QUESTION: My husband and I just moved to Arizona from Pennsylvania, and I haven’t established a network of friends here yet. My family is back East, and I have no one but my husband to talk to about problems our kids are having. He is very busy, so that leaves it all pretty much to me. How can I deal with the feelings of loneliness and isolation as a mother?

DR. DOBSON: You’re right; there is less support available to families now than in the past. When a child was born during the 1800s, the new mother was assisted by many friends and relatives who hovered around her to offer their advice and help.

These aunts, grandmothers, and neighbors hadn’t read many books on child-rearing, but they didn’t need them. They had picked up a certain folk wisdom that gave them confidence in handling babies and children. They had answers for every question, whether right or wrong, and they were willing to share what they knew with those they loved. So a new mother was taught how to raise her children by older women who had many years’ experience in caring for little people.

That support for new parents is now largely nonexistent. With the disappearance of the “extended family,” many moms feel isolated and alone. They live in a mobile society where neighbors are often strangers. Their own mothers, aunts, and sisters have moved far away to Detroit or Dallas or Portland – and they might not be trusted even if they were available to help. This isolation has shaken the confidence of new moms, especially, who are aware that there is too much they don’t know about kids.

Dr. Benjamin Spock, the author of Baby and Child Care, observed this anxiety in hospital maternity wards. He wrote: “I can remember mothers who cried on the morning they were to take their baby home. ‘I won’t know what to do,’ they wailed.”

What can you do to build a network of friends in a similar situation? I strongly recommend that you seek out groups that are designed to meet this need. Many churches run classes called Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), which is an outstanding program that puts women in touch with one another. Other possibilities are out there, such as Mom’s Day Out, Mothers on the Move, etc.

You are not alone, even in a new city. There are other women out there who need you as much as you need them. You can find each other with a little effort.

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QUESTION: I was taught in my psychology class that babies come into the world devoid of personality, and the environment then stamps its image. Do you disagree?

DR. DOBSON: Yes, although that understanding has been accepted for hundreds of years. Philosophers Locke and Rousseau told us in the 17th and 18th centuries that babies come into the world as “tabula rasas,” or “blank slates,” upon which society and the environment wrote the fundamentals of personality. But they were wrong. We now know that every newborn is unique from every other baby, even from the first moments outside the womb. Except for identical twins, triplets, etc., no two are alike in temperament, biochemistry, or genetics.

How foolish of philosophers and behavioral scientists to have thought otherwise. If every grain of sand is unique and every snowflake is like no other, how simplistic to have believed that human beings are mass-produced like little robots. That is nonsense.

Just ask the real experts – the mothers who understand their babies better than anyone. They’ll tell you that each of their infants had a different “feel” – a different personality – from the first moment they were held. If these mothers are eventually blessed with six or eight or even 20 children, they will continue to say emphatically that every one of them was unique and distinct from the others when only 1 hour old. They are right – and their perceptions are being confirmed by scientific inquiry.

 

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Dr. Dobson is founder and chairman of the board of the nonprofit organization Focus on the Family, P.O. Box 444, Colorado Springs, CO. 80903; or www.family.org. Questions and answers are excerpted from The Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide and Bringing Up Boys, both published by Tyndale House. 2006 James Dobson Inc.