(Img: Me with Archer @ 5 weeks)
As some of you know, nine weeks ago my husband and I were lucky enough to become parents to our first little one, a beautiful boy for whom I lack sufficient words to express my love and adoration. As you also may know, we have struggled with homelessness for a long time, for me it has been five years. We often find it difficult to qualify on housing applications, between us for a variety of reasons, but my most recent hurdle shocked me. This housing program requires BOTH partners to work outside of the home, regardless of how much money one partner can bring in alone, and regardless of their parental status.
Basically, they expect me to hand over my infant son who is not weaned, has never spent a day away from his parents, who is ill and panics when I leave the room, and cannot hold his own head up yet into the care of strangers so I can do something "productive" like stack shelves (due to homelessness and other health issues I haven't had a long term job in a while and instead worked for myself as a dog walker which isn't acceptable to this organization) to earn money to pay this stranger to raise my son. This policy places more value on the act of shelf stacking than nurturing a child. It has been proven to cause long term psychological damage to separate infants from their mothers, but it's more important to them that I stack shelves to prove responsibility. Taking responsibility for my child doesn't count. My husband has income so it's not even a matter of that, it's the principle that they think I should be doing something "productive".
I am doing something incredibly "productive". I "produced" a new member of society and I intend to see the task through and raise him too.
Unfortunately this is another great example of an illogical "Christian" organization. And if I don't obey these rules with no question? (Because there's nobody to address the question to, you'll just get told "those are the rules") We'll be put out on the street with our baby.
This is NOT an program that is trying to actually help families stay together and better their lives, as it would claim. They do not have reasoning behind their rules (eg "you need this amount of income per family to cover the housing, coming from either one adult or both" - that would be too logical), but they will blindly enforce them with no regard for individual circumstance. This is another sad example of an organization basking in tax breaks, clocking up numbers and churning people through the system. It's sick.
Let me make it clear that I'm not criticizing mothers who have been forced to hand over their babies in exchange for housing, or to pay rent on their existing homes. They are victims of this system too.
Personally I suffer with severe clinical anxiety and "mostly o" OCD, causing debilitating breakdowns brought on by horrifying potential circumstances playing out through my mind should my child be away from me. The nature of my OCD also causes the fears to be unsubsided by the safe return of my child, as I have a deep fear that things happen that he is unable to tell me about as he is too young to communicate them. I understand that my mental condition is not the case for most, but despite official diagnosis and my continual counseling for said condition, it is not taken into account or taken seriously at all. The incidents in my life caused specifically by my illness have been intense and very harmful, and definitely something to be taken seriously. It is something I struggle with every day. But aside from my specific circumstance, this fear is not routed in imagination. There have been many instances of abuse, purposeful or accidental neglect and even death through either abuse or neglect of tiny infants left in day care.
I understand the choice is yours at what age to leave your child in the care of others. But my point is that it should be just that - A CHOICE. We live in a society that places very little value on the mother-child relationship and then we wonder why so many children have problems. Mothers are criticized for "babying" newborns with too much attention, for having their baby's bed near to their own (despite its Proven psychological and simply logical benefits), and for wanting to raise their child full time. It's almost as if "nurture" is considered a dirty word. Each relationship is different and needs to be treated as such, but with no less importance. Raising an infant is a demanding job - many of us are fighting exhaustion from nursing every two hours in the night, comforting colicky babies and attending constant doctor's appointments (my son suffers with laryngomalacia - had I been working outside the home with no time to take him to the doctor, this would still be undiagnosed and untreated). Mothers, whether single or married, and fathers, deserve support and the opportunity to build healthy, loving relationships with their child. Personally I don't think daycare is the place for a newborn. Mothers or fathers who wish to raise their own children should be helped not condemned, and no child should ever be ripped away from its family for financial reasons or under threat of homelessness.