Who should care for our babies?

Abstract

Who should care for our youngest children? For decades, Western society has emphasised the importance of mothers as their children's first carers, and the research agenda has supported this. However, the world is changing around us and successful approaches to child rearing from the past do not necessarily meet the needs of today's families. In this paper I argue that an exclusive focus on maternal care is detrimental to the well-being if many infants. Involvement of others in a circle of attachment around infants is, I argue, a strong protective factor, buffering infants against the risks in their environments. Evidence from anthropology suggests that the involvement of allo-parents in the rearing of infants is, in fact, something that has existed for humans (and other primates) for a much longer time than has the concept of the nuclear family. At a time when we are debating the care of infants, we need to ensure that in our reflections we clearly separate our ideologies from the available evidence.