Being too critical of parents

Parents who both consciously and intuitively reflect carefully on their own behaviour towards their children are likely to be adults who have come to terms with most of their own anxieties. It is probable that as children they were cared for well enough. Often the parents of children considered to need additional support to look after their children are not so free of the anxiety insecurity brings. This is not to place blame. These parents are frequently prisoners of their own upbringing and all too often the victims of an acquisitive society where status based on wealth is a predominant value. Their own experience of family may offer them little to fall back on when they struggle with the give and take of relationships which are so much a part of healthy family life. They may not feel able to create the kind of family environment which provides good social examples,consistent warmth and underlying harmony as well as intellectual stimulus and challenge, because they have not experienced these in their own childhoods. As children they suffered a deficit of love.
Now, and for the longer term, as a community we have a responsibility to help these parents, and to work towards a community which will not cultivate the alienation they experience. We are all responsible for creating the kind of community we have. These are our difficulties just as much as they are their difficulties. This is not to deny that in the meantime there is a pressing shorter term problem which is to tend to the needy children of these families.

First published on April 17th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/Home.aspx?cpid=1 

Brief and disparate reflections on attachment theory, the good enough mother, womanhood and the social care of children and young people

During the 1950s and 1960s working independently but contemporaneously John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott developed different  theories about the  psychological and physical growth and wellbeing of children. Bowlby's theory of attachment and Winnicott's notions of the good enough mother and the facilitating environment remain influential in the study of child development.


Attachment Theory

Bowlby's work along with that of the many others who have continued to develop a theory of attachment has been fruitful in raising our awareness of the significance of the attachment relationship between a baby and its principal parenting figure, who is usually the baby's mother. The newly-born baby seeks out a caregiver and the caregiver's response to the baby’s quest influences the development of the baby. For instance the securely attached infant feels that his caregiving figure is accessible and responsive to him when needed, while the anxiously attached infant cannot assume that his caregiver will be responsive and so he adopts strategies to circumvent the  perceived unresponsiveness. Such a strategy may result in a baby denying the emotional tie with a caregiver, or it may be manifested by the baby's need to amplify their signs of distress in order to ensure he will be heard (See Ainsworth and Bowlby,1965).

Winnicott's facilitating environment and the good enough mother

Winnicott's idea of a facilitating environment created for a child by a "good enough mother" who is supported by the adults around her, rests easily alongside Bowlby's theory of attachment.
Bowlby wrote,

"intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person's life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a schoolchild but through his adolescence and his years of maturity and on into old age."   (Bowlby, 1980, p.442)

For Winnicott this hub is provided by unconscious processes within "an ordinary mother who is fond of her baby" (Winnicott,1952) :  a "good enough mother", who learns best how to look after her baby not from health professionals and self-help books but from having been a baby herself ."She acts naturally, naturally " (Winnicott, 1988). Winnicott suggests that during pregnancy a mother develops "a state of heightened sensivity" which continues to be maintained for some weeks after the baby's birth. When this heightened state passes, the mother has what Winnicott calls a "flight into sanity" and she begins to be aware of the world which exists outside of her state of "primary maternal preoccupation" with her infant (Winnicott,1975). Nonetheless the good enough mother continues to provide an environment  which facilitates healthy maturational processes in her baby. She achieves this by being the person who wards off the unpredictable and who actively provides care in the holding, handling and in the general management of the child. The good enough mother provides physical care and meets her baby's need for emotional warmth and love. She also protects her baby against those parts of her from which murderous feelings are brought forth when, for example, her baby screams, yells and cries continuously. By containing her own hateful feelings about her baby, and using them to intuit the baby’s terror and hate, the good enough mother facilitates her baby's feelings and expressions of omnipotence by adapting to his needs until such time as he gradually begins to feel safe enough to relinquish these feelings. At this stage the process of integration can start and the baby begins to develop a sense of "me" and "not me" (Winnicott, 1975). To achieve this shift from the baby's total dependence to relative dependence the good enough mother has, by a gradual process, to fail to adapt to her baby's needs in order that the baby can begin to learn to tolerate the frustrations of the world outside of himself and his mother (Winnicott,1965).

Winnicott always argued that mothers knew better about the needs of her baby than experts. He suggested that there were,

"very subtle things that the mother knows intuitively and without any intellectual appreciation of what is happening, and which she can only arrive at by being left alone and given full responsibility..."      (Winnicott1988,p64).

Criticisms of Winnicott's good enough mother
  

With his notion of the "good enough mother" who intuitively knows best about her baby, Winnicott intended to take the pressure off women who became mothers but critics have argued that Winnicott in his idealisation of the good enough mother has placed  an expectation upon the "real" mother that she must shoulder most of the responsibility for the care her baby. Furthermore she is held responsible for how well the baby flourishes.

On being a woman and a mother 

 In recent times a number of  female writers have borne witness to this responsibility.  For instance recently, Rachel Cusk, at the same time as encapsulating many of Winnicott's ideas about motherhood, observes,

"Becoming a mother reveals a woman's capacity for numerous things : virtue, self-sacrifice, anger, foolishness, love. Some of these qualities will never before have been tested - she may not even have known that she possessed them. Some of them will take their shape exactly from what she was offered by her own mother, though she may not remember being offered them. And some - anger is one - will find forms of their own, of which she feels herself the only progenitor" (Cusk,2011, p36).

For Cusk, "The baby comes and everyone panics, looking for the woman who's going to take care of it." and this she argues is the principal source of a woman's anger when she has a baby,

"because she has lost the power of autonomy and free will in her own life. From the first moment of her pregnancy, a woman finds herself subject to forces over which she has no control, not least those of the body itself. This subjection applies equally to the unknown and the known : she is her body's subject, her doctor's subject, her baby’s subject, and in this biological work she has undertaken she becomes society's and history's subject too. But where she feels the subjection most is in the territories,whatever they are that in her pre-maternal life she made her own. The threat to what made her herself to what made her an individual : this is what the mother finds hardest to live down. Having been told all her life to value her individuality and pursue its aims, she encounters an outright contradiction, a betrayal - even among the very gatekeepers of her identity, her husband or colleagues or friends - in the requirement that she surrender it"  (Cusk,2011.p36).

Even in times when there are more plastic views about how the task of caring for a baby is assigned, when both father and mother at different times may have leave of absence from work to be the baby's primary parenting figure it remains impossible, as Cusk suggests for a woman to escape the biological implications of maternity.

Cusk acknowledges that her feelings may be influenced by her experience of being mothered and recent commentators on attachment theory have indicated that the quality of parenting figures' to attachment to their children is influenced by their own childhood experience of attachment figures (See for instance, Fonagy 2001).

Winnicott too acknowledged that a mother may not be good enough. Such a mother might repeatedly fail to meet the needs of her baby and so the baby grows to be a child who complied to his mother's needs and so in order to survive this developed a false rather than a true self.

Attachment theory, the facilitating environment and the care of children not living in with their own families

Yet Cusk's idea of the panic when a new baby arrives may have an unlikely resonance for those such as residential child care workers and foster carers, who are charged with looking after children and young people who have been deprived of consistent attachment figures,and who have not received "good enough parenting". These children can create a panic in children's services departments and sometimes in the wider communities. When we do we look around for the symbolic "mothering figure"  - man,woman or groupd -  who will take responsibility for them. The trouble is the professional carer's task is that of creating a facilitating maternal environment at a time when a child's development has already been impaired by parental deprivation  and inconsistent parenting. The professional carer who is asked to be a consistent attachment figure and a "good enough mother" first encounters the child when the true self is already well hidden and when powerful false self defences are pre-eminent. In this case the nurture, the good enough caring, the consistent attachment provided can never be primary but has to be a real compensation for  loss and abandonment before any healing can be done. It is in this sense that the carer is addressing what seems like  the panic caused by the arrival of a new baby (albeit one inhabiting for a 5 years old or a 14 years old body) of whom really we know nothing, who we did not experience in the womb  and for whom we have as yet no authentic feelings apart from trepidation and perhaps fear.  For how can the carer know if she will be good enough to deal with the child's indifference to her responses or to the child's omnipotence in the face of the care she offers ?


Charles Sharpe, Totnes, 2011

References

Ainsworth, M. and Bowlby,J.(1965) Child Care and the Growth of Love  London  :  Penguin Books

Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss, Sadness and Depression , Vol 3 of Attachment and Loss   London : Hogarth p.185

Fonagy,P.(2001)Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis   New York : Other Press

Cusk,R.(2011) "From liberty and equality to the maternal grind" in The New Review, The Observer  April 3rd, 2011. A review of Shattered : Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality  by Rebecca Asher published by Harvill Secker. The text of this book review can be accessed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/03/shattered-rebecca-asher-motherhood-equality

Winnicott, DW (1952) Letter to Roger Money-Kyrle, 27th November in The Spontaneous Gesture : Selected Letters of D.W. Winnicott      London   Karnac Books (1987,pp 38-43)

Winnicott, D.W.(1965) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment     London  :  Karnac Books(2005)

Winnicott, D.W.(1958) Collected Papers : Through Paediatrics to Psycho-analysis    London  :  Tavistock Publications (1975)

Winnicott, D.W.(1988) Babies and their Mothers  London : Free Association Books

This opinion piece was first published in March, 2011, on the goodenoughcaring home page  at 

http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/Home.aspx?cpid=1

where there are many interesting and informative articles related to parenting and childhood development as well as many other aspects of the care and nurture of children and young people

The poor families get poorer, but the United Kingdom media plays down the significance of the March 26th, 2011, TUC protest about public expenditure cuts.

First posted on March 27th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/Home.aspx?cpid=1  where many other many articles relating to children, childhood, child development, parenting, families, foster care and residential child care can be found.

In London on Saturday, March 26th, reportedly between 100,000 and 500,000 people - among them child care workers, teachers and health workers - protested legitimately and peacefully about the coalition government's decision to cut drastically our health, education, social and other community services. The British media, including the BBC, chose to focus most of its reporting of the event on a small breakaway group which - though it may have had a valid point to make - protested in a more sensational and destructive way.

The overwhelming response to the TUC's call for a protest march came in a week when the coalition government's budget offered little sustenance to those families with children who struggle on a low income. An analysis of the budget carried out by Tom Horton, the research director of the Fabian Society, and Howard Reed, the director of Landmark Economics, shows that many single-earner families with children and families claiming help with child care are set to lose from tax-and-benefit reform. The report claims that "despite government rhetoric about 'lifting the poorest out of tax' many low income families are set to become bigger contributors to the Exchequer." According to the report these losses occur because for many families, the rise in Value Added Tax and the cuts in tax credits outweigh any gains from the budget's proposed cuts in income tax and national insurance.

The cutting of services and the increased financial burdens to less well off families with children impacts upon what the parents in these families can give to their children. Moreover this has an emotional impact. Parents who are struggling financially often become anxious parents and anxious parents make children anxious. Attention should be drawn to this and that is exactly what the peaceful protesters in London were trying to do. It is therefore tragic as well as ironic that at a time when the coalition government backed by the media is defending the rights of peaceful protesters in other countries, our media deflects attention away from legitimate protests about government policies and financial restrictions which not only cut essential resources for our children and young people but also challenge their basic rights.

Note

The full text of the Fabian Society Report can be found at :

 http://www.fabians.org.uk/images/FabianSociety-LandmanEconomics_post-Budget_report.pdf

Something to reflect on : the trials, tribulations,struggles and excitement of adolescence

First posted on March 24th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/  where many other many articles relating to children, childhood, child development, parenting, families, foster care and residential child care can be found.


As adults with a responsibility to look after young people who are experiencing the onset of puberty while butting through the storms and languishing in the occasional calms of adolescence, we sometimes adopt a temporary amnesia concerning the trials, tribulations, and the excitement we experienced at that time in our lives. We forget those occasions when we thought or said "When I become a parent I am going to make a better job of the world than my Mum or Dad." Instead an understanding dawns on us of the frustrations our parenting figures felt when we as youngsters thought it unreasonable that we were not, for instance, allowed to stay out late every night. As we rediscover the parenting wheel for ourselves we can appreciate that adolescence is an essential part of the development of both generations. The psychoanalyst, Margot Waddell begins to explore the adolescent phenomenon in this excerpt from her book, Inside Lives .



"......the nature of adolescence and its course are organised around responses to the upheaval of puberty. Adolescence can be described, in narrow terms, as a complex adjustment on the child's part to these major physical and emotional changes. This adjustment entails finding a new, and often hard-won, sense of onself-in-the-world, in the wake of the disturbing latency attitudes and ways of thinking. The means by which this altered relationship to the self may be achieved vary across a very wide range of behaviour, of different modes of defence and adaptation, from being the "conforming", "pseudo adult", "good" boy or girl to being the "tear-away", the "drug addict", the "suicide risk", "bad" boy or girl. It may take several years, or decades,for the turmoil to settle. For adolescents the psychic agenda is a demanding one : the negotiation between adult and infantile structures; the transition from life in the family to life in the world; the finding and establishing of an identity, especially in sexual terms; in short the capacity to manage separation, loss, choice, independence, and perhaps disillusionment with life on the outside."



Reference



Waddell, Margot (1998) Inside Lives  London  :  Karnac Books 2005,  p140

Foster Care Controversy

In response to our opinion piece on the recent Question Time programme which was broadcast on March 3rd, 2011, Stuart Russon writes,

'Following the media frenzy over the Derbyshire couple who weren't allowed to foster because of their religious/homophobic views and following your short article about this programme I was struck - without commenting on the moral dilemma itself - by the general view that seemed to pervade most on the Question Time panel and audience when discussing it. The consensus seemed to be that because the child was under 10 that the religious/homophobic views of the foster parents didn't really matter as the child was too young to be influenced (or "is too young to be considering such adult themes"). Now I've always thought that a child of that age is most susceptible to influence and so it does matter. The child WILL be influenced by the thinking/views of the foster parents and this at a possibly critical time in the child's development. Watching the programme was one of those times when I realise how out of kilter I am with public opinion, as I thought, with all due respect to the couple involved, that it was the right decision although the Question Time audience thought otherwise'.

First posted on the goodenoughcaring home page  on March 9th, 2011 at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com  where you have access to many articles about childhood, child care, nurture, parenting, children in care, social pedagogy and therapeutic child care.

Government minister, Iain Duncan Smith, claims residential child care fails children

Visitors to the goodenoughcaring.com site who watched the programme “Question Time” from Derby on BBC 1 last night, (Thursday,3/3/11) may have heard Iain Duncan Smith, the coalition government’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions say as an aside to a plea for the recruitment of more foster carers, “that as many children as possible should not be in care homes because ultimately they do not do them any good at all.”
Iain Duncan Smith is right to stress the need to recruit more foster parents for troubled children but there is a significant number of children who, temporarily or more long term, cannot live with their birth families and who, for a variety of reasons, would not have their current needs met in a foster care placement. For them good quality group residential care is less threatening and also has the resources which can accommodate and provide for their complex developmental needs. This is not to be complacent about, or to deny the difficulties residential child care faces, and at the best of times residential child care is a problematic project. In a sense that is how it should be for if it were otherwise something would be seriously wrong.
Iain Duncan Smith is not the minister responsible for children’s homes but he is a rightly respected and influential voice in the coalition government on matters concerning the most needy and vulnerable members of our community. This is why his remark is disappointing for it is surely not stretching things too far to conclude that his views represent the government’s position on this matter. It is disappointing too because he should know that there are many examples of good residential child care being provided throughout England but these are not encouraged or developed further because there is a lack of consistent political commitment and support to the residential child care sector.
The recent Ofsted report on children’s homes in England, Outstanding Children's Homes (2.3.11) highlights examples of the good residential child care practice but implies that the lack of consistent suppport to the sector is reflected in the inconsistency of service provision which Ofsted found. The report recommends that exceptional practitioner leaders in residential child care should be encouraged to spread their practice by being placed at the forefront of the development and training of residential child care workers. Those directly involved with residential child care are wary when they are provided with neat general solutions to the unique and dynamic difficulties faced by individual children but Ofsted's recommendation is to be welcomed if it is intended to free residential child care workers from being manacled to laid down procedures that satisfy the demands of political and senior management “heavyweights” but which, as Mark Smith (2009) and Jim Rose (2010) in their different ways so eloquently demonstrate, do nothing to meet the real personal and intimate needs of children.
This week in Community Care (3.3.11) Camilla Pemberton observes that Ofsted’s report comes after a period of time when support to residential child care in England has been severely reduced. The National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care closed last year when the Labour government withdrew its funding. For a time it seemed the private consultancy consortium Tribal would take over much of the NCERCC role until the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government cancelled the contract with Tribal. This cancellation was broadly welcomed but sadly nothing has been heard from the government about what will be put in place to fill the vacuum left by the excellent service provided by the NCERCC or indeed what will be done to provide the kind of consistent support and leadership for which the Ofsted report asks. In the shadow of Iain Duncan Smith’s remark the government’s silence is concerning.

Sources
Camilla Pemberton (2011) “Ministers need to take the lead on improving children’s homes” in Community Care . Accessed on 3.3.11 at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2011/03/02/116373/ofsted-urges-ministers-to-boost-childrens-homes-leadership.htm)
Ofsted (2011) Outstanding Children’s Homes Accessed from http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Outstanding-children-s-homes
Jim Rose (2010) How Nurture Protects Children : Nurture and narrative in work with children, young people and families London : Responsive Solutions
Iain Duncan Smith statement from “Question Time”, BBC 1 on Thursday, 3rd March, 2011. Re-accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z2xk8/Question_Time_03_03_2011/
Mark Smith (2009) Rethinking Residential Child Care : Positive perspectives Bristol : Policy Press

A review of Mark Smith's book can be found at www.goodenoughcaring.com/JournalArticle.aspx?cpid=102 An article by Mark Smith 'Loving and Fearful Relationships' can be found at www.goodenoughcaring.com/JournalArticle.aspx?cpid=52



This opinion piece was first published online at http://www,goodenoughcaring.com/  at 2.15pm  on 4/3/11

Teachers don't let your students grow up to be prime ministers

In 1969, a son of Forfar, the Scottish educationalist and founder of Summerhill School, A.S. Neill, was heard to say,

"I'd be very disappointed if a Summerhill child became Prime Minister. I'd feel I'd failed".

What could he have meant ?


Reference : Croall, J. (1983) Neil of Summerfield : The Permanent Rebel London Routledge and Kegan Paul p.400

First posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring website home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/