Today the average age of mothers has risen considerably because, thanks to contraceptive methods, pregnancy is postponed until the moment when a woman feels ready to face life as a parent. This process is heavily influenced by one's work situation, which must be "stable" before trying for a pregnancy, and which must not be set aside for too long after the baby's birth. But is this really the only reason why women become "full-time mothers" for the shortest possible time? Isn't the main reason, though hard to put into words, that being close to a newborn is exhausting and, for many, does not bring the satisfaction they expected?
In our society, marked by the frenzy of wanting things without knowing how to wait for them, of skipping steps, of handling a thousand commitments at once, there is a tendency to try to speed up children's growth. It is thought that having a wide range of experiences from the first months of life allows them to mature and become independent sooner. In reality, not taking their own rhythms into account, in the hope of not losing one's own, leads to exactly the opposite result.
Even though we are in the third millennium, just as the length of pregnancy has not shortened, neither has the time needed, for newborns or for mothers, to "adapt" to life and to their new role. Raising a baby means, in fact, changing one's own rhythms to bring them into line, at first, with his. It is a way of getting to know him, of understanding him, of expressing containment and availability to him. Only once one has attuned to his rhythms does it become possible to start, little by little, without rushing, accustoming him to one's own.
The first requirement for a mother who wishes to be "good enough", as Winnicott (English pediatrician and psychoanalyst) puts it, is therefore to be available to care for her baby calmly and peacefully, above all with a mind clear of thoughts directed toward other activities or of guilt over not managing to carry them out as she would like.
The postpartum period (roughly 40 days) does not concern only the woman's physical recovery, but is the minimum time she must allow herself to "become skilled" in her role as mother.
Unfortunately, however, many consider this time spent at home, with the sole occupation of caring for the baby, as lost or unproductive time! It would be important instead for them to understand that helping the little one work through the first fundamental stages of his psycho-affective development without rushing them will help him grow up more serenely. He will not, in fact, need to keep going back to rework what he was unable to assimilate at the right moment.