Even "Good" Parents Can Harm Their Children (Part Two)

Even the parent who tries to inform themselves on how to be more helpful to their child's growth often makes mistakes, not out of ill will but because of gaps in the information they draw on. Indeed, various opinion leaders on early-childhood topics often fail to take into account the importance of the unconscious part of the newborn, the part that forms in the first years of life (as well as during pregnancy), which registers all the stimuli and sensations the baby is exposed to and which he will then seek for the rest of his life, even if with different settings and characters. This means that, while sensations of well-being leave traces that tend to be reproduced, sensations of dissatisfaction and distress (since the tension is not discharged) leave a sort of black hole, a gap into which the person will fall back repeatedly in the attempt to fill it. This explains why, over the course of a life, one finds oneself repeating experiences of suffering, more or less often, which, looked at closely, reveal similar features even though they occur in apparently different situations!

So, bearing this reality in mind, one will try to avoid putting the little one in situations of suffering.

One of these consists in being a witness to the parents' sexuality, if he sleeps in their bedroom.

Usually, when co-sleeping or bed-sharing* is recommended, this aspect is overlooked, underestimating the newborn's capacity for perception. In reality, even a very small baby perceives what is happening around him, through a sensory channel that is far more developed and active in him than in an adult: smell. Many glands become active during sexual activity and release scents that our society tends to cover or mask with deodorants and perfumes, without however eliminating their production, so much so that they are detectable by someone, like a newborn, who still has a highly developed sense of smell.

Adult sexuality excites him, that is, it increases his tension, which however he has no way of discharging through contact with the other person (particularly the mother) who, even if present in the same room, is emotionally far from him. This situation creates in him a strong sense of loneliness that leaves indelible traces in his psyche and which often translates (as many have had occasion to observe) into attempts to draw their attention onto himself, diverting them from what they were engaged in. Often, indeed, the start of intercourse is interrupted by the child waking up, by crying, by coughing, or by a sudden bit of spit-up!

Psychoanalysis calls "primal scene" the unconscious representation the child forms of the intimacy of his parents, of which he has been a witness. The sensations felt, even though they do not reach consciousness, can be so intense as to cause him, even in adulthood, problems of various kinds and severity (phobias, panic attacks, sexual disorders). Indeed, adult sexuality is experienced above all as a struggle, a more or less violent aggression of the man against the woman: unconsciously the child identifies with one figure or the other, taking on, that is, either the active role (typical of the persecutor) or the passive role (typical of the victim). This will affect the way he experiences sexuality later, both in the choice of partner and in the ways he seeks pleasure.

* Co-sleeping (shared sleep) is based on the theory of exogestation, which holds that physical contact with the newborn remains important even during sleep, since at birth the maturation of his nervous system is not yet complete. Bed-sharing is sharing the same bed as the parents, a choice that carries many risk factors given the great difference in size between parents and newborn.