Posted by Dinah on February 25, 2011, at 16:37:28
In reply to Re: New research on Depressed Mom's and their babies » Dinah, posted by floatingbridge on February 25, 2011, at 15:44:03
Anyone can answer!
I didn't either. I ask because a perfectly "healthy" mother strongly suggested it to me as the best thing that could happen to parenthood. While I, perhaps sensitized by a history of depression and with my own sensitivity to abandonment, rejected the idea of leaving a baby to cry until the baby gives up on the idea of crying to gain attention.
People in clinical depression likely have sluggish reward centers in general. I don't know that this causes any more ill to a baby than any other sort of emotional misattunement.
It seems hard to me to believe that an experience as common as postpartum depression would have persisted in an evolutionary sense if it was an unmitigated negative and harmful experience for offspring. The general thought is that it brought community support for the mother. But perhaps it also narrows the mother's focus to the smaller world of mother and child, and away from the world at large and its distractions. I'm not of course saying it's a good thing. It's nothing I would wish on anyone, having experienced it myself.
poster:Dinah
thread:979678
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110220/msgs/979776.html