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While anthropological data shows that birth is above all a community event and ritual not just involving the mother and father, there is a growing trend for parents to feel very much isolated and helpless when faced with the new-born infant. This phenomenon is the subject of an ongoing research project that seeks to assess the effects of family isolation of the parents after birth on the construction of parenthood, parental distress and the psychic life of the baby during its first year. In the clinical case taken to illustrate this “new loneliness ” of the parents, internet forums stand in stead of such poor family support while perfectly legitimate anxieties around birth persist as the baby grows. Beyond the problems of maternal postpartum depression, the focus is on the real importance of the circle of relatives and friends in providing support for the more intrapsychic processes specific to the construction of parenthood.