Ambience in the nursery: if in place of the mother there is the father (or the grandmother, the aunt, the nanny …)

The beginning of school can be experienced with some concern by those mothers with children who have to face the transition to the nursery and who fear long times and difficulties in detachment. In this regard, the doctor Margherita Fassari – Development Psychologist, Director of the Higher Education School Learning The World and Coordinator of the structures of Grow up together – breaks a lance in favor of fathers who often, if they propose to replace the mother figure, prove to be great facilitators of detachment.

From specific scientific studies conducted on attachment styles in the 0-3 year period and from the analyzes developed by Growing Together – Esperia, it emerged that the setting, often characterized by crying and desperate crises, is not a procedure reserved for mothers, but that, on the contrary, it can have important and positive implications even if carried out by the paternal figures. “The difference in the way in which the separation and subsequent reunification of the father or mother is managed becomes effective after 18 months of the child’s life, when the so-called separation anxiety occurs”, explains Dr. Fassari. “At this point the two parental figures react differently. S.and the mother tends to carry out behaviors aimed more at approach, revealing an extremely strong and deep bond, the father instead manages to maintain that reassuring detachment that becomes an encouragement to separation and places it, therefore, as a model for the regulation of emotions. By facilitating and assuming a mediating role during the acclimatization process, the detachment is experienced in a clearer, but also more serene way ».

From the preliminary interviews to the adaptation that the operators of the structures of Grow up together perform with families, it appears that, in contexts where there is an important paternal presence and the father is recognized from the outside a parental role that he himself assumes in a good way, more and more often couples decide to delegate to the latter the task of following the setting. «The regulation that the father figure carries out within a parental dynamic thus becomes very important for the very first growth of the child», says Dr. Fassari. “Where the father is recognized this role by the partner and, at the same time, feels it as his own, the contribution becomes fundamental and the implications very positive. Once it is established that it is not the mother’s exclusive task to follow this delicate path, we can affirm that even third figures can play a central role in this phase of the child’s life. Certainly the ideal is that parents also establish a relationship with the context in which they leave their child, but in the face of a situation of feared discontinuity in fulfilling this task, it is always better that the setting is managed by a person who can take care of it constantly. Unless this figure is a fundamental point of reference for the child».

This is why, in such a delicate historical moment, in which families feel the need to leave and the incentive to resume their work duties, it is important to keep in mind that the continuity with which the child experiences the adult presence during the setting it can disregard the nature of the figure that accompanies it, that it can be the mother, the father, the grandmother, the uncle or, even, the nanny. Multitasking moms breathe a healthy sigh of relief!