Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in Depicting Neglectful/Uninvolved Parenting.
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.[i]
Distilling Neglectful/Uninvolved Parenting
Born for Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered 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.[ii]
Yet in terms of consistency of care, Ryan’s early care was as unstable as the shift workers’ changes in an orphanage. 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. So she fired them, eighteen caregivers, before Ryan entered preschool. 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.[iii]
…. 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.[iv]
Which leads to the question about daycare.
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. These writers quite strongly dispute the dangers of daycare,
“The preponderance of research says that [daycare] does not [damage children] … 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.[v]
It may even be beneficial in parent-child interactions, giving parents greater income, lessening their stresses and helping to make children more school ready. And here is a plus that could raise some parental eyebrows: these kids may get more illness, ergo, they will develop a greater immunity to illness….
Yasik certainly came packaged in immunity to illness.
May orphanage life have had some real plusses for Yasik? Yes, of course, it did; the difference is that Yasik didn’t get to go home at night. In a day-care setting, the child is home developing a secure attachment to the parents to balance the time away from the parents. And, “evidence suggests that children of working moms grow up to be just as happy as children of stay-at-home mom”.[vi]
And then there are mothers who are not bullies or abandoners, but maybe
Some of them were absent-minded [or distracted]. 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. …. It shows that in parenting the little things matter just as much as the big ones.[vii] Perhaps safety and tummy are taken care of, but some time to stimulate the neurons bursting forth in the tiny brain with play is limited.[viii]
But when Uninvolved/Neglectful parenting is sparing with safety and basic care, 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.[ix] These children may develop a sense of independence and self-sufficiency that prefers to trust themselves before anyone else. Does hoarding or self-soothing suggest self-care? These children may have an ache for affection that is difficult to assuage even in adulthood.
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. 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”.[x]
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… Even at 4 I could tell this baby was broken… My sister’s bio family 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… they broke her trust and capacity to understand love. She never recovered because they did it at the most critical time in her development. My parents and us kids love her deeply. And she cares for us, but she is incapable of trusting us to not hurt her… My parents changed the entire way they parented me and our older brother to accommodate her needs…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… Love wasn’t enough to keep her with us. When she turned 18 she ran…She doesn’t live in reality… 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… if you take on a broken baby… Just love them and accept them for who they are.[xi]
If the neglected child grows into an adult 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 know 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…”[xii]
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, they have made use of the working mother trope. 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.[xiii]
In The End of Mom Guilt, Lara Bazelon, the mother, fights back. Although the conflict between career and parenting seems more divisive than for the father, she believes “prioritizing your career- not all the time, but some of the time – models… for the children…independence and resilience.”[xiv]
A school teacher has added another label to Neglectful/Uninvolved, ‘Roommate Parenting’. It is this teacher’s experience that parents are not invested in interactions and relationships anymore.[xv]
Love Works Like This Lauren Slater (Random House, 2002,169). Goodreads refers Lauren Slater’s experience of parenting as “career-oriented“, looks at having a child and the need to “reconcile [her needs to be with her baby] with the demands of others… 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.”[xvi]
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] https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/parenting-styles
[ii] 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.
Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered 2010, P. 121, 125-126
[iii] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, 142.
Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered William Morrow, 2010, 121.
[iv] 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
[v] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Jewell. Great Myths of Child Development, Myth #42: daycare damage, Kindle version, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
[vi]https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/evidence-based-living/201607/moms-working-outside-of-the-home-good-for-kids
[vii] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joshko. Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence. Dundern Press, 2013, 85-87.
[viii] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joshko. Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence. Dundern Press, 2013, 175.
[ix] Shreyasi, Debnath Dec 30, 2020 https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/ The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958
https://www.regain.us/advice/parenting/the-risks-of-having-an-uninvolved-parenting-style
[x] Lifton, Betty Jean. Journey of the Adopted Self: a quest for wholeness. Basic Books, 1994, 110.
[xi] Turow, Scott. The Laws of Our Fathers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996, 66.
[xii] Simon, Scott Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption Simon Schuster, 2010, 142-3
[xiii] https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-love-enough-in-parenting-an-adopted-child
[xiv] Bazelon, Lara. The Atlantic “The End of Mom Guilt: why a mother’s ambition is good for her family” May 2022
[xv] “Teacher Says The New Wave Of Parents Are ‘Roommate Parenting’” https://www.yourtango.com/self/teacher-says-new-wave-parents-are-roommate-parenting
[xvi] Slater, Lauren Love Works Like This Random House, 2002, 169
Leave a Reply