I feel the same way about Komisar. I had to laugh when I listened to an interview she did in which she claimed to have an unusual amount of empathy. I think she comes off as a bully, and that's coming from a stay-at-home Mom!
Ha. This is so silly. There was a great NYT piece on how parents should ignore their children more based on research with a famous anthropologist who studied the Aka - children in HG societies are NOT entertained by their parents and they are very mentally healthy
Thank you for this! Over the last couple of years especially, I've been noticing and reacting more strongly against the tone she (or others who are also 100% sure of their opinions) uses. Seeing thumbnails of that recent video in my feed was the last straw for me--my husband has ADHD, both of us have autism, and we do not appreciate her lack of nuance in interpreting research.
If my young children could have put into words how they felt, they would be saying exactly what Erica Komisar says regarding their needs. Perhaps with the mother's role being a bit more interchangeable with other alloparents who were consistently available in the home. Am I an example of what you are advocating for Elena? I was 'raised' by childminders and my father - both my mum and dad worked full time (but he worked slightly less long hours than her). The set up was wholly inadequate in terms of me and my sister getting our needs met. We have both suffered childhood trauma and neglect. If we had had alloparents at home, who were more available than my parents and less narcissistic e.g. who I'd known since birth and who knew us well and loved us (grandparents, aunts, cousins), we would not have suffered as much as we did. But most people don't have this set-up available to them in our society. The childcare available did not fill this void in our basic needs. When my children were born, I had an innate (non-intellectual) expectation that I would be helped by others, which took me by surprise, because up until then, I'd been taught that I should be totally independent in life. This help never came and it was deeply painful and cripplingly exhausting. My children struggled with being looked after in all their settings outside the home, and society certianly expected way more of them than they were capable of age 2,3,4 and 5. They often came home totally disregulated and it could take me a whole day and much emotional labour to recalibrate them. My friend worked at a pre-school and she spent most of her time trying to convince the 2-4 year olds that it was ok to be there (rather than at home with their mum/alloparent), where they universally wished they were, and spent all day waiting to get back to.
My 3 yo actually does quite well at preschool but it’s only 3 hours long. I think if she had to be there 8-11 hours long (which is how long a lot of preschools go) it would be a really different story. She does come home kind of dysregulated, but I think it’s from using her brain too hard.
I’ve been following your work for awhile and it was honestly what pushed me to get a paid subscription. Thank you for punching a wall, so other mommas don’t have to 😂
Yes, thank you for this! Been feeling terrible after listening to it. I also felt it was so privileged to say they went without “vacations, 2nd homes, fancy clothes, and traveling” to stay home. Some of us are just trying to pay our mortgage and make ends meet.
Yes she absolutely does and in my opinion it’s the most harmful and unscientific claim she makes. But she makes it repeatedly and refuses to engage with contrary evidence. ADHD has a HUGE hereditary component and is thought to be a natural evolved variant of human behavior related to exploration and hyper curiosity - it just doesn’t serve us well in the modern context. To claim that it’s a stress response caused by bad mothering is the biggest BS since refrigerator moms and autism.
Ugh! That's horrible. My mom was a SAHM until I started 7th grade and my sister started Kindergarten (and then she worked part-time at our school). We both have ADHD, because our father has ADHD and his mom was a SAHM as well. (Interestingly enough, my dad is also autistic. So is my sister.)
My cousin has THE worst case of ADHD I’ve ever seen and his mom was a SAHM. But his ADHD was a gift for the future: he’s now a wild land firefighter and his ability to juggle multiple thoughts and projects as well as the endless energy has helped him move up the ranks! You are correct that in the modern world of email jobs it’s not helpful but in the world of high impact work, building infrastructure, running around like a madman ADHD is power
Nice straw man argument. Yes, parents CAN stress newborns and CAN cause ADHD because of our actions. You don't believe that could be true? Try not to feel so attacked, instead look at the research objectively. That would be the wise thing to do. If you actually read/listen to a full interview/article of someone from a differing opinion, you could learn some things that could pot4entially better you as a parent, don't we all strive for that?
Elena, this is misguided. By arguing against mothers as primary nurturers, you’re both ignoring the neuroscience behind our changing brains being uniquely designed to care for babies, and trumpeting the patriarchal (and neoliberal) ideology that women are only valuable if they stop acting like mothers: sensitive and nurturing. Oh, and by the way, you must be “hysterical” if leaving your baby sends your body reeling. (Sorry, the research shows this aversion is ingrained.) The renowned Italian neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi has written: “When women become pregnant, the brain’s very architectural design and internal connectivity are all recalibrated; a neural overhaul to equip a new mother with some nearly superhuman abilities: the precision to distinguish her own child among a sea of faces; an enhanced auditory sense to detect the softest of whimpers; the unparalleled capacity to empathize with her baby, comprehending their needs and emotions based solely on non-verbal cues.”
I don’t see how advocating for mothers, or trying to push policy (or relatives and friends) in the direction of *more* support for mothers, is achieved by saying that what we do—what we’re designed to do—is actually not true. Or shouldn’t be emphasized. Or even asked of us. Or worst of all: not viewed as beneficial. Disparaging the research of mother-infant co-regulation is, in effect, doing a disservice not only to mothers and babies, but to progressive society in general. Truly right-wing politicians and pundits will use any dismissal of the science to say “See. The first three years don’t actually matter. Why fund them.” If moms are stressed and asking for support? It’s their fault. They should just ignore or leave their child so they can chill the hell out. Or get a hobby.
It’s hugely convenient to the patriarchy (and late-stage capitalism) to pretend that these critical years don't matter. Whether it’s men on the neoliberal left who think the solution is for babies to attend 10+ hours of daycare with underpaid staff doing this inconvenient-to-effecient-markets work so their wives can get back to raking in more dough, OR men on the Christian conservative right who believe one isolated mother can do all the cooking, cleaning, and care work, and never complain because they’re “paying for everything”. (Again, this other end is flat out abuse—as you rightly point out—but it’s so obscenely far from where we are today in most WEIRD societies.)
We shouldn’t have to leave our babies in daycare so they can have a friend group or “be socialized.” And we shouldn’t have to play with them all day in isolation because there are no other kids around in the neighborhood (as being a full-time mom is increasingly rare.)
Parents need a third option: a way to raise our children in community as HG populations do. A way to be able to remain around our kids AND other mothers, playmates, and helpers. Whether this is having a work/living space daycare hybrid, or mass ECE workers, midwives, nurses and nannies to support mothers at home. Help them cook, clean, play, organize. This can be achieved in the same way we fund our military (extensively). Tons of funding, tons of training, and paying the people best suited to the job, just as the military selects for skill and endurance. Because these years matter. They are critical to building healthy adults. We need to start putting forth solutions to the lack of village, not dismiss the importance of mothering in our early years.
It’s critical that—rather than be useful idiots for the whitewashing of attachment science—we instead highlight this research to show our policymakers why they should heavily fund these years. Raising healthy, stress-resilient children requires a tremendous amount of time, attention, emotional skill, and knowledge. Another neuroscientist once put it to me frankly: “In the first three years, expect them to need you intensely.”
You’re right about proximity for breastfeeding, but the first 3 years matter for other reasons. Relative to other mammals, the human species is born prematurely in order for our large heads to fit through the birth canal. The reason that birth to three is understood in neuroscience as “infancy” is because it’s a time when a million neural connections are built every second.
What we know today, that we didn’t before the 90s due to advances in neuroimaging technology, is that attuned and responsive mothering in these years does affect the functioning of the HPA-axis as well as the brain’s stress alarm bell, the amygdala. Reliable mother-infant co-regulation is critical for building early brain architecture. This presence wires neurons toward an adaptive response to stress for life. The academic literature illustrates how a prompt and warm response to a baby’s cries builds stress resiliency by activating the oxytocin system (and building/strengthening it when these responses are repeated.) This system—a “cascade” of oxytocin followed by dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA—is crucial for mental health and recovery from external stressors. It's essential to bring babies back down to physiological homeostasis, where mitochondria and telomeres are no longer being damaged.
Of course, a father, grandmother, and even a nanny can do all the above. But an attuned mother is highly-credentialed for the job. She was made for it. Given a breast pad soaked in a mother’s milk versus another woman’s, an infant will turn toward the mother’s. There is, unfortunately, biology underpinning a baby’s preference for the mother. Again, this isn’t just attachment "theory” as you have said before, this is shown in the academic literature out of Yale University’s Child Study Center, the University of Toronto’s SickKids’ Infant and Early Mental Health Promotion, and a litany of other prolific research centres.
BUT. The above is time intensive and energy sucking. No one advocating for full time mothers says they should do this all alone .. in isolation .. with no help. Even Komisar. She often laments the lost community of other mothers to raise our babies in community with. And far from saying that “only mothers” can do this, she routinely speaks of a hierarchy of care, with the “best option” being the mother, then father, grandparent, nanny—but yes, placing daycare at the bottom due to the low pay and ratio of caregivers there. Yes, she’s often harsh, but she does this to push back on a society that guilts mothers back into the workforce and relegates them to a lower class or lower intelligence if they're merely "caregivers.” There’s no denying that moms are chronically ridiculed in popular media. And I’ve heard from so many whose own parents say things ranging from them staying at home being “the dumbest decision,” “lazy,” or “anti-feminist.” That last one is huge. It’s as potent as calling someone racist. And it stings hard. These women are all leftist, Democrats, and big L liberals. Erica’s work (and popularity) is merely pushback to this. She sits on the other side of the pendulum, trying—almost in isolation—to illustrate to women that they shouldn’t have to go back to work in order to maintain respect from a society that increasingly has less and less respect for mothering ... even when the science overwhelmingly supports its importance.
Lastly, to your comment on the NYT piece which you continue to note was “great.” That piece was utterly—and dangerously—wrong. Telling parents to ignore their children runs counter to over 30 years of cutting-edge research on brain development. When a parent in a nuclear household is at home alone with a baby, habitually disengaging with that child is devastating to both its brain and body. In our Western context, there are no relatives or alloparents to jump in—as there would be in these Aka societies—and that lack of engagement, if prolonged, significantly harms a child. Contrary to long-held belief, we don’t have the brain parts to “self-soothe” during these first three years: Babies need the voice, eye contact, smell, skin, etc of a loving caregiver in order to be soothed—wiring this oxytocin system in a healthy way. Not having an attuned parent for these vulnerable first months and years, in effect, stunts healthy brain and limbic system development. We know babies breathe better, pump blood better, and sleep better when held. These interactions are not only critical for the early architecture of the limbic system (which includes the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus—regions responsible for the healthy functioning of emotions and hormones), they also help wire the prefrontal cortex, which pilots our emotional regulation and governs impulse control.
I suggest your readers brush up on “serve and return” interactions out of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. These important social interactions are necessary for humans to thrive. So to advise parents to ignore their children in the West is wrong and should not be celebrated.
When a mother in HG societies “ignores” her child, the community steps in. In a Western household, increasingly with fewer children and relatives inside, parents ignoring their babies (effectively leaving them without these critical brain-building serve and return interactions) is borderline cruel. Mother’s should not be faced with the horrible decision between their own health and that of their child. But the burden of a burnt-out parent should not be placed on a vulnerable infant who can not survive without attuned care; it should be placed on society. It should be a call to action for politicians, civil servants, family members, friends, and neighbours. Parents need more help. And the science proves why.
💔 When the Truth Hurts, It’s Because We Care: Thank you so much for this beautifully written, deeply informed, and fiercely compassionate comment. 🙏 You’ve articulated exactly what so many of us feel in our bones but struggle to say in the noise of modern motherhood.
Yes—this isn't about guilt-tripping mothers. It's about naming the systems that undermine us and pretending it's “empowering” to ignore our biological reality and the science behind early development. You’re so right: both the neoliberal push to outsource care at all costs, and the patriarchal expectation that one isolated mother can do it all with zero support—are two sides of the same oppressive coin.
It’s not radical to say that babies need their mothers. What’s radical is a culture that won’t fund what we now know is critical for children’s mental and physical health. It shouldn't be on individual parents to choose between their well-being and their child’s healthy development. The science should be a call for radical social investment, not personal shame.
You said it best: “The burden of a burnt-out parent should not be placed on a vulnerable infant. It should be placed on society.”
Thank you again for voicing this with such clarity and fire. We need more voices like yours breaking the silence around how modern motherhood is being robbed of its fullness and power—under the false banner of “progress.” 💥
Let’s keep pushing for real change, rooted in truth, community, and care. 🤍
Wow thank you. And thank you so much for reading my comment. I feel like you put it perfectly: “The science should be a call for radical social investment, not personal shame.” Your response is exactly why I spend the time trying to provide nuance through comments on the writing of women who are influential in this sphere. There’s always so much more to the picture than one person can realize on their own. I love the collaboration this space provides. So: Thank you.
Thank you so much. I appreciate your time in doing so. I wish Elena, and others trying to push mothers away from their instincts to nurture, was challenged more.
It doenst appear that Elena is saying in this article that parents dont deserve support ant that ignoring children is the answer. In fact, one of your points, that parents need to pay attention to children and that there aren't alloparents around, could be an argument AGAINST stay at home motherhood right, bc which stay at home mom can do everything all day? if anything maybe daycare IS better for babies as once they get used to these new daycare aunties and uncles there is always someone they are attached to around who can assist if another one is busy? I dont get anywhere in her article where she says, dont ask for society to support moms, moms don't matter, or that there arent unique aspects to motherhood. Rather that the messaging in Komisar's video (which i just watched in its entirety). Feels like a both and situation to me and that your points are a post on their own.
Thank you for writing and rebutting this. It seems Komisar is all-in on American individualism and *only* moms (of the cis/het/birth mom variety it seems ?) are the “right” caregivers. This dogma, in the context of our fucked up economy and lack of social-structural support, stressed me out as I considered parenthood. Given this, I have been beautifully surprised by something as a mom to an 18 month old: the indescribable swell of (positive) emotion I feel bearing witness to my child being cared for, seen, and loved by others. I know I’m very fortunate to have a patchwork of child care while I work (full time), including my partner, a grandparent, and a wonderful nanny shared with another family. But seeing this incredible little person, who I made with my own body and marvel at every day, be supported by a small group of close, safe adults, magnifies the love and joy I feel. Not to mention allows me to “fill my cup” (to varying degrees) and be present for the round-the-clock connection of motherhood. I guess Komisar would call that narcissistic but I’d counter that her need to platform her own narrow views of “good mothering” in her own image are much more self serving.
What we need is universal, affordable, high-quality childcare where caregivers are valued and respected and children can be loved and supported by a small community.
I heard her speak like 4 sentences in a podcast, also saw her tiny glasses and said NOPE. But I have second guessed myself a few times and almost listened to a full interview. Feeling vindicated
Haha I think her tiny blue glasses are cool. Actually I think she’s kind of sexy 🤣 I just don’t like her ideas and the way she misuses science and partial evidence to justify her positions!
Totally! Let’s give credit where credit is due! She’s an excellent public speaker, very articulate, easy on the eyes 🤣 and also manipulative, dogmatic and lacking basic empathy for mothers
It sounds like the study lumped daycare, dads, and nannies into child care. Do you know of a study that separates the outcomes out based on dad v daycare?
I think Komisar overstates her case quite a lot and I don’t like the guilt and shame component of her arguments. But I don’t entirely trust “the science” either. I feel like many of “the science” suspiciously aligns with the status quo and becomes justification that no matter how you parent your child, they will turn out more or less the same, give or take a little bit. Jettisoning truth to avoid mom guilt is questionable to me.
You also can’t know what you can’t easily measure, which is another problem with “the science”. I can’t be convinced that one unrelated caregiver caring for 4 infants is the same. Humans do not routinely have quadruplets. We don’t have to do everything the hunter gatherer way, but that is SUCH an unnatural way to “parent” that I don’t buy it. Not to mention institutional care tends to have all the other problems institutions have, among others, you get extremely risk aversion (for fear of liability). And risk aversion + anxiety is a problem in kids and young adult population nowadays.
Ultimately we can’t live optimally, and I think it’s important to recognize that some choices are suboptimal but they still have to be made. Life is a series of trade offs. It doesn’t make you a bad parent to make trade offs given certain constraints, unless you’re lazy and just never want to parent (parents like this exist, sure, but not the kind who would ever read Komisar). Hunter gatherers live in very suboptimal ways too, compared to the way we live. Just look at their infant mortality (do modern hunter gatherers have lower infant mortality because they get to piggy back off modern tech? But historic ones certainly did NOT)
I regret reading the first half of her book during my 1st child's infancy. The guilt and shame and vigilance/doubt it induced negatively impacted my parenting. I was always stressed about our childcare, even when we had truly excellent care!
I think I was vulnerable as a new exhausted mom and didn't have the energy to dig deeper and research/refute some of her claims. There are lots of things to agree with on the surface. It's kind of sneaky that way.
I'm grateful for Elena's thoughtful, nuanced, and well-researched takedown. Rock on, Elena!
A few month's ago I dug a little deeper into Komisar's affiliations, after seeing her enthusiasm on Insta at being at a conference with Jordan Peterson. I really started to question her core values.
It's tricky to agree with some of Komisar's (and the IFS's) points, while disagreeing with their foundational values and connections to more extreme views and sources of funding.
As Elena says, "In other words, even if Erica and I reach some of the same conclusions, how we each get there matters."
You're not analyzing her research in its entirety, instead you are taking it apart to suit your argument. She would probably agree with you that quality is more important than quantity, depending on various factors. It's all about balance, that's her entire point. Her primary goal is to squash the misconception that we need to force independence on our kids early on, which is exactly what our society is doing. She's is more focused on the extremism of forced independence and schooling at such an early age. Do some research on the beginning of the compulsory schooling in America. We used to have our children in our homes much more than we do today, and it's showing in our society. As time goes on we continue to add time our children are in school (away from parents). Generations ago school was only a couple hours a day and a couple days a week. Then it continued to increase. She's a breathe of fresh air in our current climate that pushes kids to be "independent." I highly recommend you looking more into this and perhaps your may be surprised and even change your mind. I think most of the women who have a problem with her opinions, are simply feeling guilty because they were duped from the other side of the argument.
I think you should watch the interview. she specifically says quantity matters and that quantity has to be quality lol. her point is not about balance. she says you shouldnt leave a child under three for more than 'a few hours' and that daycare (even though it has a lot of individual caring people ...) is a problem. i do agree with you that school days are too long!
The 2006 study that you suggest discredits Komisar had findings that you fail to mention which support Komisar's line as against yours. Here are examples:
"For young children whose mothers showed low levels of sensitivity during mother-child interactions, more than
10 hours of care each week increased the risk of insecure attachment to their mothers.
Children who spent more time in child care were somewhat less cooperative, more disobedient, and more
aggressive at age 2 and age 4½, and in kindergarten, but not at age 3."
I'm not fan of Komisar but, frankly, a plague on both your houses.
Having come from the indoctrination of cult-adjacent religious parenting propaganda, it is a VERY strong narrative that only mothers are capable of nurturing their children….with an interesting parallel of rigid sleep training to teach the infant submission to authority….
I am excited for this series, people who use propaganda to shame mothers need to be challenged!!
I feel the same way about Komisar. I had to laugh when I listened to an interview she did in which she claimed to have an unusual amount of empathy. I think she comes off as a bully, and that's coming from a stay-at-home Mom!
I remember that moment!! I had the exact same reaction. Really??
Fellow SAHM and she makes me feel awful lol. A lot of being a SAHM is multi tasking! Which is apparently emotional neglect.
Ha. This is so silly. There was a great NYT piece on how parents should ignore their children more based on research with a famous anthropologist who studied the Aka - children in HG societies are NOT entertained by their parents and they are very mentally healthy
Wait I was about to restack this and tag you 😂 SAHMs are still very imperfect people and it’s okay!
Yup she is one of those self-opinionated, defensive and ready to attack people for sure
Thank you for this! Over the last couple of years especially, I've been noticing and reacting more strongly against the tone she (or others who are also 100% sure of their opinions) uses. Seeing thumbnails of that recent video in my feed was the last straw for me--my husband has ADHD, both of us have autism, and we do not appreciate her lack of nuance in interpreting research.
Her claims about ADHD are absolutely bonkers and so harmful. And about mental illness in general. I’ll write a separate post on that.
If my young children could have put into words how they felt, they would be saying exactly what Erica Komisar says regarding their needs. Perhaps with the mother's role being a bit more interchangeable with other alloparents who were consistently available in the home. Am I an example of what you are advocating for Elena? I was 'raised' by childminders and my father - both my mum and dad worked full time (but he worked slightly less long hours than her). The set up was wholly inadequate in terms of me and my sister getting our needs met. We have both suffered childhood trauma and neglect. If we had had alloparents at home, who were more available than my parents and less narcissistic e.g. who I'd known since birth and who knew us well and loved us (grandparents, aunts, cousins), we would not have suffered as much as we did. But most people don't have this set-up available to them in our society. The childcare available did not fill this void in our basic needs. When my children were born, I had an innate (non-intellectual) expectation that I would be helped by others, which took me by surprise, because up until then, I'd been taught that I should be totally independent in life. This help never came and it was deeply painful and cripplingly exhausting. My children struggled with being looked after in all their settings outside the home, and society certianly expected way more of them than they were capable of age 2,3,4 and 5. They often came home totally disregulated and it could take me a whole day and much emotional labour to recalibrate them. My friend worked at a pre-school and she spent most of her time trying to convince the 2-4 year olds that it was ok to be there (rather than at home with their mum/alloparent), where they universally wished they were, and spent all day waiting to get back to.
My 3 yo actually does quite well at preschool but it’s only 3 hours long. I think if she had to be there 8-11 hours long (which is how long a lot of preschools go) it would be a really different story. She does come home kind of dysregulated, but I think it’s from using her brain too hard.
Gosh I’m only two sentences in, and I’m so grateful to you for posting about this. I saw a plug for that podcast and I wanted to scream.
Try listening to all two hours and 40 minutes and you’ll want to punch a hole in the wall
I’ve been following your work for awhile and it was honestly what pushed me to get a paid subscription. Thank you for punching a wall, so other mommas don’t have to 😂
Yes, thank you for this! Been feeling terrible after listening to it. I also felt it was so privileged to say they went without “vacations, 2nd homes, fancy clothes, and traveling” to stay home. Some of us are just trying to pay our mortgage and make ends meet.
Does she really say "We're stressing newborns and it's causing ADHD." ???
Yes she absolutely does and in my opinion it’s the most harmful and unscientific claim she makes. But she makes it repeatedly and refuses to engage with contrary evidence. ADHD has a HUGE hereditary component and is thought to be a natural evolved variant of human behavior related to exploration and hyper curiosity - it just doesn’t serve us well in the modern context. To claim that it’s a stress response caused by bad mothering is the biggest BS since refrigerator moms and autism.
Ugh! That's horrible. My mom was a SAHM until I started 7th grade and my sister started Kindergarten (and then she worked part-time at our school). We both have ADHD, because our father has ADHD and his mom was a SAHM as well. (Interestingly enough, my dad is also autistic. So is my sister.)
My cousin has THE worst case of ADHD I’ve ever seen and his mom was a SAHM. But his ADHD was a gift for the future: he’s now a wild land firefighter and his ability to juggle multiple thoughts and projects as well as the endless energy has helped him move up the ranks! You are correct that in the modern world of email jobs it’s not helpful but in the world of high impact work, building infrastructure, running around like a madman ADHD is power
Exactly - it’s also a super power in the right context. Diversity is a cornerstone of evolution.
Nice straw man argument. Yes, parents CAN stress newborns and CAN cause ADHD because of our actions. You don't believe that could be true? Try not to feel so attacked, instead look at the research objectively. That would be the wise thing to do. If you actually read/listen to a full interview/article of someone from a differing opinion, you could learn some things that could pot4entially better you as a parent, don't we all strive for that?
Elena, this is misguided. By arguing against mothers as primary nurturers, you’re both ignoring the neuroscience behind our changing brains being uniquely designed to care for babies, and trumpeting the patriarchal (and neoliberal) ideology that women are only valuable if they stop acting like mothers: sensitive and nurturing. Oh, and by the way, you must be “hysterical” if leaving your baby sends your body reeling. (Sorry, the research shows this aversion is ingrained.) The renowned Italian neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi has written: “When women become pregnant, the brain’s very architectural design and internal connectivity are all recalibrated; a neural overhaul to equip a new mother with some nearly superhuman abilities: the precision to distinguish her own child among a sea of faces; an enhanced auditory sense to detect the softest of whimpers; the unparalleled capacity to empathize with her baby, comprehending their needs and emotions based solely on non-verbal cues.”
I don’t see how advocating for mothers, or trying to push policy (or relatives and friends) in the direction of *more* support for mothers, is achieved by saying that what we do—what we’re designed to do—is actually not true. Or shouldn’t be emphasized. Or even asked of us. Or worst of all: not viewed as beneficial. Disparaging the research of mother-infant co-regulation is, in effect, doing a disservice not only to mothers and babies, but to progressive society in general. Truly right-wing politicians and pundits will use any dismissal of the science to say “See. The first three years don’t actually matter. Why fund them.” If moms are stressed and asking for support? It’s their fault. They should just ignore or leave their child so they can chill the hell out. Or get a hobby.
It’s hugely convenient to the patriarchy (and late-stage capitalism) to pretend that these critical years don't matter. Whether it’s men on the neoliberal left who think the solution is for babies to attend 10+ hours of daycare with underpaid staff doing this inconvenient-to-effecient-markets work so their wives can get back to raking in more dough, OR men on the Christian conservative right who believe one isolated mother can do all the cooking, cleaning, and care work, and never complain because they’re “paying for everything”. (Again, this other end is flat out abuse—as you rightly point out—but it’s so obscenely far from where we are today in most WEIRD societies.)
We shouldn’t have to leave our babies in daycare so they can have a friend group or “be socialized.” And we shouldn’t have to play with them all day in isolation because there are no other kids around in the neighborhood (as being a full-time mom is increasingly rare.)
Parents need a third option: a way to raise our children in community as HG populations do. A way to be able to remain around our kids AND other mothers, playmates, and helpers. Whether this is having a work/living space daycare hybrid, or mass ECE workers, midwives, nurses and nannies to support mothers at home. Help them cook, clean, play, organize. This can be achieved in the same way we fund our military (extensively). Tons of funding, tons of training, and paying the people best suited to the job, just as the military selects for skill and endurance. Because these years matter. They are critical to building healthy adults. We need to start putting forth solutions to the lack of village, not dismiss the importance of mothering in our early years.
It’s critical that—rather than be useful idiots for the whitewashing of attachment science—we instead highlight this research to show our policymakers why they should heavily fund these years. Raising healthy, stress-resilient children requires a tremendous amount of time, attention, emotional skill, and knowledge. Another neuroscientist once put it to me frankly: “In the first three years, expect them to need you intensely.”
You’re right about proximity for breastfeeding, but the first 3 years matter for other reasons. Relative to other mammals, the human species is born prematurely in order for our large heads to fit through the birth canal. The reason that birth to three is understood in neuroscience as “infancy” is because it’s a time when a million neural connections are built every second.
What we know today, that we didn’t before the 90s due to advances in neuroimaging technology, is that attuned and responsive mothering in these years does affect the functioning of the HPA-axis as well as the brain’s stress alarm bell, the amygdala. Reliable mother-infant co-regulation is critical for building early brain architecture. This presence wires neurons toward an adaptive response to stress for life. The academic literature illustrates how a prompt and warm response to a baby’s cries builds stress resiliency by activating the oxytocin system (and building/strengthening it when these responses are repeated.) This system—a “cascade” of oxytocin followed by dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA—is crucial for mental health and recovery from external stressors. It's essential to bring babies back down to physiological homeostasis, where mitochondria and telomeres are no longer being damaged.
Of course, a father, grandmother, and even a nanny can do all the above. But an attuned mother is highly-credentialed for the job. She was made for it. Given a breast pad soaked in a mother’s milk versus another woman’s, an infant will turn toward the mother’s. There is, unfortunately, biology underpinning a baby’s preference for the mother. Again, this isn’t just attachment "theory” as you have said before, this is shown in the academic literature out of Yale University’s Child Study Center, the University of Toronto’s SickKids’ Infant and Early Mental Health Promotion, and a litany of other prolific research centres.
BUT. The above is time intensive and energy sucking. No one advocating for full time mothers says they should do this all alone .. in isolation .. with no help. Even Komisar. She often laments the lost community of other mothers to raise our babies in community with. And far from saying that “only mothers” can do this, she routinely speaks of a hierarchy of care, with the “best option” being the mother, then father, grandparent, nanny—but yes, placing daycare at the bottom due to the low pay and ratio of caregivers there. Yes, she’s often harsh, but she does this to push back on a society that guilts mothers back into the workforce and relegates them to a lower class or lower intelligence if they're merely "caregivers.” There’s no denying that moms are chronically ridiculed in popular media. And I’ve heard from so many whose own parents say things ranging from them staying at home being “the dumbest decision,” “lazy,” or “anti-feminist.” That last one is huge. It’s as potent as calling someone racist. And it stings hard. These women are all leftist, Democrats, and big L liberals. Erica’s work (and popularity) is merely pushback to this. She sits on the other side of the pendulum, trying—almost in isolation—to illustrate to women that they shouldn’t have to go back to work in order to maintain respect from a society that increasingly has less and less respect for mothering ... even when the science overwhelmingly supports its importance.
Lastly, to your comment on the NYT piece which you continue to note was “great.” That piece was utterly—and dangerously—wrong. Telling parents to ignore their children runs counter to over 30 years of cutting-edge research on brain development. When a parent in a nuclear household is at home alone with a baby, habitually disengaging with that child is devastating to both its brain and body. In our Western context, there are no relatives or alloparents to jump in—as there would be in these Aka societies—and that lack of engagement, if prolonged, significantly harms a child. Contrary to long-held belief, we don’t have the brain parts to “self-soothe” during these first three years: Babies need the voice, eye contact, smell, skin, etc of a loving caregiver in order to be soothed—wiring this oxytocin system in a healthy way. Not having an attuned parent for these vulnerable first months and years, in effect, stunts healthy brain and limbic system development. We know babies breathe better, pump blood better, and sleep better when held. These interactions are not only critical for the early architecture of the limbic system (which includes the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus—regions responsible for the healthy functioning of emotions and hormones), they also help wire the prefrontal cortex, which pilots our emotional regulation and governs impulse control.
I suggest your readers brush up on “serve and return” interactions out of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. These important social interactions are necessary for humans to thrive. So to advise parents to ignore their children in the West is wrong and should not be celebrated.
When a mother in HG societies “ignores” her child, the community steps in. In a Western household, increasingly with fewer children and relatives inside, parents ignoring their babies (effectively leaving them without these critical brain-building serve and return interactions) is borderline cruel. Mother’s should not be faced with the horrible decision between their own health and that of their child. But the burden of a burnt-out parent should not be placed on a vulnerable infant who can not survive without attuned care; it should be placed on society. It should be a call to action for politicians, civil servants, family members, friends, and neighbours. Parents need more help. And the science proves why.
So true! Thank you so much for this!
💔 When the Truth Hurts, It’s Because We Care: Thank you so much for this beautifully written, deeply informed, and fiercely compassionate comment. 🙏 You’ve articulated exactly what so many of us feel in our bones but struggle to say in the noise of modern motherhood.
Yes—this isn't about guilt-tripping mothers. It's about naming the systems that undermine us and pretending it's “empowering” to ignore our biological reality and the science behind early development. You’re so right: both the neoliberal push to outsource care at all costs, and the patriarchal expectation that one isolated mother can do it all with zero support—are two sides of the same oppressive coin.
It’s not radical to say that babies need their mothers. What’s radical is a culture that won’t fund what we now know is critical for children’s mental and physical health. It shouldn't be on individual parents to choose between their well-being and their child’s healthy development. The science should be a call for radical social investment, not personal shame.
You said it best: “The burden of a burnt-out parent should not be placed on a vulnerable infant. It should be placed on society.”
Thank you again for voicing this with such clarity and fire. We need more voices like yours breaking the silence around how modern motherhood is being robbed of its fullness and power—under the false banner of “progress.” 💥
Let’s keep pushing for real change, rooted in truth, community, and care. 🤍
Wow thank you. And thank you so much for reading my comment. I feel like you put it perfectly: “The science should be a call for radical social investment, not personal shame.” Your response is exactly why I spend the time trying to provide nuance through comments on the writing of women who are influential in this sphere. There’s always so much more to the picture than one person can realize on their own. I love the collaboration this space provides. So: Thank you.
Wish more people took the time to read your comment. It’s hard when your worldview gets challenged.
Thank you so much. I appreciate your time in doing so. I wish Elena, and others trying to push mothers away from their instincts to nurture, was challenged more.
An excellent breakdown of what Komisar’s work is really about.
It doenst appear that Elena is saying in this article that parents dont deserve support ant that ignoring children is the answer. In fact, one of your points, that parents need to pay attention to children and that there aren't alloparents around, could be an argument AGAINST stay at home motherhood right, bc which stay at home mom can do everything all day? if anything maybe daycare IS better for babies as once they get used to these new daycare aunties and uncles there is always someone they are attached to around who can assist if another one is busy? I dont get anywhere in her article where she says, dont ask for society to support moms, moms don't matter, or that there arent unique aspects to motherhood. Rather that the messaging in Komisar's video (which i just watched in its entirety). Feels like a both and situation to me and that your points are a post on their own.
Thank you for writing and rebutting this. It seems Komisar is all-in on American individualism and *only* moms (of the cis/het/birth mom variety it seems ?) are the “right” caregivers. This dogma, in the context of our fucked up economy and lack of social-structural support, stressed me out as I considered parenthood. Given this, I have been beautifully surprised by something as a mom to an 18 month old: the indescribable swell of (positive) emotion I feel bearing witness to my child being cared for, seen, and loved by others. I know I’m very fortunate to have a patchwork of child care while I work (full time), including my partner, a grandparent, and a wonderful nanny shared with another family. But seeing this incredible little person, who I made with my own body and marvel at every day, be supported by a small group of close, safe adults, magnifies the love and joy I feel. Not to mention allows me to “fill my cup” (to varying degrees) and be present for the round-the-clock connection of motherhood. I guess Komisar would call that narcissistic but I’d counter that her need to platform her own narrow views of “good mothering” in her own image are much more self serving.
What we need is universal, affordable, high-quality childcare where caregivers are valued and respected and children can be loved and supported by a small community.
Yes! You say it so well.
I heard her speak like 4 sentences in a podcast, also saw her tiny glasses and said NOPE. But I have second guessed myself a few times and almost listened to a full interview. Feeling vindicated
Haha I think her tiny blue glasses are cool. Actually I think she’s kind of sexy 🤣 I just don’t like her ideas and the way she misuses science and partial evidence to justify her positions!
I deleted my comment to fix something. But yes credit where is due all around 😆
Totally! Let’s give credit where credit is due! She’s an excellent public speaker, very articulate, easy on the eyes 🤣 and also manipulative, dogmatic and lacking basic empathy for mothers
I am going to read every word of this series, -signed a stay home mom.
It sounds like the study lumped daycare, dads, and nannies into child care. Do you know of a study that separates the outcomes out based on dad v daycare?
The study is very comprehensive and also looks at outcomes by type of non-maternal childcare. I’ll get into that later in the series.
You are amazing thank you!
I think Komisar overstates her case quite a lot and I don’t like the guilt and shame component of her arguments. But I don’t entirely trust “the science” either. I feel like many of “the science” suspiciously aligns with the status quo and becomes justification that no matter how you parent your child, they will turn out more or less the same, give or take a little bit. Jettisoning truth to avoid mom guilt is questionable to me.
You also can’t know what you can’t easily measure, which is another problem with “the science”. I can’t be convinced that one unrelated caregiver caring for 4 infants is the same. Humans do not routinely have quadruplets. We don’t have to do everything the hunter gatherer way, but that is SUCH an unnatural way to “parent” that I don’t buy it. Not to mention institutional care tends to have all the other problems institutions have, among others, you get extremely risk aversion (for fear of liability). And risk aversion + anxiety is a problem in kids and young adult population nowadays.
Ultimately we can’t live optimally, and I think it’s important to recognize that some choices are suboptimal but they still have to be made. Life is a series of trade offs. It doesn’t make you a bad parent to make trade offs given certain constraints, unless you’re lazy and just never want to parent (parents like this exist, sure, but not the kind who would ever read Komisar). Hunter gatherers live in very suboptimal ways too, compared to the way we live. Just look at their infant mortality (do modern hunter gatherers have lower infant mortality because they get to piggy back off modern tech? But historic ones certainly did NOT)
I regret reading the first half of her book during my 1st child's infancy. The guilt and shame and vigilance/doubt it induced negatively impacted my parenting. I was always stressed about our childcare, even when we had truly excellent care!
I think I was vulnerable as a new exhausted mom and didn't have the energy to dig deeper and research/refute some of her claims. There are lots of things to agree with on the surface. It's kind of sneaky that way.
I'm grateful for Elena's thoughtful, nuanced, and well-researched takedown. Rock on, Elena!
A few month's ago I dug a little deeper into Komisar's affiliations, after seeing her enthusiasm on Insta at being at a conference with Jordan Peterson. I really started to question her core values.
She's a contributing editor for the Institute for Family Studies https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/institute-for-family-studies/, which is also connected with the Bradley Foundation https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/lynde-and-harry-bradley-foundation-inc/.
It's tricky to agree with some of Komisar's (and the IFS's) points, while disagreeing with their foundational values and connections to more extreme views and sources of funding.
As Elena says, "In other words, even if Erica and I reach some of the same conclusions, how we each get there matters."
You're not analyzing her research in its entirety, instead you are taking it apart to suit your argument. She would probably agree with you that quality is more important than quantity, depending on various factors. It's all about balance, that's her entire point. Her primary goal is to squash the misconception that we need to force independence on our kids early on, which is exactly what our society is doing. She's is more focused on the extremism of forced independence and schooling at such an early age. Do some research on the beginning of the compulsory schooling in America. We used to have our children in our homes much more than we do today, and it's showing in our society. As time goes on we continue to add time our children are in school (away from parents). Generations ago school was only a couple hours a day and a couple days a week. Then it continued to increase. She's a breathe of fresh air in our current climate that pushes kids to be "independent." I highly recommend you looking more into this and perhaps your may be surprised and even change your mind. I think most of the women who have a problem with her opinions, are simply feeling guilty because they were duped from the other side of the argument.
Thank you for your comment! We need to be able to talk about that.
I think you should watch the interview. she specifically says quantity matters and that quantity has to be quality lol. her point is not about balance. she says you shouldnt leave a child under three for more than 'a few hours' and that daycare (even though it has a lot of individual caring people ...) is a problem. i do agree with you that school days are too long!
Yup.
The 2006 study that you suggest discredits Komisar had findings that you fail to mention which support Komisar's line as against yours. Here are examples:
"For young children whose mothers showed low levels of sensitivity during mother-child interactions, more than
10 hours of care each week increased the risk of insecure attachment to their mothers.
Children who spent more time in child care were somewhat less cooperative, more disobedient, and more
aggressive at age 2 and age 4½, and in kindergarten, but not at age 3."
I'm not fan of Komisar but, frankly, a plague on both your houses.
I came here to say this, so I’m glad you already have.
Having come from the indoctrination of cult-adjacent religious parenting propaganda, it is a VERY strong narrative that only mothers are capable of nurturing their children….with an interesting parallel of rigid sleep training to teach the infant submission to authority….
I am excited for this series, people who use propaganda to shame mothers need to be challenged!!