Does Your Child Say “No” to Almost Everything You Serve at Dinner?

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How we got here and what to do about it.

When I was a child, long, long ago, after the age of two or so, kids just ate what everyone else was eating at dinner. They didn’t have a choice.

But something has changed in the last few decades. Children, especially young children, often only want to eat mac and cheese or pasta and butter and many parents are providing these.

Many parents feel that they just can’t figure out what to put on the table. They don’t have time to prepare a variety of options and they’re afraid that their children won’t eat what they provide.

I have been wondering what has happened to family eating habits and why it has happened — so I decided to read some of the scholarly literature on the subject of children’s food preferences to see if I could find any clues.

And I will tell you this: there is very little I could find.

But what I think is that children’s eating habits have changed as a function of the changes in parenting practices. We have evolved from parenting in an authoritarian manner – up through the 1950’s – to parenting in a more “child centered” fashion.

Of course the influences of psychoanalysis (on Benjamin Spock among others), developmental psychology, progressive educational theories and “pop psychology” have a great deal to do with these changes.

And we are now at a point that we now find ourselves in the age of “gentle parenting” where rules and limits are discouraged.

However – I think we have gone too far.

And this includes at the dinner table.

We now ask children what they want to eat and we let them eat it while looking at our phones – rather than providing them with a meal that we are going to eat with them.

We now encourage kids to eat in their strollers and in the car and, well, really anywhere they are.

And, as a result, many kids they may not be all that hungry at meals. Meals are not the major source of nutrition anymore.

So, let’s take a closer look: when we ask children what they want to eat, are we giving them a choice they really need to make? Are we making life harder for ourselves? And are we actually helping our children’s development?

Because we know that too many choices are not good for young children. In fact, we know that children feel safer when there are fewer choices and more rules and limits. This has been proven by the studies on authoritarian versus authoritative parenting (Baumrind et al, 1967, 1981, 1989; Steinberg, 1989, 1991; Lamborn, 1991, etc.)

From this literature, we know that children need to understand what their parents expect of them and they need to know what the consequences are if they do not do as their parents expect.

And it used to be that kids knew they were expected to at least taste what was on their plate at dinner – if not to clean their plates entirely.

Of course this does not mean that kids liked this. Children often hated these rules.

But some rules actually make sense.

Recent research has shown that it often takes many exposures to a new food for babies and children to come to accept – or even like – that food.

Parents do not need to give up when a baby turns her head from the spoon or when a child says “ewwwww”.

Perhaps we have given children too much choice. When we say “What do you want for dinner” or “Do you want McDonalds or pizza?” we are opening the door to their limiting their food choices to only their most favorite and well known foods.

So, what is a parent to do?

Research shows that the best thing parents can do is to present a large variety of foods from infancy on and to model eating a large variety of foods — including fruits, vegetables, a variety of protein sources, and some fun foods. In other words, it is better to make a variety of things available for dinner and not give in to the child’s desire to have mac and cheese every night.

Yes, kids, especially young kids often like bland foods – or as some parents say, “white foods”, like pasta and rice and bagels. And this makes evolutionary sense. The aversion to bitter taste has been linked to survival as poisonous plants are often bitter. And the preference for sweet foods has a similar evolutionary advantage as mothers’ breast milk is sweet.

However, research has shown that early exposure to a variety of flavors including bitter tastes can help a child to tolerate them.

A number of studies indicate that the introduction of vegetables and fruits into an infant’s diet as soon as they start to eat solid foods is extremely helpful in getting them used to these tastes and in choosing to eat these foods as they become toddlers and young children.

And the research also shows that while it may be easier to stick with just breastfeeding or bottle feeding for the first year, adding what are called complementary foods (foods that complement the breast milk or formula your baby receives) helps to promote a wider variety of food choices for these babies as they grow.

Some researchers even believe that there is a sensitive period for accepting new food tastes. These researchers found that children who were introduced to fruits and vegetables early (around 4 months for fruits and around 6 months for vegetables) ate more fruits and vegetables between ages 2 and 4 than those children who had not been introduced early (Coulthard et al.).

The same thing goes for textures. After introducing pureed foods (at around 5 months), it has been found that introducing slightly lumpy foods (around 6 months) and then foods that need a little chewing (around 7 months) is helpful in the long-term acceptance of foods with various textures, including complex ones. From 6 to 12 months, babies learn to use their tongues to move food around their mouths, and they need experience with foods of various textures in order to do so. Of course, parents need to sit with children of this age while they eat in order to observe whether they are having any trouble with swallowing these varied textures (Gisel et al.).

One study actually found that children introduced to lumpy solids later (after the age of 10 months) had more feeding problems when they were 7 years old. These 7-year-olds were also reported to eat fewer portions of fruit and vegetables than those who had been introduced to lumpy and textured foods earlier. In fact, those infants who were introduced to complementary foods by 6 months ate more green, leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and citrus fruits at age 7 than those who were introduced later.

Another factor that affects children’s eating habits are their parent’s own eating habits and attitudes towards food.

In regard to parental behaviors and how they affect children’s food choices, it has been found that parents who are less consistent and less predictable in regard to what and when they eat tend to have children with more chaotic eating habits. And it turns out that the more parents are inconsistent or erratic in their eating schedules, and the more their diet varies between healthy and less healthy options, the worse the influence on their children’s eating patterns (Ventura et al.).

In particular, the relationship between mothers’ eating habits and children’s eating behaviors has been studied. ​And it has been found that mothers who restrict their own eating can actually promote overeating in their children, especially in their daughters. Girls who were already overweight at 5 years of age whose mothers tried to restrict their eating had the highest tendency to eat when they were not hungry. And Birch et al. showed that mothers tend to increase control after ​their daughters gain weight but not ​so much after their sons gained the same amount of weight.

Limiting snacking between meals to one snack between breakfast and lunch and one snack between lunch and dinner has also been found to be best once the child is old enough to eat just three meals a day.

Moreover, providing snacks that are not composed of nutrient-dense, high-calorie ingredients is preferable. So this means that those big brownies and cookies from Starbucks are definitely not the best snacks to offer on a regular basis. Try providing yogurt and fruit, some peanut butter on pretzels or apple slices, some raisins or a couple of small cookies, a glass of milk and some fruit slices, and see how it goes.

This is a lot to digest, parents – but evidence shows that starting early with all sorts of tastes and textures, providing lots of variety at meals, persisting with getting kids to taste new foods, being aware of and addressing your own eating habits, and cutting back on high calorie snacking can be best for everyone in your family.

References

Ventura AK, Birch LL., Does parenting affect children’s eating and weight status? Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 5 (2008), pp. 15-27

Blossfield I, Collins A, Kiely M, Delahunty C. Texture preferences of 12-month-old infants and the role of early experiences. Food Qual Prefer. 2007;18:396–404

Coulthard H, Harris G, Emmett P, the ALSPAC team. Long term consequences of early fruit and vegetable feeding practices. Public Health Nutr. 2010;13(12):2044–51.

Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43–88.CASPubMedWeb of Science®Google Scholar

Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monograph, 4(1), part 2.Web of Science®Google Scholar

Baumrind, D. (1989). Rearing competent children. In W. Damon, (Ed.), Child development today and tomorrow (pp. 349–378). San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar

Steinberg, L., Elmen, J., & Mounts, N. (1989). Authoritative parenting, psychosocial maturity, and academic success among adolescents. Child Development, 60, 1424–1436.

Steinberg, L., Mounts, N., Lamborn, S., & Dornbusch, S. (1991). Authoritative parenting and adolescent adjustment across various ecological niches. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1, 19–36. Child DevelopmentVolume 62, Issue 5 p. 1049-1065

Susie D. Lamborn, Nina S. Mounts, Laurence Steinberg, Sanford M. DornbuschFirst published: October 1991https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1991.tb01588.: 299Patterns of Competence and Adjustment among Adolescents from Authoritative, Authoritarian, Indulgent, and Neglectful Families.

Maccoby, E., & Martin, J. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. In E. M. Hetherington (Ed.), P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social development (pp. 1–101). New York : Wiley.

Gisel EG. Effect of food texture on the development of chewing of children between six months and two years of age. Dev Med Child Neurol. 1991;33:69–79.

Kirby S, Baranowski T, Reynolds K, Taylor G, Binkley D. Children’s fruit and vegetable intake: socio-economics, adult, child and adolescents in the United States. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1995;150:81–6.

Mason S, Harris G, Blissett J. Tube feeding in infancy: implications for the development of normal eating and drinking skills. Dysphagia. 2005;20(1):46–61.

Baumrind, Diana.  Adolescence; Roslyn Heights, N.Y. Vol. 3, Iss. 11, (Fall 1968): 255.

American J of Clinical Nutrition DISCUSSION| VOLUME 78, ISSUE 6, P1068-1073, DECEMBER 2003Download Full Issue

St-Onge Marie-Pierre, Keller Kathleen L., Heymsfield Steven B Open ArchiveDOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/78.6.1068 Changes in childhood food consumption patterns: a cause for concern in light of increasing body weights2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652302600X

Mombrain: Myth or Real?

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This is the seventh post in a series on The Transition to Motherhood.

In her book, Matrescence, Lucy Jones discusses the idea that society — and women themselves — often feel that childbirth and caring for young children diminish their memory and cognitive capacity. While they are pregnant and after they give birth, women often complain of not being able to remember anything, being scatterbrained, or feeling stupid.

But when looking at the research, Jones found the opposite!

In fact, it seems that having a baby concentrates the mind. Brain structure and the neurochemistry of the brain actually change during and after pregnancy in order to aid the mother to tune into her baby and her baby’s needs. It may be that some of the old things the mother used to think about are less the focus of her attention after her baby arrives and she may feel less capable of concentrating on them — but this is far different from being “stupid.”

In fact, Bridget Callahan, a researcher at UCLA, found evidence of enhanced learning, memory, and cognitive capacity after childbirth (Callahan, et al, 2022).

Of course, this makes sense, because new mothers need to expand their ability to tune in to their babies, to learn what helps and doesn’t help their babies to feel comfortable, and to learn how to solve the many problems of everyday childcare.

In fact, in reviewing the literature, researchers Erika Barba-Müller et al found that there are structural and functional changes in the woman’s brain both during pregnancy and following delivery which stimulate her to progress from being an individual with self directed needs to being responsible for her baby. These changes are highly adaptive and aid in the woman’s transition to motherhood.

Similarly, in a review of the literature, Winnie Orchard found that there is evidence that the brains of pregnant women become more flexible, efficient, and responsive.

Minor difficulties in word finding and short-term memory often make women feel less competent during pregnancy and early motherhood — but this is not all that is going on.

Referring to Orchard again, Lucy Jones says that the lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain may be positive and that the cognitive load of adapting and adjusting to one or more growing children may help the brain to be resilient.

Think about it: So many people have started doing the daily word puzzles put out by the New York Times — as well as doing all sorts of gaming apps on their phones — in order to preserve and enhance their cognition. But these do not provide even a portion of the challenge that comes up in a day for the parent of a newborn or child of any age!

For a first-time mother — and her partner — the day they come home from the hospital is often a terrifying day. Suddenly, they realize that it is up to them to figure out how to care for their new baby and to keep them alive. Soon it is clear that caring for a newborn requires a completely new set of skills. And there is a great deal of trial and error. Every day new problems need to be solved. So much has to be learned — not just about babies in general — but about this particular baby, her sensitivities, and her preferences. And then, just as the parents are getting the hang of it, the baby starts a new sleep pattern, develops new feeding preferences, or enters a new developmental stage. And learning how to deal with these things requires a great deal more problem-solving.

So as for “Mom Brain” — yes, there is such a thing, but it is not what we often think it is. The Mom Brain is a more flexible, more competent, more resilient brain than the non-mom brain.

References

Barba-Müller, et al (2019). Brain plasticity in pregnancy and the postpartum period: links to maternal caregiving and mental health. Arch Womens Ment Health. 2019; 22(2): 289–299. Published online 2018 Jul 14. doi: 10.1007/s00737-018-0889-z

Callaghan, B. et al., (2022) “Evidence for cognitive plasticity during pregnancy via enhanced learning and memory”, Memory 30(5) , p. 519-536.

Jones, Lucy (2023). Matrescence.

Orchard, E. R., et al., (2022) “The maternal brain is more flexible and responsive at rest: Effective connectivity of the parental caregiving network in postpartum mothers”, bioRxiv

The Transition to Motherhood: Pregnancy

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Part 5 in a series

In her book, Matresence, Lucy Jones says that pregnancy is a metamorphosis. Like a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, the woman’s previous identity must melt away in order for her new identity and concept of self to emerge.

And during her own first pregnancy, Jones found this process very disturbing. She says, unlike other stages of life for which there are parties and ceremonies to mark the transition of one stage of life to another, during pregnancy, for which there are no ceremonies in our culture which celebrate the mother, the woman can feel profoundly awkward and alone.

Jones talks about how, during adolescence, she felt similarly awkward. She felt like she didn’t know what was going to happen next or how to be; she felt unsettled by the changes in her body.

But, she says, she had friends going through the same thing and films and articles and music which addressed the strangeness and alienation of adolescence, so she didn’t feel completely alone.

But as she went through her pregnancy, she did not feel accompanied. Part of this may have been because she, herself, did not understand what was happening to her mind, her body, or her self — and therefore she could not really talk about it with others.

She says that missing from pregnancy books or health apps was information about how pregnancy affects a woman’s mind – and her actual brain. She quotes Rosemary Balsam from the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society as calling this the “vanished pregnant body.”

She suggests that the very idea of the pregnant woman, of being two people in one, may make other people uncomfortable.

For example, there’s the the story of the runner, Allyson Felix. Felix was an Olympic medalist and many time US National Champion when she became pregnant. One of her sponsors, Nike, cut her pay by 70% and refused to offer her reasonable pay protection during her postpartum period. Felix reports being told “runners should just run” – in other words, women runners should not be pregnant.

Clearly having a premier spokesperson be pregnant was uncomfortable for Nike. And Jones talks about how it was uncomfortable for her – as it is for so many women — and not just because of the bodily changes, but also because of the emotional disequilibrium she felt and because of the changes in the way she perceived others as seeing her.

Experiencing this was hard for Jones because she felt external pressure to “pretend that pregnancy was a less dramatic and drastic event” than what she felt it to be.

And it is a dramatic and drastic event. For all women.

Thank goodness for Lucy Jones for saying so and letting us all heave a sigh of relief. We didn’t have to say it. But she did.

Toward the end of her pregnancy, Jones describes bowing out of work and not feeling guilty. She realized this was not typical of her — but she felt that she wanted to be at home and she didn’t mind being alone. She says that she felt “calm and placid, pleasantly vague, like nothing could touch me”.

Later she found out that this is normal — that there are physiological changes that accompany each of the many stages of pregnancy and that at the end of pregnancy, the reactivity to stress hormones is dampened. No wonder she didn’t feel the normal pressure to work and perform and please her boss. And luckily for her, she had the ability to step away.

The biology and neurobiological literature supports Jones. When she reports that she felt that her brain was changing during her pregnancies, she was right. In one study by Niu et all (2024), ten pregnant women were followed over the course of their pregnancies. Changes in brain structure were charted. Reductions in gray matter volume were found over the course of pregnancy. In other words — the pregnant woman’s brain actually shrinks! Their conclusion? There are profound neurobiological changes during pregnancy.

Moreover, in a review of the literature, Esel (2010) found evidence that the brains of pregnant women and women with children are very different from the brains of women who have not had children who are within the same age range. Moreover, Esel found ample evidence of neurobiological and hormonal influences on women and their feelings and behavior. She says that maternal behavior develops over the course of a woman’s life, including during pregnancy. This happens through the development of special neural networks, which are cooperatively developed by genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors.

In fact, the biology is fascinating. Esel points out the importance of hormonal influences in preparing women for motherhood. She says that estrogen, prolactin, and oxytocin stimulate maternal behavior after birth — and that the stimulation of the vagina during birth initiates the release of oxytocin, so important for the initiation of maternal behavior as well as milk production. She also discusses the finding that women are prepared to become mothers from their own birth. She says that early exposure to estrogen during the perinatal period in their own early lives may be responsible for women’s greater interest in and facility with social relationships over that of men. She suggests that this capacity primes women to be interested in and to relate to their infants once they become mothers. Then, during pregnancy the capacity for relating to their own infants is further primed by the high levels of progesterone and estrogen which are secreted. Furthermore, she says that the hormonal exposure of the brain during pregnancy plays an important role in the development of maternal neural networks and systems.

In the same vein Esel says that in humans, the ability to establish social relationships is inversely related to levels of fetal testosterone both in females and males — so in other words, men, from birth, are less primed to establish social relationships.

No wonder women feel different when they are pregnant — and no wonder they feel a shift in both body and identity. The hormonal influences on their brains, their bodies, their feelings and their behavior are powerful.

I look forward to reading the rest of Jones’s book to find out more about the research on the physiological and psychological changes that come about during pregnancy. I know too little about this.

In fact, most of us know too little about this.

Scientists are looking at aspects of the woman’s experience during pregnancy in a way that they might not have considered doing years ago, even though we have needed this information for a long time. But perhaps, as Jones suggests, science waited until there were enough women in the field to make this a priority.

References

Esel, Ertugrul (2010). Neurobiology of Motherhood. Turkish Journal of Psychiatry. https://www.turkpsikiyatri.com/Data/UnpublishedArticles/3uydyp.pdf

Jones, Lucy. Matrescence.

Yanbin Niu, Benjamin N. Conrad, M. Catalina Camacho, Sanjana Ravi, Hannah A. Piersiak, Lauren G. Bailes, Whitney Barnett, Mary Kate Manhard, David A. Cole, Ellen Wright Clayton, Sarah S. Osmundson, Seth A. Smith, Autumn Kujawa, Kathryn L. Humphreys (2024). Neurobiological Changes Across Pregnancy: A Longitudinal Investigation, bioRxiv, The Preprint Server for Biology doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.08.584178

A Deeper Dive into the Transition to Motherhood

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More on matrescence – part 4 in a series

Posted July 20, 2024

Let’s take a deeper dive into the transition to motherhood in this, the fourth post in a series on this subject.

In the Introduction to her beautiful book, Matrescence, Lucy Jones says, “Pregnancy, then birth, and then – big time – early motherhood, simply did not match up with the cultural, social, and philosophical narratives I had grown up with…I started to realize that that my mind had been colonized by inadequate ideas about womanhood, about motherhood, about value, even love… A sense that I had been fundamentally misinformed about the female body and maternal experience set in fast” (p. 9, 10).

She describes how, during her pregnancy she noticed changes in herself which she had no language to describe – but she noticed that her “consciousness felt different: restructured or rewired” (p. 10).

She says, “I thought the baby would grow inside my body, …that I would still be the same person. But that didn’t seem to be the case” (p. 10).

I think that many if not most women feel all of these things. But do they have the language to speak about them? Or do they feel permitted to speak about them?

I suspect not.

Jones talks about how ill prepared she was for motherhood – how she had never changed a diaper and knew nothing about what it took to raise and take care of another human.

And I think many women feel this way – especially with their first babies.

Jones speaks about her guilt if she tried to do anything just for herself during those first months of motherhood.

She also writes about the idea that women are supposed to have a built in maternal instinct and how this works against the acknowledgement that motherhood absolutely requires the acquisition of knowledge and skills about babies, children and mothering.

And in saying this, I think Jones puts her finger squarely on the shame and embarrassment many mothers feel when they don’t know what the right thing is to do for their baby – whether it is something as simple as whether to put them down for a nap or something as complex and important as when to call the pediatrician.

As she says, “this is a set up in which mothers (are) destined to fail” (p. 11).

She says, “I thought early motherhood would be gentle, beatific, pacific, tranquil, bathed in a soft light. But actually it was hard core, edgy, gnarly” (p. 14).

Finally, we have someone who tells the truth about motherhood.

We have needed a Lucy Jones for a long time.

Women feel that they are not allowed to talk about the utter fatigue, boredom, tedium, panic and downright hardship of childcare. Yes, the difficulty of juggling work and child care is talked about. And the under valuation of parenting work is mentioned now and then. But as a society? We do not have much of a discussion around many of these issues – and we certainly have not made changing any of them a priority – in our own minds, with our partners and friends, or at the ballot box.

There is still pressure to put on a good face as a mother, to treat the work we do as joyous and to present that point of view to anyone other than our closest and most trusted friends and fellow parents.

Jones calls this “cultural apathy”. And she says that many women feel that they themselves are to blame for the extent of their troubles as new mothers. However, the fact is that a majority of women feel anxious after having a baby, at least 45% report feeling low, and at least 35% describe themselves as depressed. One in five mothers do not tell anyone about their feelings and over half report not feeling supported by their families. Almost half say they feel like they have to handle everything alone.

But there is hope. Jones writes about a burgeoning field of neurobiology that is looking at the changes in the brains of pregnant women and those who care for young infants. And she quotes Alexandra Sacks, a psychiatrist interested in this subject, as saying that simply by talking about the difficulties inherent in transitioning to motherhood, many women will feel relief.

And this is why, Jones says, she wrote her book: as an invitation to start talking about the process of becoming and being a mother.

And this is why I am writing this series.

Stay tuned for more.

References

Jones, Lucy. Matrescence

Matresence: The Transition to Motherhood – Isolation and Identity Shift

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A while back I wrote a post on matrescense, or the transition to motherhood, which seems to have struck a chord. This post is the second in a series on this subject.

To give some background, matrescence is a terms that was coined in the 1970’s by medical anthropologist, Dana Rafael, in her book, Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change. More recently, the term was brought back to our attnetion by Aurelie Athan, a reproductive psychologist at Columbia University.

Athan notes that Rafael “pointed out that in many cultures, the birth of a new baby is announced by saying, “a woman has given birth.” Athan’s point is that the focus is on the mother and what she has done. And that emphasis is important. The mother is given credit for what she has accomplished. This is symbolic of the meaning the culture gives to the event and how it is handled. In cultures other than our own, mothers are often more supported after the birth of a baby, and more taken care of.

For example, in South Korea, it is common for mothers to go to a retreat for the first 21 days after they give birth. There, fresh meals are delivered three times a day, they can receive massages and facials and attend childcare classes, and there are nurses available to watch over the baby if the mother needs a rest.

There is a special soup to drink, traditional in South Korea during the postpartum period, lactation consultants and exercise routines to help with recovery, and body realignment to help new mothers get back in touch with their bodies.

In South Korea, eight out of ten mothers go to such a spa after giving birth.

This is the kind of thing that mothers in the United States can only dream about.

Here, mothers are often isolated in their own apartments or homes after their babies are born. During their leave from work, they often struggle with feelings of loneliness and anxiety. And this is especially true for first time moms who are not entirely sure what they are doing.

For example, a New York Times article profiled Alicia Robbins. When she had her first two children, she, like almost every woman who has birthed a child before her in this country, felt overwhelmed upon leaving the hospital. Never mind that she herself is an obstetrician and gynecologist. She said, having a child “was way harder than I expected. I kept wondering if it was OK that breastfeeding was so difficult or that I felt anxious. I kept asking myself, ‘Is this really my new normal?’”

Her mother came to help her, “but she kind of froze,” Dr. Robbins said. “I love her, God bless her, but we had fights over things like whether you need to sterilize the breast pump for three hours.”

In this country, as Aurelie Athan says, we talk about the baby, not the mother. We pay attention to the infant, give gifts to the infant, visit the infant….and we don’t talk so much about what the mother has accomplished and what we can do for her.

But the process of becoming a mother is something that we, in our culture, need to pay more attention to. As Daniel Stern said in his two books, The Motherhood Constellation and Becoming a Mother, giving birth to a new identity may be as hard, or even harder than the act of giving birth to the actual baby.

Becoming a mother changes who a woman feels herself to be. It expands her identity — but, as with many changes, this expansion can be fraught with uncertainty and anxiety. Who am I now? Do I know how to be a mother? Am I doing the right thing? What kind of mother do I want to be? Can I ever get back to doing the things I used to like to do? And if I do, will I be neglecting my baby? Can I still work? How much should I work? Can I still be good at my job?

The questions are endless.

Additionally, becoming a mother changes a woman’s identity as a partner. And this is not always easy. Sometimes a woman wonders if she still has room in her emotional repertoire for her partner. Sometimes the partner is jealous of the time a woman spends with her baby. Sometimes a woman feels she can only share her body with one person at a time and she feels resentful of other demands being made on her or torn about who that person should be — the baby or the partner? Often, a mother and her partner differ on how they each feel caring for the child should be handled. Conflicts come up over sleep training or how much of a schedule the baby really needs. And the energy for talking through these conflicts can be in short supply. Women often feel they carry more of the mental load for making doctor’s appointments, reading up on child development, and thinking about what the baby needs.

This identity shift is especially difficult, as a new mother needs her partner for support, and any resentment, difference of opinion, or outright conflict can get in the way of feeling supported.

The identity shift a woman faces after giving birth is hard. Like shedding a skin that no longer fits, the woman must say goodbye to aspects of herself and ways of being and doing that were part of her previous self, and she must grow into her new role as she works out what that will be.

Just knowing that all women experience this, that having a hard time with this shift is normal, and that it can be named and learned about — and even, in some cases, talked about with other mothers — can be helpful to new mothers.

I recommend that anyone suffering from this transition reach out — whether to friends, other new mothers, more experienced mothers, or even to a therapist who can discuss these issues openly.

After my last post, one such mother reached out to me and said that she felt less alone just knowing that what she was feeling was not unique to her.

****************************

For more good discussion of this subject, see the references section below and watch this blog for part 3 of this series.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

References

Jones, Lucy. Matresence

Rafael, Dana. Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change

Stern, Daniel. Becoming a Mother

Stern, Daniel, The Motherhood Constellation

Today, As We Think About the Victims of the Massive Bombing Campaign in Ukraine, a Post on War and Children

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Because of the news of a massive bombing campaign including the bombing of a Ukrainian Hospital today, I would like to post on war on children.

This is an excerpt from my book, How Children Grieve: What Adults Miss and What They Can Do to Help:

One psychiatrist said of both the children and the adults in the Ukraine, “(They) aren’t just grieving a person; (they) are grieving (their) entire existence.”[i]

And, as the United Nation International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says:

            “In war, children suffer the most”.

As I write, children are dying and losing loved ones every single day in multiple locations around the world, including Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Russia, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Yemen, Congo and numerous other countries. These children are suffering in ways that are quite simply horrific and completely incompatible with normal development.

In fact, globally, one in four children, or over 400 million children live in a country affected by armed conflict, terrorism, or disaster.[ii] And armed conflict can last throughout a child’s entire life, such as in Liberia where civil war caused widespread trauma from 1989 to 2004.[iii]

The effects of war are innumerable. They extend far beyond the trauma that is experienced by the loss of loved ones and the witnessing and being the victim of violence. In wartime, children, teens and adults may all experience a brutal shattering of parts of their inner worlds. Their minds may become black holes of horror and despair and their mental functioning can be intruded upon and assaulted by destructive forces. [iv]

Moreover, they experience all the secondary losses of war including the loss of home and community due to fighting and bombardment. They include all the losses embedded in the experiences of evacuation and immigration including the loss of contact with friends, and the division of families. They include all the difficulties associated with adapting to one or more new living arrangements. And they include the loss of food security, the loss of the provision of proper public health measures and the loss of general health care including mental health care.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that approximately 20 million children and adolescents have been displaced from their country of origin as refugees in the year 2023.[v]

And we must remember that the numbers of children living through war and experiencing displacement are even larger than this because there are many kinds of war—including not only armed conflicts between nations – but also drug wars, gang wars, and more localized street fighting caused by conditions of poverty and social inequality – and these too cause people to suffer and to flee.

In the Ukraine alone, as of March 2022, half of all Ukrainian refugees were children.[vi] And this number does not even include all of the children who have been kidnapped and forced to adapt to life in Russia.  Again, this is a LOT of children who have lost their homes, friends, neighborhoods, schools and so much more.

The past two decades have marked increasing interest in the psychological impact of war on children. Many researchers have studied this subject, it is well documented that exposure to adverse childhood events (including violence and war trauma) leads to a higher-than-average incidence of acute stress disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and physiological and mental illness).

The most important thing we know about the effect of war on children is that even above and beyond the exposure to risk and violence, the most traumatizing event for children is the threat of separation from one or both parents or actual separation from them. Given the intense attachment of children to their parents, this is the worst consequence of war for children and leads to the most suffering. [vii]

We also know that the most common mental health effects of exposure to war for children are elevated symptoms traumatic stress, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

There is so much more to say about the effect of war on children. See this site for more in the coming weeks.

[i] Fleming, LaKeisha, How the War in the Ukraine is Affecting the Mental Health of Survivors.

https://www.verywellmind.com/ukrainian-mental-health-during-the-war-5225389

[ii] Gudrun Østby, Siri Aas Rustad, and Andreas Forø Tollefsen, “Children Affected by Armed Conflict, 1990–2019,” Conflict Trends 6.

[iii] Betancourt. T. S., et al., “The Intergenerational Impact of War on Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Lessons from the Longitudinal Study of War-Affected Youth in Sierra Leone,” Conflict and Health 14, no. 62 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00308-7.

[iv] Roth, Merav, Ten simple guidelines on initial therapeutic intervention with acute trauma following October 7, 2023. In Psychoanalysis in a Holy Land, Abramovitch, Cusin, Leo, Roth, Alaltiello and Volkan. Pgs. 135 – 162. Frenis Zero Press: Italy.

[v][v]

[vi] United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Two Million

Refugee Children Flee War in Ukraine in Search of Safety

Across Borders. UNICEF. Available from: https://www.unicef.

org/press‐releases/two‐million-refugee-children-flee‐war‐ukraine‐

search‐safety‐across‐borders.

[vii] Masten AS, Best KM, Garmezy N (1990). Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity. Dev Psychopathol 2: 425–444.

Bumbum Cream for YOUR Kids???

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Recently I became aware that children, tweens and teens are buying beauty products….like firming creams for their skin.

Teens?

Doesn’t surprise me.

But children and tweens?

Mystifying!

Are your kids asking for $48 a tub face or body cream?

And if so, what do you do?

In a New York Times article published recently, a 15 year old was quoted as saying, “All of my friends have it”.

Do they really think their bums need firming?

Why do they think they need something which advertises itself as “visibly smoothing and tightening the appearance of your skin”?

These kids have the tightest, most beautiful skin of anyone on the planet!

This is concerning to me.

I really do think that if your child is asking for this, you might want to open a discussion of why they want it. And if the answer is, “because all my friends have it”, you might want to ask why they think their friends all want it.

This brings up the topic of body image and the importance of external appearances. It can open the question of why our children think these things are important (if they do) and how they feel about their own bodies and appearances. Do they have worries about how their skin looks? Or do they have worries about other parts of their bodies?

It can also bring up the topic of aging. Are kids, even young kids, worried about getting older and what they will look like as they do?

These things are not easy to talk about. Your children may resist. They may say, “just forget it” and then save up their own money to buy the cream.

But these topics are important, as we all know.

And what’s more, this may be an opportunity to talk about money and what is worth spending money on and what is not.

We can also talk about advertising and how companies take advantage of people’s worries to get them to buy more products.

And THIS may lead to a discussion of values – what you value, what you want your child to value and what your child thinks about values.

On the other hand, you may just feel like one of the parents quoted in the New York Times article who said, “It’s not that serious, they’re just trying to have fun.”

For more see: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/style/sol-de-janeiro-brazilian-bum-bum.html

My new book on grief in childhood is coming out!

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In an act of shameless self-promotion, I would like to announce the publication of my new book on grief in childhood.  It is written for the general public and I hope you will share it with your friends, family, acquaintances, etc. – and also, if you like it, do not hesitate to write a review on Amazon!

Thank you so much!!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738355/how-children-grieve-by-corinne-masur

The Importance of Pets

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Dr. Corinne Masur

We all want love and gratification from those who care for us – and this is particularly true of children.

But from their earliest moments of life, babies and kids must learn to put up with delays in getting what they want, mood changes in those they love and all sorts of other disappointments in relationships with parents, siblings, and friends.

But not so much with pets.

Pets provide a unique opportunity for a child to love and be loved.

Pet give love unconditionally. And if they don’t, because they are a lizard or a frog, the child can imagine that they do. And pets are there all the time. They are there if the child is sad, or angry or if the child fees lonely or misunderstood. The child can talk to the pet, cry with the pet, yell at the pet or even give the pet a little shove. According to some children, pets are better than siblings.

With pets, the child has more control over the relationship. This can be comforting because of the implicit guarantee of stability. A pet does not turn a cold shoulder (well, on second thought, maybe some cats DO…) nor does it choose to leave the relationship. A pet does not criticize (or if so, rarely). It stays at home, with the child and it does whatever it does at the bidding of the child (at least some of the time).

In moments of hardship and sorrow, children sometimes feel that their pet understands their feelings. They often feel that their pet is the only one who truly understands and is “there” for them. There is a large element of projection here, but none-the-less, the feeling for the child is real.

And pets teach kids about love. Kids learn what it is to feel deeply for someone who is not a parent or a brother or sister. They learn about what kind of care another creature needs (even if they don’t always do what needs to be done).

But there’s more: researchers who studied the subject found that the mere presence of a family pet during childhood can increase emotional expression and control in children,[1] and other research shows that even brief interactions with dogs can lower stress levels in children.[2]. Moreover, studies have found that attachment to pets can promote healthy social development, social competence, increased social interaction, improved social communication, and social play in children[3]

And also, kids learn about loss from their pets.

Most animals live much shorter lives than we do – and inevitably, during the child’s life, the life of their pet comes to an end. Children may be shocked when this happens; they may be sad or angry or upset in any of a number of ways. But this kind of loss can be useful preparation for later, more profound losses.

Recently, The New York Times published a story called, “Walnut and Me”, a first person account of the relationship between a man and his dog. It was very personal and completely heartfelt. In describing his first dog, Sam Anderson, the author of the article said, “I loved him so deeply that I became a vegetarian – my affection for this little dog radiated out to the whole rest of the animal kingdom”. But then, he says, that love turned to pain. At 12, his beloved dog got cancer, wasted away and died. The first night in bed without him, Sam reached out – and broke down sobbing when he did not feel him there. Anderson was also angry. He wrote, “I wanted to burn down the universe. I either wanted Moby back…or I wanted nothing”.

And Anderson also talks about the importance of the next animals the family had, a hamster and another dog, to his teenage daughter. He even includes his daughter’s graduation picture in the article – in which she wears her cap and gown and is holding their dog, who is looking up at her adoringly.

The kind of love a pet can provide is a rare commodity. It is valuable. It is painful when it ends – but it is comforting and healing while it lasts. And it is important.

So – when you get tired of walking the dog – or feeding the iguana – remember, you are doing a good thing for your children by letting them have that pet.

References

1. Sato, R., Fujiwara, T., Kino, S., Nawa, N., & Kawachi, I. (2019). Pet Ownership and Children’s Emotional Expression: Propensity Score-Matched Analysis of Longitudinal Data from Japan. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(5), 758.

2. Crossman, M. K., Kazdin, A. E., & Knudson, K. (2015). Brief unstructured interaction with a dog reduces distress. Anthrozoös, 28(4), 649-659.

3. Purewal, R., Christley, R., Kordas, K., Joinson, C., Meints, K., Gee, N., & Westgarth, C. (2017). Companion animals and child/adolescent development: a systematic review of the evidence. International journal of environmental research and public health, 14(3), 234.

Anderson, Sam. Walnut and Me: How my dog helped me to accept that someday we all will die. New York Times Magazine Section, June 2, 2024.

Are You or Your Child Confusing Hate with Anger?

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Recently a mother told me that her son hates her.  

She is going through a divorce and her six year old son has been yelling at her and even trying to kick and hit her on occasion.

We needed to talk about this.

I have known this mother ever since her son was born and I know quite a lot about her mothering.

She is a good mother. And I am sure that her son does not hate her. I know that (most of the time) he loves her and depends on her and looks forward to coming back to her after time spent with his Dad.

But I also know he is very confused and angry about the divorce.

And I also know that his Dad is harder to be angry with because he is very strict.

It is easy for kids and teens to confuse anger and hatred.

When a child or teenager is extremely angry, they yell and scream and they may even say the dreaded words, “I HATE YOU!!”.

And while they may actually feel that they hate you in that moment, it is likely that they are expressing how angry they are – and not an enduring feeling about you.

The same thing can happen when we are angry – especially with someone we are in a very close relationship with, like a partner or a sibling or a parent. We may feel that we truly hate them.

Anger can be that powerful. 

But that is the difference between anger and hatred. Our children – and we ourselves – become angry with someone when they hurt us or do something that we dislike or have asked them not to do. It is a temporary emotional response. 

We hate someone because of who they ARE – because they have enduring characteristics that we just cannot tolerate and which violate our own values or morals or which hurt us or others repeatedly. 

But why is this distinction an important one to make?

For a couple of reasons:

First of all, let’s go back to the mother I referred to at the beginning. It is extremely important for her wellbeing that she understand that her son really does not hate her. If she believes that he does, her feelings about herself as a mother will be altered in such a destructive way. She will feel terrible about herself and about her relationship with her son.

Second of all, some researchers believe that when we define our feelings toward another as hatred, we are more likely to act in a hateful way. In an important study on this topic, Fisher et al pointed out that hatred is usually based on a belief that the person who is hated is always deserving of hate. Hating someone is based on the idea that the hateful things about them are stable and always present. As they say, “there is little room for constructive change”, this is just the way the person IS. ,”And therefore (the only) options left (are) to act upon one’s hate”. 

So – do we allow our children to act on their hateful feelings? Do we allow the child who “hates” us to leave the house to go stay with a friend? Do we ourselves break up a friendship because we feel this strongly about our friend?

We are living in a time of escalating division. We need to educate our children – and ourselves – in regard to the difference between anger and hatred – so that neither they nor we have to act on our angry feelings, so that we can open up the possibility that when we think we hate someone, we can actually allow ourselves to calm down and consider the possibility that we were just angry with them – and they do not deserve our hatred.

This is an important distinction for our children to learn. When they say that they hate us – it does not feel good to them – and afterwards they are likely to feel quite guilty.

We can teach them about the differences between anger and hatred – and we can also remember them ourselves so that the next time our child says they hate us, we do not feel quite so devastated.

But how do we help our children to make this distinction and how do we make it ourselves?

These same researchers I mentioned above concluded that “trying to explain the hated target’s actions in terms of circumstances rather than nature (is) a first step” in de-escalating one’s hating feelings. 

In other words, if we can believe that the way the other person acted had to do with particular circumstances rather than because that is just how they are, we can begin to understand that we do not hate them – we are angry with how they acted. 

So – when we argue with our partner – or when our child shouts at us that she hates us, after everyone calms down, the question is, can the person who felt hatred ask themselves whether the other person is really deserving of hate?

It is critical that we try to disentangle these two emotions – when we take in what our children are giving out, when we interpret our own emotions, and when we evaluate what is happening in our neighborhoods, our country and our world.

Friendships, partnerships, the parent-child relationship and the relationships between groups of people can all be fraught at certain moments of conflict. But generally, these relationships can survive anger.

We need to show our children – and remember this ourselves – that we can survive their anger – and still love them.

In fact, it would be odd if there was not some anger involved now and then in our relationship with them. 

But labeling these feelings as hatred makes the stakes much more dramatic.

We can try to help our children to understand that when they are upset with someone they may be tempted to use the words, “I hate you!” when what they really feel is anger….and we can try to remember this for ourselves as well.

References

Fisher et al. (2018). Why we hate. Emotion Review Vol. 10, No. 4 (October 2018) 309–320