1. Throughout history, new parents have experienced the pressures and responsibilities that come with rearing a child. The mother in particular, for biological and societal reasons, is under stress to fulfill the expectations that she and society puts on her. Donald Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, broke ground and shocked those around him with his original views on the relationship between children and their mothers. Winnicott challenged the traditional and idealised view of parenting and provided theory and guidance that was more grounded in the reality of parenthood. Winnicott’s notions of the ‘good-enough’ mother and the facilitating environment that he described remain important in the study of child development.
2. 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 the theory of attachment. Winnicott’s facilitating environment is provided by an unconscious process within an ordinary mother who is fond of her baby. Winnicott suggests that during pregnancy, a mother develops a state of heightened sensitivity, which continues to be maintained for some weeks after the baby’s birth.
3. The good-enough mother then continues to provide an environment that 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. 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 thoughts 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’. To achieve this shift in the baby, the good-enough mother must, by a gradual process, 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.
4. Like many social theories of child development, it is clear to outsiders that real life practice exhibits characteristics of all theory and most parents show parts of each theory in order to adapt naturally to whatever situations arise. Nevertheless, Winnicott’s ideas have been a source of comfort and hope to many mothers who have naturally struggled with the challenge of motherhood.