Being There
Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters
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4.4 • 15 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A powerful look at the importance of a mother’s presence in the first years of life
**Featured in The Wall Street Journal, and seen on Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, and CBS New York**
In this important and empowering book, veteran psychoanalyst Erica Komisar explains why a mother's emotional and physical presence in her child's life--especially during the first three years--gives the child a greater chance of growing up emotionally healthy, happy, secure, and resilient.
In other words, when it comes to connecting with your baby or toddler, more is more.
Compassionate and balanced, and focusing on the emotional health of children and moms alike, this book shows parents how to give their little ones the best chance for developing into healthy and loving adults. Based on more than two decades of clinical work, established psychoanalytic theory, and the most cutting-edge neurobiological research on caregiving, attachment, and brain development, Being There explains:
• How to establish emotional connection with a newborn or young child--regardless of whether you're able to work part-time or stay home
• How to ease transitions to minimize stress for your baby or toddler
• How to select and train quality childcare
• What's true and false about widely held beliefs like "I'm not good with babies" and “I’ll make up for it when he’s older”
• How to recognize and combat feelings of postpartum depression or boredom
• Why three months of maternity leave is not long enough--and how parents can take control of their choices to provide for their family's emotional needs in the first three years
Being a new mom isn’t easy. But with support, emotional awareness, and coping skills, it can be the most magical—and essential—work we’ll ever do.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Amid a landslide of literature examining the culture of the needlessly overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmingly busy mom, Komisar makes a different claim here: mothers aren't doing enough for their children. Drawing from her practice as a psychoanalyst in New York City, Komisar makes the case that the mother is primarily and uniquely responsible for a baby's development, and a lack of the mother's responsive, nurturing presence in the early years can contribute strongly to all manner of behavioral and developmental problems. Komisar offers sound, warm guidance for baby interaction in an attempt to draw ambivalent mothers back into the home and gives several examples from her practice in which increased maternal involvement solved behavioral problems. Though she acknowledges the role of fathers and the burden on single mothers, Komisar regretfully concludes that children raised without the frequent presence of a mother are likely to grow up with serious problems. Despite Komisar's well-intentioned tone, her perspective is ultimately dispiriting, since there is little indication that the near future will bring about the legislation for paid leave that would help all families to afford her ideal.
Customer Reviews
Must read
This book delivered more information than I expected. I think it is an important read for everyone to bring an understanding on how important the nurturing role is in the first years of life, it made such a connection to the many issues we see in adolescence today and it also helps explain some adults we come into contact with. It also was an awakening for how I was raised affected me and that confronting that trauma and being aware of it will allow me to be the better parent and not pass that on to my kids.