“I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.”
Donald W. Winnicott
Donald Winnicott was an English pediatrician and psychoanalyst, who emphasized the importance of the mother in an infant’s healthy development. By “mother,” I mean any person in the life of an infant who bears the maternal role. He stated that “there is no such thing as an infant’ meaning, of course, that wherever one finds an infant, one finds maternal care, and without maternal care, there would be no infant”. Through this statement, he wanted to emphasize that the infant cannot fulfill his physical and emotional needs on his own. This is why, during pregnancy and the postpartum period, the mother becomes biologically and psychologically involved with her baby’s needs. Winnicott called this condition “the primary maternal preoccupation” and likened it to an illness in which the mother steps into the shoes of the baby and temporarily withdraws herself from other aspects of her personality that are not closely related to the tasks of mothering. Illness because the mother, under prevalent circumstances, is a healthy person, who develops this condition and recovers from it, a few weeks after the infant is born.
This mother, according to Winnicott, is the “good enough mother”, who consciously and unconsciously is physically and emotionally attuned to her baby’s needs and adapts herself appropriately during the different stages of infancy. A good enough mother begins with an almost absolute attunement to her infant’s needs and as time passes, she gradually adapts less and less, according to her infant’s ability to handle failures and to tolerate frustration.
(At this point, I want to highlight that when using the word failure, I’m not referring to major failures such as neglect and child abuse!!)
These small doses of failure help the infant to see himself as separate and real from his mother, build resilience, and introduce him to the reality of life. If the infant has everything he needs even before his needs are created, he will always remain passive, waiting for his needs to be fulfilled magically. Only when he would become frustrated, he would try to activate himself, and therefore he would blossom. And the only person who could learn the infant, healthily and protectively, about life, is his good enough mother.
The good enough mother acts naturally and provides the baby with a holding environment with warmth, love, and physical care. This action is based on devotion and does not require any intelligence or wisdom. There is no special training or diploma needed for a devoted mother. She just needs to be a healthy person, both mentally and physically. This means a mother who experiences both positive feelings and also fear, doubt, and frustration. A mother who takes responsibility for her actions and inactions, praises her success, and admits her failure.
The good enough mother has weaknesses and makes mistakes just like any individual!
The good enough mother is the one who stands by the side of her baby and provides more comfort than pain, more harmony than discord!
Winnicott, D. W. (1975). Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis. H. Karnac Books.
Donald Woods Winnicott. (1971). Playing and reality: D.W. Winnicott. Tavistock.