Supporting working mothers: A key element in promoting infant mental health
Anneliese Dodd, Labour Member of the European Parliament, took her baby to work with her this week. She presented an important speech on tax avoidance, whilst cradling her infant in her arms.
The images that have circulated of this moment have been extremely moving and important. They show a powerful woman, integrating her role as mother and as worker. We have seen similar images of politicians before. For instance, Italian MEP Licia Ronzulli regularly takes her young daughter to parliament with her, whilst Argentinian politician Donda Perez has shared many photos via social media of her working and feeding her baby. These images are important, in shattering the myth of the working mother who cannot provide close, nurturing care for her baby. But they are not images that most working women can relate to.
We know that close, nurturing and physical interaction between babies and their primary carers is important for early attachments, and for early infant development. We know that babies need regular, predictable and sustained contact with their main carers. They need calm and soothing touch. But we function in an economy that simply doesn’t allow that kind of inter-relationships for the vast majority of parents. The vast majority of parents have to get on with the business of feeding their families, and that means that they have to work. And unfortunately, our culture of work is hostile to supporting these early relationships.
When my daughter was tiny, I had to return to work to complete a research contract. I was very lucky. I had a kind, supportive boss, and I had a nursery within walking distance of my place of work. Because of this, I was able to pop out three times a day to breast feed my daughter. This enabled us to continue to feel connected, and enabled me to continue to feed long beyond the time that many women have to give up, because work routines make that breastfeeding impossible. My experience of blending work and mothering was in many senses ideal, but it is not one that is available to most working women.
To support the mental health and development of babies, we need to enable working mothers to do what is best for their infants. It is unrealistic for the vast majority of working women to stop working for very long, when their babies are small. For many, it is unrealistic to switch even to part time working. If we want to support the early attachments of babies, we have to do something about this. We have to enable a better balance between work and caring responsibilities than our labour culture currently allows.
Whilst it is lovely, and important, to see these images of high powered women politicians, integrating their work and their mothering, their model is not accessible for many women. Policies that support work life balance are heavily skewed to middle class women. Workplaces that are family friendly remain far too much a rarity in our culture. We work long hours, and many working parents juggle more than one job, just to keep their families financially afloat. Government cuts to financial support for working families on lower incomes pressures families to work longer and longer hours.
If we want better mental health outcomes for developing babies we need to be willing to put in place the cultural and economic conditions that support this. Better mental health outcomes for babies cannot be produced simply be putting in place parenting classes and parent-infant psychotherapy. These are useful initiatives, but without ensuring that parents are actually supported to have meaningful, predictable and consistent relationships with their babies, they cannot work. That support must extend beyond individual families, to a working culture that enables families to be families. Supporting families as if they were social islands misses the bigger picture of what makes parenting difficult.
If we are serious about infant mental health, we need to pressure for better conditions for working families. Challenging long hours culture, ensuring that there is a strong package of financial support for low income working families, supporting a meaningful living wage, and rewarding companies that introduce family friendly policies (e.g, work place nurseries) are important steps to ensuring that our infants have the best start in life.
