A Thin Soup of Resources

Mother Nurture
by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Jan Hanson, M.S., L.Ac., Ricki Pollycove, M.D., M.H.S.

(Page 2 of 2)

If the demands on a person grow, her resources should grow as well. We're sure that one sort of resource has increased since you had children: the emotional fulfillment of being a mother. But otherwise, have your resources grown since your baby was born? Probably not. We're not talking about money here, but things like a good night's sleep and healthful foods and strong support from your partner. For instance, the typical mother of a young child gets about six and one-half hours of sleep a day rather than the eight or more hours most adults need-losing over five hundred hours of sleep per year-plus she rarely gets a chance to sleep as deeply as she needs to. This diminishes the neurotransmitters her brain needs to regulate her mood and other physiological functions.

You're probably not eating all that well, either; according to studies, less than half of the mothers of young children get three solid meals each day. It's hard to find time to exercise with little ones around. And whether you're going off to the workplace or staying home, when you've got a young family, pleasures fall away, old friends drop out of your life, and you never seem to have any real time for yourself. Even if you're ill, you usually get little chance to rest. One mother told Jan this story: I was reading a nursery rhyme to Julie, the one about Mother Hubbard, and I had to sigh because that's how I was starting to feel: my "cupboard" was constantly being emptied and not enough was getting put back on the shelves.

Has your partner jumped in to fill this vacuum? Maybe. Some dads are great: committed to parenthood and skillful with the kids, they do their fair share around the house and are sympathetic and supportive. But let's face it: many are not. Numerous studies have shown that the average mom works about twenty hours more per week, altogether, than does her partner, regardless of whether she's drawing a paycheck-and a mother's stress jumps and her mood drops when teamwork with her partner breaks down. You probably also handle more of the high-stress tasks, like dressing a resistant two-year-old, and carry more of the "executive responsibility" for the family by being the one who worries, plans, and problem solves. And if you're raising your children essentially alone, as does one in five mothers, you're getting little to no help from a partner at all.

Even if your partner is a strong teammate, much research has shown that the arrival of children commonly leads to a dramatic decrease in positive interactions and marital satisfaction-especially for mothers. There is so little time or energy for conversation, fun, or affection that there's a good chance your relationship no longer recharges your batteries or offers a safe haven. As one mother commented to Rick: My husband and I work together well in terms of taking care of the kids and the house. But I don't know where he and I are when we're without them. I feel lonely inside my own marriage. It's no wonder that couples with children report less satisfaction with their relationship than couples without kids.

Children are meant to be raised within a strong community, but compared to the times in which most of us grew up, relatives live farther away, neighbors are less neighborly, there are fewer kids nearby, and the average adult is affiliated with just one community group as compared to five in our parents' day. Compounding the problem, fathers have not entered the world of family to the extent that mothers have gone into the world of work, leaving a kind of vacuum, so there is less of the glue that once held neighborhoods together. As a result of all these factors, you're likely to have much less of the social support that could have provided practical help, lowered your stress, and buttressed your health.

In short, things have really changed, both in your own life once you became a parent and in the culture since you were a child yourself, and chances are you simply aren't getting the full support you need.

Vulnerable Spots in Your Armor of Resilience

In a perfect world, you could cope with all the demands upon you or with scarce resources by being Supermom. Yet that's not real. Each of us has some vulnerabilities that lower our resilience, the way a wound on a finger creates an opening for bacteria. Like a small cut that makes little difference until you do the dishes, a vulnerability may not matter much before children arrive. But then it begins to exacerbate the effects of the demands upon you; for instance, an immune system weakened by chronic stress is less able to defend you against the germs brought home from preschool. And any vulnerabilities lower your ability to handle shortages in the resources you receive; for instance, if you are even a little anemic when you enter motherhood-as ninety percent of women are-your nutritional reserves will be even further eroded by the typical low-iron diet of a mother.

Please see if any of these vulnerabilities, common among mothers, apply to you:

• Having children at an older age. In the last two decades, the birthrate of women over thirty has increased by about one-third, and the rate of first births for women over thirty-five has nearly doubled. Older mothers are less able to weather a pregnancy, are more prone to fatigue and illness once children arrive, and have less time to restore a hormonal equilibrium before menopause.

• Nutritional deficiencies. About nine mothers in ten have not consumed the U.S. government recommended amounts of minerals and vitamins before conceiving their first child. Nutritional deficiencies are cumulative, and since about 40 percent of all pregnancies are unplanned, there's often little time to remedy them before the demands of bearing and raising a child gather a full head of steam. And even if you start taking supplements, it often takes months or years to restore healthy levels of nutrients in your body.

• Genetic predisposition. Your relatives may have had illnesses of the endocrine system, obstetric complications, or other conditions that raise your risk for similar problems.

• Prior health problems. Women are more likely than men to enter parenthood with preexisting gastrointestinal, hormonal, or autoimmune conditions.

• Postpartum depression (PPD). At least one mother in ten will have an episode of PPD, which can increase her risk for hormonal or mood-related problems a year or two later. If you did suffer from postpartum depression after your first baby, your chance triples of having PPD again with another child.

• General history of depressed mood. Some women have a tendency toward depression, and this can be intensified by the hormonal fluctuations of motherhood.

• Temperament. Raising kids is likely to be more stressful if a mother has a high need for control or orderliness, or if she tends to be anxious or irritable.

Some unique blend of vulnerabilities affects every mother. In the chapters that follow, we'll be covering how to build up your own resilience so you are better prepared to cope with all the increased demands upon you.

From Mother Nurture by Rick Hansen, Ph.D, Jan Hansen, La.C., and Ricki Pollycove, M.D. Copyright © March 2002, Penguin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.

About the Author

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist who works with couples, individual adults, and children. He has written and lectured extensively on parental stress and depletion, ways to nurture mothers and fathers, and how a couple can be both strong teammates and intimate friends while raising a family. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA, Dr. Hanson did management consulting before earning his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute. He has been President of the Board of FamilyWorks, a non-profit agency serving families in Northern California. His personal interests include meditation, rock-climbing, and having fun with his kids.

Jan Hanson, M.S., is an acupuncturist and nutritionist whose private practice focuses on women's health and on temperament problems in children. In addition to developing protocols for preventing and reversing maternal depletion, she has written articles and presented workshops on family health and on holistic approaches to childhood illnesses. While working in the Neurochemistry Research Laboratory at the Veteran's Hospital in Sepulveda, California, she co-authored a study that was published when she was 18 years old. She went on to receive a B.A. from UCLA and an M.S. from the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences, in addition to taking many courses in clinical nutrition, homeopathy, and laboratory assessment. She and Rick have been married for over twenty years, and they have a teenage son and pre-teen daughter.

Ricki Pollycove, M.D., M.H.S., is the founding director for Education and Program Development at the California Pacific Medical Center Breast Health Center, and a past chief of the Division of Gynecology there. She is a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a member of the North American Menopause Society, American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the American Society of Breast Diseases, and past editor in chief of the San Francisco Medical Society Magazine. She appears regularly as a medical expert on television and radio, and is the women's health expert for MedicinePlanet.com. A mother for over eighteen years, she enjoys cooking, baking, and gardening with her daughter, Leah, with whom she also sings and plays viola.