The early parenting years are a full-contact sport—and the chaotic mix of sleepless nights, tantrums, and physical neediness can often lead to parents feeling “touched out.” From the intensely physical experience of breastfeeding to just generally being seen as a personal jungle gym for your toddler or preschooler, parenting little kids can make it feel as though your body is no longer your own.
“Everyone has very different tolerances for physical touch,” said Mary Ann
Covey, a licensed psychologist with Thriveworks. “Some people are huggers; some aren’t.” Becoming a parent doesn’t change this tolerance for touch, so the physicality of raising small children can often send a parent into a sensory overload.
Feeling “touched out” is a common experience
Although the feeling of being touched out as a parent isn’t talked about very often, it’s very common. Given how different children (and parents) can be when it comes to touch, this can also leave a lot of parents feeling alone. “It varies so much based on the child,” Covey said. “Some children are very touchy and others aren’t, so then other mothers can’t identify—and not only can they not identify, they want what you have.”
However, it’s common enough that Jessica Rohr, a psychologist at Houston Methodist Hospital who specializes in maternal mental health, sees it on a weekly basis in her practice. As Rohr notes, feeling touched out often derives from a number of social and biological factors. “First, there’s a biological component,” Rohr said. “When babies are young, we release oxytocin when we’re near our babies. This is an evolutionary holdover, so we didn’t leave them in a cave. However, it makes us feel bad when we’re away from them.”
As Rohr notes, the second factor is social. “In Western society, there is an emphasis on what is called intensive parenting, which is the idea that a parent, especially mom, needs to give everything of herself, become consumed by her children, her time, her energy, her body,” Rohr said. “There is definitely this emphasis on the idea that your baby needs to have access to your body, and if you don’t do that, you are a bad mom.”
How to cope with feeling touched out
For Rohr’s patients who are feeling touched out, she tends to focus on two main strategies for making the situation more manageable. The first priority is to find a way to get the partner on board, so they understand what is going on, and how to help. In her experience, being touched out can often cause tension in a marriage. “What we’re seeing is partners, usually male partners, getting frustrated because he wants to start having sex again, he wants to cuddle mom, he wants to hold her hand, and that’s one place where she feels comfortable saying ‘no, please do not touch me, I’m feeling repulsed by that right now,’” Rohr said. “That can lead to some strain in the marriage.”
Once a partner understands what is happening, then it can help to team up, so one parent can provide attention to a child, while the other parent gets a break from all of the physical contact. If a child tends to cling to one parent, then dividing up the time can also help encourage them to spend additional time with the second parent.
The second priority is to teach children about the importance of bodily autonomy, which extends both ways. Just as a child shouldn’t be expected to hug or kiss someone when they don’t want to, they also need to learn that there are times when their parents need physical space. “This is a really important skill to demonstrate to them, and to model for them, that in a loving relationship, you do not have to have access to someone else’s body, for them to prove to you that they love you,” Rohr said. “This is a really important thing that our children need to learn.”
One strategy that Rohr finds effective is to phrase the request in terms of “Mommy’s body needs some space,” as a way of letting a child know that although there is a need for space, it’s about the physical touching, rather than a blend of the physical and emotional.
