Being There

A powerful look at the importance of a mother’s presence in the first years of life.

In this important and conversation-starting book, veteran psychoanalyst Erica Komisar offers a provocative and compelling premise: a mother's emotional and physical presence in her child's life -- especially during the first three years -- means that her child has a greater chance of growing up emotionally healthy, happy, secure, and resilient. When that essential presence goes missing, the child is at higher risk for social, emotional, and developmental issues, both immediate and long term.

In other words, when it comes to connecting with your baby or toddler, more is more.

Compassionate and balanced, and focusing on the emotional health and well-being of children as well as that of the mothers who care for them, this book shows mothers and fathers how to give their children the best chance for developing into healthy and loving adults. Based on more than two decades of clinical work, established psychoanalytic theory, and the most current and cutting-edge neurobiological research on caregiving, attachment, and brain development, Being There explains:

- How to establish emotional connection with a newborn or young child -- regardless of whether you're able to pause your career to stay home,
- How to select and train quality childcare if necessary -- and how to ease transitions and minimize stress for your baby or toddler,
- What's true and false about widely held beliefs like 'Babies are resilient' and how to combat feelings of post-partum depression or boredom,
- How women and their partners can take control of their choices around work to provide for their family's emotional needs in the first three years.

Erica Komisar, LCSW, is the author of Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters, which won a Family Choice Award for best parenting book, and Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety. A psychoanalyst, clinical social worker, and parent guidance expert, she earned her MSW from Columbia University and started her private practice in New York City in 1990. A contributing editor for the Institute for Family Studies, she belongs to the International
Psychoanalytic Association and lives in Manhattan with her husband and three young-adult children.