One of the problems a mother may encounter after her child's birth concerns the difficulty of separating from them. Unconsciously, many women continue to experience their child as a part of themselves, as had been the case during pregnancy. The physical separation that occurs with birth seems to change nothing in the mother's psyche: she refuses to detach from the baby, avoiding leaving them with others even for a short while (in some cases even refusing to let family members hold the baby), inventing every kind of fear about putting them to sleep alone, and trying to keep them constantly in her arms or under her eyes to prevent any possible difficulty.
This unjustified, anxiety-driven attitude on the mother's part betrays a form of depression that often goes unrecognized, in which the mother confuses the baby with herself and projects onto them the distress that actually concerns her. This distress arises from the repetition, with her child, of the relationship she had as a little girl with her own mother, from whom she had been unable to separate in order to build her own identity. Having become a mother herself, she finds herself entangled again in her confused and ambivalent relationship with her mother, now replaced in the present by the baby.
Unable to recognize that the problem concerns her, she projects it onto the child.
It is no coincidence that the children of these mothers frequently develop physical problems that require repeated visits to the pediatrician and constant maternal presence to ensure they receive the necessary care.
These health problems, unconsciously caused by the mother's difficulty in establishing a healthy relationship with her child, make up what is known as Pediatric Maternal Avoidance Syndrome (SPEM).
Pediatricians, who know it well, often realize that the true «patient» in the pair is not the child but the mother, who is the one who should receive care, if only she could recognize and accept this reality.
This does not mean blaming mothers for something that happens within them unconsciously (that is, something they are not able to recognize), but simply making them aware that the frequent recurrence of the child's illnesses can be improved or resolved by exploring their own inner world, even if they show no symptoms that would otherwise push them to undertake this work on themselves.