Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has shown once again that he has his proverbial finger on the pulse of our nation’s health and wellbeing. In his latest advisory titled Parents Under Pressure he calls for a fundamental shift in how we value parents in order to promote not only the health of children and their caregivers but the health of our society as a whole. As a pediatrician specializing in early relational health, I appreciate Dr. Murthy’s call to “reorient our priorities {regarding parents}… to ensure the balance skews toward joy.”
If we take time to land for a moment on the unique human newborn, both the urgency to support parents, as well as the travesty of neglecting to do so, becomes crystal clear.
Babies come into the world with their full self. When all goes well, they announce their arrival with a magnificent cry of, “I’m here!” The very immediacy of that voice challenges the adults to pay attention—to listen as they get to know this new person. The human newborn is uniquely helpless, relying completely on the adult caregiving environment for regulation of the immature nervous system that in the service of human evolution, does 70% of its growing outside the womb. In an equally important evolutionary adaptation, the human newborn has the capacity for complex connection and communication. From the moment of birth, they have the ability to open their eyes and turn their head to follow a familiar and loving voice.
The human caregiver, provided they are held and supported in proportion to the essential nature of the task, knows what to do to care for their baby. Decades of developmental research reveal that far from being smooth, this process is messy and uncertain as parents typically miss their infant’s cues a whopping 70 percent of the time. These missed cues are not only inevitable but vital for promoting healthy relationships and development. In the repair and reconnection, baby and caregiver together develop a primary feeling of trust. Through this microscopic process, a sense of belonging to the culture (s) into which a child is born take root.
In an earlier advisory Dr. Murthy raised the alarm about the epidemic of loneliness in the United States. The experience of loneliness as a new parent has an exquisite painfulness that jeopardizes these tender new relationships. Dr. Murthy outlines a series of social policy changes needed to safeguard against this dilemma. The time has come to insure that—right from the start— all parents have the support needed to raise their children with a sense of dignity and belonging.
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