The ABA Journal e-Report includes a report on overnight parenting time with infants.
Stephanie Francis Ward writes (excerpt):
Most parents will tell you that babies aren’t always picky about where they sleep. They’re happy to find their way to the Land of Nod at home in their cribs, but they are often just as amenable to sleeping at day care, with a baby-sitter or at a grandparent’s house. That’s why many family lawyers have begun to draft parenting plans that include overnight visits with noncustodial parents.
In the past, the belief has been that infants have a primary attachment with only one caregiver, and separation from that person is distressing for the child. Accordingly, courts often don’t allow noncustodial parents to keep their children overnight, sometimes applying the policy to children as old as 5.
The problem with that theory, says Dr. Richard A. Warshak, a clinical research psychologist in Dallas, is that it’s based on studies involving children in prolonged, institutional care who were deprived of being with their mothers and fathers. It also conflicts with reality, he says, because infants are often cared for outside the home by a variety of different people.
“It seems like a legacy from old stereotypes–that only women were suited to care for children, and children need their mothers more than their fathers. We know those stereotypes have fallen by the wayside,” says Warshak, who often provides expert witness testimony about overnight visits.
Warshak mentions indirect evidence indicating that overnight visits improve parent-child relations, particularly with fathers. If men are caregivers for their infants, he says, they are less likely to abandon the child later on.