? Many hope sincerely to be up to the challenge of holding two dreams at the same time: work and family. I became an Adult Ed. teacher because cut and paste and kiddie stories were not my thing. Adult level classes interest me but Adult Ed. schools are not found on every corner nor do they always offer classes that run parallel to kindergarten hours. My husband had secured a long hoped for dream of attending art school. We believed we could juggle effectively.
Yasik’s first day of kindergarten: here it is verbatim from my journal to maintain the attitude emanating from my record.
Sept’97, Thursday, I bathed, fed him and took him to kinder where he stayed outside the door for 45 minutes and I sat inside – bored with the woman’s cutsie voice and inane activities – weather and silly questions – but she speaks Russian, knows what she is doing and handles them all well – so I sat it out and then got him and walked in the hall and edged him in and he knew where he was going – so we looked at the rabbit, he resisted a bit where he could but a helper sucked him in with a book and then slide projector and computer and he was in and sat with me on the rug and again resisted but I held him to it and we made it thru a long 2 ½ hours – I know how long it was because I watched the clock desperate to get out.
By noting that I bathed and fed him I guess I am recording that I had done my duty. But what was with leaving him outside in the hall while I sat in the classroom? Was that the teacher’s suggestion? Was that my contest with him?
The teacher’s voice really was remarkably little kid like. But obviously, my mood was bare minimum motherly. When I either got fed up or kicked into mother mode, I went out into the hall with him and drew him along to the classroom, luring him in with a chance to pet a rabbit kept in a cage in the classroom. God bless the teacher’s aide who seems to have taken it from there, dangling technology and books before him. I was less generous, holding him to keep him from escaping. This kid had only a few words of English, was prematurely peer-oriented without knowing what he was dealing with among this new set of peers, and still uncertain if his parents really were people he could count on. Every fiber of his little body must have been desperate to get out of there. And I was hrumphing about having to be there for 2 and half hours of kiddy stuff.
The last weekend of October, ’97, just before Yasik’s fifth birthday and our first with him, we took him for his first visit to my parents’ home on Vancouver Island. This would also be his first Hallowe’en adventure. It did not disappoint any of us. At first the thrill for Yasik was getting to run up and ring the doorbell. And then the wonders of freely dipping into a bowl for a handful of candy. And for us the wonders of watching the wonders that were his. We put him to bed in my parent’s large bedroom, up and away from the rest of the house, still in that glow, but sticking to our parental responsibility and planning on some adult time with family downstairs. While we were laughing and talking together, my sister, who is more attuned to young children, slipped up to check on Yasik. She found this little mite, swallowed up by the bed, and staring wide-eyed into the darkness. She slipped in beside him and whispered with him until he fell asleep. Again, the memory stays with me.
On Saturday afternoon, November ’97, my day off and after my marking was finished for the week, I took Yasik shopping at the nearby mall, just after his 5th birthday. He was now our child for 3 months.
I took him to the mall to get long pants for the cooler weather. Soon he was pleading to go home. Dave would have been pleading too by this point, but he had already learned to avoid following me around a mall.
“Momma, Yasik go home. Momma Yasik GO home”. (Well, it would have been something like that.)
“Just wait, please Yasik. I’m just checking this one more store”. Trying to accommodate, I ran ahead of him to a shop lured by a rack of clothing on sale. I have never been certain that for a moment, with all those clothes crowding my vision, I didn’t forget about him. I seemed to have assumed that he was right behind me and could see where I was headed, he of 40 inches tall, barely reaching the mid-point on the rack. But, of course, unused to malls, limited in English, he missed my side-step around the rack.
I clicked back into parenting within what seemed to me mere moments, though the journal says somewhere between 2 and a whole 7 minutes or more, and stuck my head around the rack to check on him. He was not there.
As it was created to do, the urban myth about the child kidnapped in a mall, went all breaking news in my brain. I started scanning in every direction and frantically checkout the nearby shops and then called out to a security guard walking past. And he did his job, trying to calm me, calling for other guards to watch and striding off to look. I heard Yasik crying before I saw him. There he was holding a guard rail in front of The Bay on the opposite end of that level of the mall. His face was stricken. He was standing there with big tears, and once seen, made no further sound. I gathered him to me, and held on for dear life. I thanked the relieved guard and led Yasik to the closest clothing store, to a change stall. There I pulled him into my lap and we cried, sitting on that change bench until he quieted. And then we got out of that mall as fast as our shaky legs could go.
It can happen just as they say, so fast.
And I wonder why I think I might be an imposter mom?
It is possible to think that Dr. Gordon Neufeld, had he watched this scene, would have understood Yasik’s frightened cries to have exposed his deep understanding of abandonment. In a class lecture Neufeld made the point: “There is no experience that has more impact upon us as humans than that of facing separation”.[i]
A long-time colleague and friend came to visit during those early days of parenting. Like my sister, she was someone far more naturally attuned to parenting than I and had always loved being with little ones. One afternoon during her visit, she and I, with Yasik in tow, picked up my sister-in-law and her two kids for a mid-morning swim at a community pool which offered a kiddies’ pool and an adult pool. We had been told that Yasik was not a stranger to swimming as the orphanage took the kids to a community pool in Yaroslavl.
I, who loves to swim, and my sister-in-law, not a fan of swimming, got ourselves and the kids into swimming gear. My friend, not having packed a bathing suit, relegated herself to the poolside.
My niece and nephew were already quite accustomed to pools and happily followed their mother into the children’s pool. I walked with Yasik over to the same pool. I was not aware of any agitation emanating from him. I stepped into the pool near where his cousins were already splashing and laughing. And once again, just as with the way he would not try out the swings and teeter-totters at the playground until we went sliding with him, and with his resistance at kindergarten until we enticed him with the rabbit, Yasik would not come into my arms to get a lift into the pool. I tried to persuade him several times with a voice moving from “Come sweetie” calm to one attempting to hold down rising tension. My sister-in-law, my nephew and niece, my friend and likely others in the pool were within hearing. Yasik stood above me mute but definitely not planning to be persuaded into the pool. Sensing the awkwardness, my friend came to the pool’s edge, put her arms around Yasik and led him back to her chair, saying (need I say, with a calming tone), “He can sit with me for a while”.
I turned to my sister-in-law. She and the kids seemed happy doing their own thing. I climbed out of the kiddies’ pool and went over to the adult pool for a nice long swim. It is the feeling of shame that remains.
Recently I asked this friend if she had memories of her visit and the swim outing. Very much to her surprise she did find that she had made a journal note after the visit:
It is so much rush, rush in their lives. Little Yasik is a dear. It is almost overwhelming all he faces. We went swimming this a.m. – he was afraid to…. He is so totally dependent on adults & his new parents. They’re ‘elderly’ to be taking him on. I do hope it works out.[ii]
Epilogue: the following summer, Yasik readily worked through all the children’s levels for swimming down at the park.
Some of these examples of times of neglectful parenting can be chalked up to being new parents, still learning the new reality, but the following examples cover times when lack of experience doesn’t hold water as well.
For me, the weakest link in my parenting was the many times we let our son have overnights with school mates before our first year with him was even up. He was at the age for which it is common. It solved babysitting strains for several families. Yasik was well-attuned to playing with other little kids having spent most of his time until he became ours with many little playmates. And as I have repeatedly reminded readers in our defense, we did put him in the school-run daycare ONLY one afternoon. However, those rationalization were long ago countered for me by a story I thought might have been in my nearly worn-out copy of Deborah D. Gary’s widely respected, Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents, but I can’t find it there. This story I have for so long worried over is about a couple who did not allow any allo-parenting for the first two years with their children in order to secure the children’s attachment to themselves. They did not allow their children to have sleep overs or be babysat by others. The children went everywhere with them and were cared for solely by themselves, wanting to ensure that the children were well-attached to themselves and could understand, after previous experiences of insecure relationships, what the meaning of family now was.
Dave and I were not yet deeply aware how weak his bonds of attachment to us were. We were parents about whom Dr. Bruce Perry would say: “… the limited experience many people have with young children before they have their own still puts far too many parents and their children at risk”.[iii]
I think your average parenting book will encourage allo-parenting, the ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ concept. Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans. Avid Reader Press, 2021, by Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD. shows its value in many cultures. For children whose attachments are being secured from day one, the option of living in a society where allo-parenting is encouraged is almost certainly ideal. For children whose early years have offered little in secure attachment perhaps nuclear attachments are essential before taking the child into a wider social circle, a developmental stage our son was chronologically expected to be ready for. Yet we can assume Yasik had cycled through a large variety of care-givers before becoming part of our lives and family. It is reasonable to suggest his attachment had become prematurely peer-oriented. His understanding of family unclear.
Our week days were well packed with school and work and the commutes tying it all together. As we saw it, that meant lots of left over demands for the weekends. If the neighbour wanted Yasik to have a sleep over at her house to free her from the demands of keeping her son entertained and if Yasik was eager to play with his friend, allowing Dave time for to complete assignments and for me to get 27 essays marked, this was a win-win all the way around.
“‘When you are in a jam, it’s hard to remember that you are in a relationship with a person, not just trying to get someone out the door in ten minutes. Problem is, we have our own agendas and sometime we see the kid as an impediment’”. [iv]
Gordon Neufeld, PhD. and Gabor Mate, M.D in their book Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more peers begin the book’s argument for securing parent-child attachment before allowing the child free-range with peers by drawing parents in with “…in the short term, peer orientation appears to be a godsend”. And as a salve to any worries, Dr. Neufeld acknowledges that “At first glance peer-oriented children appear to be more independent, less clingy, more schoolable, more sociable and sophisticated”. But then Neufeld and Mate give the reader 264 pages to say, “WRONG! IT IS NOT A GODSEND!”.[v] Yasik was simply not yet secure enough in his attachment to us. Sleep-overs in the first years as a family were not a win-win for us.
It also cost us precious memories like being the ones who took him to the PNE for the first time. I marked papers, Dave completed university assignments and Yasik went to the PNE with the buddy and his parents.
Later I recognized that I shouldn’t have added a new course to my schedule, one that required extra hours to pull together in Yasik’s first year with us. We also had a new debt load as we began to pay off the costs of adoption. But did we think carefully enough, were we even aware of what trade-offs we were going to have to deal with? About all the awareness I can find in the journal was ‘we are all just caught in a big pressure pool and we’ve got to help each other.’
Dave’s contribution when I read the definitions to him: “I was triggered by Yasik and you and the dog to be involved but at times would have rather indulged in my own interests and engagements”. That is Dave, easily guilted into taking care of others’ needs, even when he wants to do his own thing.
Yasik’s input when I read the definitions to him: “I think you know the answer to that. Yes, there were times when I was left to fend for myself”. (though he was mainly referring to times later than this period). “Look where it led me”.
Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.
Δ Cold/Low Responsiveness/Emotionally Absent/Unsupportive/Unconcerned: Parents are neglectful even when they might provide food, shelter and basic amenities for their children. They show lack of warmth, connectivity and care, interest or attention or affection towards their children, not interacting with their children much at all.
Δ Low demandingness/ Disconnected/ Undemanding/ Indifferent/ Disengaged/ Detached/ Uninvolved/ Overwhelmed with other things: Children are often left to fend for themselves, even taking on a limited parenting role. These parents offer little nurturance, guidance and attention to the child’s social-emotional and behavioural needs, have limited engagement with their children, don’t converse or interact with their children much, don’t attend their children’s activities or events and don’t strive for any kind of emotional connection but do not discipline them either, and rarely implement rules or structure.
Sites referred to for the definitions:
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26987389/types-of-parenting-styles/
https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/
https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html A psychologist shares the 4 styles of parenting—and the type that researchers say is the most successful
https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/
https://openpress.usask.ca/lifespandevelopment/chapter/parenting-styles/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958
What do my collection of the experts say?
Born for Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered. This book has several stories of child neglect rising out of parents’ lack of care due to ignorance or struggles, as well as, stories of abuse even when parents thought they were doing the best they could for their children. The family story in Chapter Six has all the accoutrements of the good life. The child is well provided for,
Ryan didn’t spend his early life in a neglectful orphanage like Eugenia.[vi]He wasn’t raised by a family of con artists like Danny.[vii]He wasn’t beaten or staved or witness to domestic violence or wartime trauma. He grew up in a stable two-parent home.[viii]
Yet in terms of consistency of care, Ryan’s early care was as unstable as the shift workers’ changes in an orphanage. “Ryan’s parents had never been educated about the social needs of infants”.[ix] When infant Ryan became attached to a caregiver, the caregiver was replaced because his mother would become concerned that Ryan seemed more attached to the caregiver than to her. “This made no sense to [the mother]. She couldn’t understand what was wrong and why her own baby didn’t seem to like her”. So she fired them, eighteen caregivers, before Ryan entered preschool.[x] By the time Ryan was 3 he had begun to shut down his emotions. When he was 17, he could not understand why raping a developmentally-disabled girl was problematic.[xi]
Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence looks at a study examining causes for problematic behaviour or negative emotional responses in children. The researchers used the Maternal Sensitivity Scale which measures “a mother’s awareness of her child’s signals of needs or wants, her accurate interpretation of those signals, the appropriateness of her response, and how promptly she responded”, either with high or low sensitivity to their child’s needs. The chapter inserts a defense of mothers who showed low sensitivity:
Keep in mind that the women in the low-sensitivity group were not necessarily bad mothers. The study did not recruit parents accused of child abuse or neglect, nor did it focus on families from groups generally considered to be high-risk (impoverished, uneducated, suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction, prone to violence, etc.) Low -sensitivity mothers didn’t leave their children home alone for hours on end to go party, or drink themselves sick, or bully their children with taunts or smacks or insults. Some of them were absent-minded. Many of them were overworked and exhausted and didn’t have the energy or patience required to meet their children’s every immediate need, but loved their children all the same and wanted nothing but the best for them. The vast majority were probably doing their best, and would be horrified at the thought that their actions might be hurting their children. And yet, their children were over twice as likely to display aggressive or violent behaviour as those of high-sensitivity mothers …. It shows that in parenting the little things matter just as much as the big ones.[xii]
On P. 175 Scientific Parenting:what science reveals about parental influence also says:
Certainly, neglectful parenting has an adverse effect on children’s development. Our neural gardens need more than fresh soil to truly flourish. They need pruning and weeding and watering. An untended garden may grow thick and green if the sun is shining and rain comes often enough, but it will be a wild, chaotic patch of earth, fruitful perhaps, but also cluttered and choked with weeds. The same goes with young minds…. Infants need more than food and warmth and safety; they need stimulation and interaction and play, and the more of it they get, the better they’ll be at thinking and reasoning and, above all, feeling.
Great Myths of Child Development, Myth #42: daycare damages the attachment between children and parents: the writers question Spock, Bowlby, Ainsworth and Schlessinger’s dire warning of leaving a child to the insecure attachments that may result for daycare exposure. The concerns their views generated remain in the wanting-to-do-it-ALL-right parental psyche, even as these parents see no option but to enter the work force or have the desire for a career, as well as, parent. These writers quite strongly dispute the dangers of daycare,
“The preponderance of research says that [daycare] does not [damage children]”. It may even be beneficial in parent child interactions, giving parents greater income, lessening their stresses and helping to make children more school ready. These kids may get more illness, ergo, they will develop a greater immunity to illness….
Yasik certainly came packaged in immunity to illness. (What I am also saying /suggesting? That orphanage life may have had some real pluses for Yasik? Yes, of course, it did; the difference is that in a day-care setting, the child is home developing a secure attachment to the parents to balance the time away from the parents. Yasik didn’t get to go home at night to that other element in the need for secure attachment, his own parents.)
Myth #42 goes on to say
The argument seems to be that “if a mother is not with her child almost all day, then she can’t really be a loving parent. Although it’s true that a daycare worker won’t love and care for a child just like a parent will, sending a child to a daycare doesn’t mean the parent stops loving or caring for their child. The same point could be made about fathers, but the anti-daycare crowd rarely seems to argue that fathers should stay home.” So to all those anxious parents in the world, we say don’t fret. Human babies are not geese, and they won’t “imprint” on a daycare worker instead of you.[xiii]
Perhaps because our faith in the traditional family is deeply embedded, studies have been called for to examine the question of the outcomes for children raised by working mothers versus stay-at-home mothers. The findings: “evidence suggests that children of working moms grow up to be just as happy as children of stay-at-home moms. In fact, having a working mom comes with potential benefits for adult children”.[xiv]
And that observation about the focus on mothers, ignoring the role and responsibilities of fathers:
One of the hugely overlooked truths of parenting is that parenting involves both parents and their equal contributions make up for a suitable condition that ensures an overall general development of the child. It’s a myth that the mother has a bigger role to play in raising a child. Absence of a father can have drastic effects on the emotional, social and economic well-being of the child. Therefore, both of their involvement is crucial.[xv]
And Dr Perry’s question in The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog – Can a child raised in serious abuse have capacity for further development, could his neural system be shaped by patterned, repetitive experience in a safe and predictable environment?[xvi]
[Neglected] children need patterned, repetitive experiences appropriate to their developmental needs, needs that reflect the age at which they’d missed important stimuli or had been traumatized, not their current chronological age…. A foundational principle of brain development is that neural systems organize and become functional in a sequential manner…. If one system doesn’t get what it needs when it needs it, those that rely upon it many not function well either, even if the stimuli that the later developing system needs are being provided appropriately. The key to healthy development is getting the right experiences in the right amounts at the right time.[xvii]
And the needs-to-be-restated preliminary to that is the need for parents to be better informed of the needs of the children they set out to raise. “… the limited experience many people have with young children before they have their own still puts far too many parents and their children at risk”.[xviii]Later in The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, Dr. Perry makes the point several times that such development comes with therapy in a caring environment, perhaps a given.
The stories of survivors of Uninvolved/Neglectful parenting range from abuse to resilience. These children can struggle with a sense of low-self-esteem, abandonment, depression, forming close relationships, hostility, delinquency, substance abuse and a weak sense of empathy.[xix]
People who grew up with very little affection tend to develop these 10 traits later in life (according to psychology)
Remember, these trends don’t apply to everyone, but they do provide insight into some of the ways our upbringing can influence our adult behaviors….
1) Emotional Self-Sufficiency
Those who grew up with little affection often build walls around themselves. They develop a sense of emotional self-sufficiency, an ability to navigate through life relying primarily on their own emotional strength.…Their childhood experiences often leave them feeling that they cannot depend on others for emotional support, leading them to rely heavily on themselves. Remember, this doesn’t mean these individuals are incapable of forming emotional bonds. It just means they’ve learnt to rely on themselves first and foremost.
2) Difficulty Trusting Others
Trust is a tricky thing, isn’t it? Especially for those who grew up with very little affection.
3) Craving for Affection
Here’s something raw and honest: people who grew up with very little affection often nurse a deep, unspoken craving for it in their adult lives….This longing often manifests in different forms – some might seek validation consistently, others might strive to excel in everything they do, hoping to earn the approval and affection they crave.
4) Strong Independence
This strong sense of independence can be empowering, but it can also make it challenging to accept help from others. It’s as if accepting help or support is a sign of weakness, a betrayal of the self-reliance we’ve cultivated over the years…. Being independent doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone.
5) Unusual Empathy
Here’s something you might not expect: those who grew up with little affection often develop a heightened sense of empathy…. Having experienced emotional scarcity in their own lives, they tend to be more attuned to the emotional needs of others. They can pick up on subtle cues, feel the pain of others, and offer compassion because they know what it’s like to feel emotionally neglected.[xx]
What is Distracted Parenting?
Cell phones, tablets, and computers are everywhere. Almost 70% of Canadian adults own a smartphone.
However, the use of hand-held devices can get in the way of the day-to-day interactions parents have with their children. At times, many adults may turn to their phones when they feel down or they may become consumed with waiting for a message or e-mail. The distraction may get in the way of meeting children’s needs and may impact their healthy development.
Smartphone use may be behind a 10% increase in unintentional childhood injuries. The mere presence of a cell phone on the table makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected.
Parenting in the Digital Age: The Importance of Secure Attachment Responsive, face-to-face parent-child interactions during early childhood is important in the development of a child’s language, cognitive, and self-regulation abilities. We are wired for human interaction. +[xxi]
A perspective on Uninvolved/Neglectful Parenting specific to adoption: It is hard to image an adoption life story that didn’t begin with some kind of abandonment, whether intentional or otherwise. Thus Betty Jean Lifton would say of adoptees:
They are self-negating. They may look secure but they suffer from feelings of shame, inner badness, and defectiveness. They fear homelessness, betrayal, disintegration, and going mad. But, most of all they fear abandonment. The message adoptees give to friends and spouses is: “Do anything you want to me, but don’t abandon me”.[xxii]
Others’ parenting experiences, speaking to at least some aspects of the Negative Parenting Style.
For likely as long as the novelist has become aware of the working mother dilemma, novels have built the working mother trope with bits like in Scott Turow’s novel, The Laws of Our Fathers. The protagonist is a busy judge starting a high-profile case whose young daughter does not want to go to school so the judge cajoles, threatens, manipulates and promises future impossible temptations.
Someday, I always promise, it will be as she asks…. But not, of course, today. Today there is duty…. I must go off to my other world…. telling myself I am not my mother, [who apparently left her alone when she went off to work] that I am somehow on the road to conquering what remains of her in me.[xxiii]
The End of Mom Guilt: why a mother’s ambition is good for her family For Lara Bazelon, the mother, the conflict between career and parenting seems more divisive than for the father but she believes “prioritizing your career- not all the time, but some of the time – models… for the children…independence and resilience.”[xxiv]
A Quora question: Why isn’t love enough in parenting an adopted child?
I’ll tell you the story of my sister. She was 18 months old when she came to us. I was 4. Of course my parents didn’t share the situation that brought my sister to us with me. But one of my earliest memories is me asking my mom what is wrong with this baby. Even at 4 I could tell this baby was broken. Later I learned the gritty details. I don’t ever use the word hate. It’s a strong word reserved for specific things. I hate my sister’s bio family. They are evil people. They intentionally broke this innocent baby. They starved her in every way you can. No love. No food. No nothing. Their family dog treated my sister better than they did. They would sit my sister in a room by herself during dinner and would throw scraps to the dog. The dog took the scraps to my sister. That dog was a better mother to her than the humans in that house. In child development the first year is critical in developing a child’s trust and security. This is achieved through the love and care we give out infants. We feed them, hold them, bathe them, cuddle them when they are sad, we talk to them with sweet words and show them that no matter what we are there for them. My sister got none of that. Zero, zip, nada. She got neglect on every level. I do not know if they ever physically hurt her by hitting. But they broke her trust and capacity to understand love. She never recovered because they did it at the most critical time in her development. When she was helpless and completely dependent on those who were supposed to care. My parents and us kids love her deeply. And she cares for us, but she is incapable of trusting us to not hurt her. We never have. My parents changed the entire way they parented me and our older brother to accommodate her needs. We used to have a fairly strict snack and meal schedule. Suddenly we had free reign of a section of the pantry and was always stocked. They gave her extra time and attention that we didn’t get, we were never neglected and didn’t lack love and attention, but she did demand more. There were other changes, but I can’t remember them. Those were just the ones that impacted me the most. Love wasn’t enough to keep her with us. When she turned 18 she ran. She has gone no contact for years at a time. We often describe her as a person that lives in a made for TV movie, or after school special. She doesn’t live in reality. The problems she creates for herself are always someone else’s fault. She refuses to have any personal accountability for her life. The way she is can all be traced back to that first 18 months of her life when people were monsters and a dog was her mother. I hate her bio family. Don’t abuse your children. Love them unconditionally. And for the love of everything if you take on a broken baby don’t make it about you. Just love them and accept them for who they are. Not all adopted kids are broken. For some, like me, love is enough. But there is a large chunk of adopted kids that have very real, very damaging trauma. Those are the ones that need the most love, but will never thank you for it. Just give it to them.[xxv]
Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption, Scott Simon, Simon Schuster, 2010, 142-3
Neglectful parenting could be saying something about the parents experience of being parented. Because of his own experience of being parented, Steve Sagri has not had a “successful family life“.
“… even with my daughters, even when they were adorable little kids, I never felt real comfortable,” he says, “I never knew how to behave around them. I didn’t now how to be a parent. How would I? I’d never seen it done…”. “Maybe my real fear is of getting hurt,” he muses, “Maybe that is why I’ve built so many ten-foot walls around me. Maybe it’s because I was rejected as a kid that I don’t want to give anyone the chance to reject me now. So I just keep moving…”
Love Works Like This Random House, 2002,Lauren Slater P. 169. Goodreads describes this writer’s experience of parenting with: “career-oriented“, looks at having a child and the need to “reconcile the needs of self with the demands of others“.
It has come to the point where I cannot listen to Eva cry unless she is crying in my arms. I suppose this is a form of love, but not the kind I would most wish for. It is instinctual, biological, love on a cellular level. Intimacy, I am coming to understand, is corporeal. It has to do with the distance between bodies. I wish for more. I wish for a passion that transcends space. When I am with Eva, she is my heart. When I am gone from her, at work, or with a friend, she ceases to exist.
And then there is this:
I saw an ad for the BEST dishwasher soap for loving parents. It did have to remind parents they might need to buy a dishwasher first, of course.
The plot to zing the ad’s proposition straight into parental hearts was built around a mother sitting on the floor holding out encouraging arms to her infant taking her first step. The camera then slides from the middle of the floor over to the kitchen area. There a young father is bent over the sink washing dishes, his back turned away from mother and child. OMG, he was hand washing dishes. Only when the last dish has been washed does he turn back to his little family. But too late, handwashing dishes has denied him that precious moment parents wait for with bated breath, missing his child’s first step. The judgment or false pity is in the narrator’s tone: for handwashing dishes he has been charged with being negligent and missing out on one of life’s truly important moments.
Footnotes:
[i] Easterly, Sara, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, Lori Holden. Adoption Unfiltered: revelations from adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies, “Referring to Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s words… (Gordon Neufeld, PhD, “Session One: Becoming Attached,” Recorded Class Lecture (The Art & Science of Transplanting Children Course, 2011). 2024, 142
[ii] Pegg, Lois. Journal Entry. Dec. 7’97
[iii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. Basic Books, 2017, 168.
[iv] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D. Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers. Vintage Canada, 2004, 196.
[v] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D. Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers. Vintage Canada, 2004, 235, 237.
[vi] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, Chapter 3, 45 – 71.
[vii] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, Chapter 5, 96-119.
[viii] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, 121.
[ix] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, 142.
[x] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered 2010, P. 125-126
[xi] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, Chapter Six, 120- 144.
[xii] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joshko. Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence. Dundern Press, 2013, 85-87.
[xiii] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Jewell. Great Myths of Child Development, Myth #42: daycare damage, Kindle version, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
[xiv] Cuttita, Nicole, Ms.Ed., MHC-LP
Are Stay-at-Home Moms Better for Our Kids than Working Moms?
https://www.newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/are-stay-at-home-moms-better-for-our-kids-than-working-moms/
https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/mcginn-working-mom.aspx
[xv] Debnath, Shreyasi. https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/ The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids/
[xvi] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. 2017, P. 145
[xvii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. 2017, P.152
[xviii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. 2017, P.168
[xix] Debnath, Shreyasi. https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/ The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids/
https://wellbeingscounselling.ca/uninvolved-parenting-psychological-effects-on-children/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958
https://www.regain.us/advice/parenting/the-risks-of-having-an-uninvolved-parenting-style/
[xx] Fey, Tina. https://geediting.com/people-who-grew-up-with-very-little-affection-tend-to-develop-these-10-traits-later-in-life-according-to-psychology/ May 26, 2024, 10:06 am
[xxi] https://www.mjw-cydc.uwo.ca/docs/brochure_distracted_parenting.pdf Tips for Limiting Hand-Held
[xxii] Lifton, Betty Jean. Journey of the Adopted Self: a quest for wholeness. Basic Books, 1994, 110.
[xxiii] Turow, Scott. The Laws of Our Fathers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996, 66.
[xxiv] Bazelon, Lara. The Atlantic “The End of Mom Guilt: why a mother’s ambition is good for her family” May 2022
[xxv] https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-love-enough-in-parenting-an-adopted-child