Though gossip magazines have been claiming for months that Angelina Jolie suffers from a “baby addiction,” now that her look-alike, Nadya Suleman, has given birth to octuplets, some say it’s a real psychiatric disorder.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has no entry on baby addiction, but according to MSNBC, some mental health professionals say when women desperately want more babies even though they have other children and aren’t managing their family situation well, it raises a red flag. Gayle Peterson, a San Francisco family therapist, is quoting as saying, “If you’re just having babies to complete something in yourself that never got completed, you really are talking about an addiction.” But don’t people often have children at least partially for that reason? While Suleman and the women mentioned in this article may have legitimate psychological issues, pathologizing the desire to have children may not be the best way to address their problems. [MSNBC]