We have stopped valuing care itself. We value productivity.
En las consultas de Madrid, la psiquiatra infantil María Velasco observa una paradoja de nuestro tiempo: nunca hubo tanta información sobre crianza, y sin embargo los padres nunca se han sentido tan solos ni tan asustados de equivocarse. Lo que ha cambiado no es la naturaleza de los hijos, sino la arquitectura invisible que sostenía a quienes los criaban —redes de mujeres, comunidades, ritmos compartidos— y que la modernidad ha desmantelado sin ofrecer nada a cambio. Su libro *Criar con salud mental* no es un manual de instrucciones, sino una llamada a reconocer que el problema no es personal, sino estructural, y que la solución tampoco puede ser individual.
- Los padres de hoy no enfrentan escasez material sino una exigencia de perfección que convierte cada decisión cotidiana en un posible fracaso personal.
- Las madres en el posparto —con el cerebro y el cuerpo en transformación radical— son abandonadas a una soledad que el sistema confunde con autonomía.
- La cultura del rendimiento ha colonizado la crianza: se planifica, se optimiza, se evalúa, como si un hijo fuera un proyecto de empresa con métricas de éxito.
- La ampliación de los permisos de paternidad es un avance real pero insuficiente, atrapado aún en una lógica productivista que no pregunta qué necesitan realmente los niños y las familias.
- Velasco sostiene que invertir en apoyo familiar preventivo ahorraría enormes costes futuros en salud mental, pero ese argumento todavía no ha logrado cambiar el rumbo de las políticas públicas.
María Velasco lleva años recibiendo en su consulta madrileña a familias que se sienten rotas sin saber bien por qué. Su diagnóstico es claro: criar se ha vuelto más difícil que nunca, no por falta de recursos materiales, sino porque hemos convertido la parentalidad en una disciplina que se estudia, se planifica y se ejecuta con miedo al error. La sociedad promete que si lo haces bien, saldrá bien; y cuando algo falla, el padre o la madre lo vive como fracaso propio.
El problema de fondo es que hemos destruido el andamiaje social que históricamente sostenía a quienes criaban. Las redes de madres, abuelas y vecinas que comprendían el trastorno físico y emocional del posparto —lo que Velasco llama el «sostén»— han desaparecido. Hoy una madre atraviesa una transformación hormonal y neurológica profunda mientras se espera de ella que mantenga la productividad y no pida demasiado. Los primeros meses, los más vulnerables, son también los más solitarios.
A esto se suma una filosofía cultural narcisista e individualista que penaliza pedir ayuda y premia la autosuficiencia. Bajo esa presión, la crianza natural —la que se improvisa, la que confía en el instinto— se vuelve casi imposible. El miedo se instala. Los padres se vuelven hipervigilantes, incapaces de fiarse de sí mismos.
Sin embargo, el libro de Velasco no es pesimista. Cree que es posible criar con salud mental si los padres se atreven a salir de la lógica que la sociedad les impone: aceptar que la crianza tiene su propio tiempo, que exige renuncias, que requiere conocerse a uno mismo. Y cree que el cambio no vendrá de los políticos ni de las empresas, sino de los propios padres, organizados, exigiendo algo distinto. La inversión en apoyo familiar preventivo reduciría enormemente los costes futuros en salud mental —ese argumento económico existe y es sólido—, pero aún no ha logrado reorientar un sistema diseñado para la productividad, no para la realidad humana.
María Velasco sits in her office in Madrid, a child psychiatrist and psychologist who has spent years watching families struggle under conditions that feel, to her, fundamentally broken. She has just published a book called *Raising with Mental Health*, and in it she makes a simple but unsettling claim: being a parent today is harder than it has ever been, not because of material scarcity—supermarkets are full, water runs from taps, apps deliver goods to your door—but because the things that actually matter have become impossibly complicated.
The problem, as Velasco sees it, is structural and cultural at once. Parenting has been professionalized. It has become something you study, plan, execute, optimize—like a business venture. Society tells you it must turn out well, that you must do it right, and when something goes wrong or doesn't match the image you were sold, you feel it as personal failure. You have invested so much, after all. But this framework is fundamentally at odds with what children actually need and what parenting actually is: messy, time-consuming, emotionally turbulent, requiring patience and presence rather than performance.
The deeper issue is that we have stripped parenting of its social scaffolding. Historically, mothers were held by networks of other women—mothers, grandmothers, neighbors—who understood the physical and emotional upheaval of early motherhood and provided what Velasco calls "sostén," a holding or sustaining. Now that network is gone. A mother is expected to manage alone, or with a partner who often has no framework for understanding what she is going through. Her brain is changing. Her hormones are in flux. Her body has been transformed. And she is supposed to do this while maintaining productivity, meeting expectations, and not asking for too much.
Velasco emphasizes that the first months after birth are the most vulnerable. This is when physical demands from the baby are highest and when the mother is undergoing profound hormonal and neurological change. This is precisely when she needs to be held, understood, listened to—cared for so that she can care. Instead, she is often isolated, stressed, and expected to function as though nothing has changed.
The broader culture compounds this. We live in what Velasco calls a narcissistic and individualistic philosophy of life. We are told we cannot ask for help, that we must be self-sufficient, that needing others is weakness. We are told to fear mistakes and judgment. We are told to move fast and produce. Under these conditions, parenting with naturalness and improvisation—the things that actually allow children to thrive—becomes nearly impossible. Fear takes over. Parents become hypervigilant, second-guessing themselves, unable to trust their own instincts.
Yet Velasco's book carries a message of possibility. She believes it is possible to raise children with mental health even in this difficult landscape, but it requires stepping outside the logic that society imposes. It requires understanding that parenting demands its own time and rhythm, that you will have to give up certain things for others, that you must know yourself deeply and take ownership of your own life. Most importantly, it requires recognizing that this change cannot come from politicians or business leaders. It can only come from parents themselves, united, demanding something different.
She points to one small shift: paternal leave has expanded in some places, allowing fathers to be present longer. But it is still insufficient, and it remains embedded in a model that is fundamentally productivist and patriarchal. The language of "work-life balance" is, to her, a lie—it frames caregiving in corporate terms rather than asking what children and families actually need. What is missing from policy discussions is a simple economic truth: investment in mental health prevention now, through genuine family support, would save enormous sums in future intervention and treatment. But that argument has not yet penetrated the conversation. The focus remains on fitting families into a system designed for productivity, not on redesigning the system around the reality of human need.
Notable Quotes
Motherhood today is highly idealized, but at the same time we are accustomed to everything we do having very high performance, which creates a conflict.— María Velasco
This change will not come from business leaders or politicians—it can only come from mothers and fathers united, demanding change to raise with mental health.— María Velasco
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say parenting has been professionalized, what does that actually look like in a family's daily life?
It means a parent reads a book about sleep training, or consults an expert about feeding, or worries they are doing developmental milestones wrong. It means treating your child like a project to be managed rather than a person to be known. The anxiety comes from the belief that if you study hard enough and follow the right method, you can control the outcome. But children are not outcomes. They are human beings.
You mention that mothers historically were held by networks of other women. Is that just nostalgia, or was something genuinely different?
It was genuinely different. A new mother was not expected to do it alone. She was surrounded by women who had done this before, who knew what her body was going through, who could take the baby so she could sleep or bathe or simply sit. That was not sentimental—it was practical wisdom. Now we have isolated her and called it independence.
If a parent reads your book and feels the weight of all this, what is the first thing you would tell them to do?
I would tell them to stop trying to do it perfectly. To notice where they are afraid—afraid of judgment, afraid of making mistakes—and to question whether that fear is actually theirs or whether they have absorbed it from the culture. Then to find even one other person, one other parent, who understands. You cannot change the system alone. But you can change how you move through it.
You mention that the postpartum period is when mothers need the most support but receive the least. Why has that become invisible?
Because we have stopped valuing care itself. We value productivity, visibility, measurable output. Motherhood in those early months is none of those things. It is invisible labor, and invisible things do not count in our economy or our culture. So we have simply stopped seeing it.
Is there hope in what you are describing?
Yes, but not the kind that comes from waiting for policy to change. The hope is that parents can recognize what is happening and choose differently. They can decide that their family's mental health matters more than the image of perfection. They can ask for help. They can build community. These are small acts, but they are not powerless.