Childcare guru: little youngsters ought to not stay overnight with absent parent

Penelope Leach believes little children shouldn’t be taken away overnight from the parent they are attached to. Photograph: Alamy

Quite small children whose mother and father separate ought to not stay overnight with the absent father or mom, according to childcare guru Penelope Leach in a book that is presently causing controversy ahead of publication later this week.

Leach says divorce, which is now the fate of nearly half of all marriages, is also typically about the interests of the mothers and fathers, with the kids regarded as property to be shared in between them. Her guide, Household Breakdown: assisting youngsters hang on to each their dad and mom, seems at divorce from the child’s point of see, she says.

But her assertion that young children below the age of four, normally residing with their mother, could suffer emotional and developmental harm if they sleepover at the residence of the absent mother or father, typically the father, has attracted powerful criticism from some psychologists who say there is insufficient proof to substantiate it.

In an interview with Tory MP and former children’s minister Tim Loughton on the internet site of her publisher, Unbound, Leach says: “You get situations where kids are paying a week in mum’s residence and a week in dad’s home and all kinds of horrible arrangements. I get in touch with them horrible because we do know that they are desperately wrong for kids, who require the safety of a spot known as property and who, when extremely little, shouldn’t be taken away overnight from what is normally the mom – the individual they are attached to.”

It is understood she relies on a examine published in Australia in 2010 by McIntosh, Smyth and Kelaher, which was the basis for a report by the Australian Association for Infant Psychological Health. It stated that “the shared overnight care of young children less than four years of age had a significantly adverse influence on the emotional and behavioural nicely-currently being of the youngster. Infants under two years who lived one particular or a lot more overnights a week with both parents had been significantly stressed.” Older youngsters underneath four exhibited better ranges of problem behaviour, the report stated.

But Adrienne Burgess, joint chief executive and head of study at the Fatherhood Institute in the Uk, stated the study’s findings are out of line with other study on the situation and the authors themselves declare their function has been misrepresented. A consensus statement from above 100 professionals, published in the US this 12 months, had taken concern with the Australian findings. “Policymakers and selection makers should recognize that depriving youthful children of overnights with their fathers could compromise the top quality of creating father-kid relationships,” explained the statement signed largely by members of the American Psychological Association.

“Penelope Leach appears to be unaware of the [Australian authors"] most current place, let alone the furore that has been going on in the academic globe,” she explained.

Leach’s see that infants and modest youngsters form just a single powerful attachment is out of date anyway, says Burgess. “Youngsters produce multiple attachments,” she said. “There will be some attachments exactly where they invest much more time with one particular carer than yet another, but all these attachments have an influence – constructive or adverse.”

Dr Tara Weeramanthri, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust, explained that youngsters have a hierarchy of attachment figures, who incorporate grandparents and other carers as properly as dad and mom, rather than getting connected to just one particular person. “When sick or distressed, they want the man or woman at the leading of the tree as it were, so if mother was the principal carer, that would be mom,” she stated. Nevertheless, “I would not share the view that youthful youngsters should not devote the evening at the father’s residence , in which the couple have separated.

“It is clearly important that visits are managed and supported by both mothers and fathers rather than the youngster being caught up in a predicament exactly where there is acrimony. “Each and every mother or father has to work to help the child’s partnership with the other mother or father, by preparing and speaking to them about it and it is greatest if the check out are component of a routine rather than erratic and tiny youngsters could want to consider a favourite toy, this kind of as a teddy.”

Dr Nigel Sherriff, senior investigation fellow in the centre for well being analysis at Brighton University and a member of the British Psychological Society, stated the suggestion that overnight stays need to not be permitted “goes against the investigation proof which strongly suggests that constructive father engagement in the early many years prospects to higher social and educational outcomes”. He extra that the idea of a exclusive attachment to one man or woman – usually the mom – was “hugely outdated now”. The theory grew up in the 1950s, publish-war, when guys came back without having jobs and there have been attempts to persuade females that they should stay at home with the kids. “All the evidence [today] suggests it is about the good quality of the relationship to the care giver and not whether it is in a distinct area or with a diverse care giver,” he stated.

Childcare guru: little youngsters ought to not stay overnight with absent parent