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A GEM of a Parent: The Good-enough Mother

By Judith Coche

“Play permits the child to…cope directly or symbolically with present concerns. It is also his most significant tool for preparing himself for the future and its tasks.”
Bruno Bettelheim, The Good enough Parent
“Fluffy, I’m going to change you now. It won’t hurt.” Three-year-old granddaughter Ava removes the paper diaper from her foam rabbit. She plants kisses lovingly on its soft floppy ears, while her mommy removes the very same brand of paper diaper from new sister Sara Grace, now three weeks old. Sara wriggles more than Fluffy but both receive care willingly from their skillful Mommies. Daughter Juliette sticks a turquoise-topped binky into Sara’s mouth as she pats and cleans her bottom. Juliette turns to her older daughter to say proudly, “Oh, Ava, you are taking such good care of Fluffy.” All this is done without conscious effort. . Juliette just knows.
Juliette then mentions that she needs to pump milk for Sara’s lunch. At dinner that evening, Ava announced “Wait!” She lifted her t-shirt, placed her hand on her small, flat chest, and said, “I have to plump,” She intended to express her milk for the fortunate, if inert, Fluffy.
As regular column readers know, I have just become a grandmother three times over. Sara was born one month ago this Thanksgiving. Her birth provides a way to touch on one of the key concepts in child development.
Donald Winnicott, a British Psychoanalyst, developed the concept of what I refer to as a GEM, short for “The good-enough mother.” A couples expert long before we had couples experts, Winnicott quipped that “There is no such thing as a baby – only a nursing couple.” Babies do not develop optimally without what he called the “primary maternal preoccupation:” a GEM ( a good-enough mother) intuits her infant’s need such that she is able to supply body and emotional needs. She, and the partner that supports this inconvenient undertaking, literally create the ecostructure for their baby’s development.
Hurrah for Juliette, providing living example of Winnicott’s concept of the good-enough mother. Winnicott tells us that the good-enough mother
• Consciously and unconsciously is physically and emotionally attuned to her baby appropriately at differing stages of infancy, enabling an optimal environment for the baby’s later capacity to love others.
• Gives her baby a sense of control by adapting the world for her baby. This provides the comfort of being connected with the mother.
• Is a kind of shock absorber for the baby. The good-enough mother contains the infant’s bad objects, with equanimity, allowing the child to project unwanted impulses onto the mother. This ability to absorb the shocks for the baby (“There, there, it will be all right…”) allows the infant a sense of subjective omnipotence, a sense of power over the self that the infant is actually too young to have. It instills a kind of premature sense of confidence, which enables the tiny child to enter the world with safety.
• As the infant matures, the good-enough mother allows a bit of time to pass before she solves the problems for the child, enabling the child to work out situations rather than relying entirely on the parent. Little by little, independence increases.
Hurrah too, for three year old Ava. Before she can read the astute Dr. Bruno Bethlehem, she intuits that she needs to work out loss of “onliness” in her play with a diapered stuffed rabbit. As Ava deciphers how to adjust to no longer being the only child of an adoring family, she mimics her Mommy, using Fluffy as her own baby. Ava can be a GEM to Fluffy, independent from her own Mommy.
Ava can “plump” milk in fantasy, as she watches her Mommy pump milk for her new sister, the intruder into Ava’s “onliness.” As Juliette orchestrates the drama split second after split second, with the skill and training she received when she wasn’t really paying attention, I sit back and smile.
I feel at peace, seeing that the independence training my husband and I tried to provide is being transmitted before my eyes to another generation. I allow a moment to appreciate Juliette’s Daddy, my Ph.D. in Human Development, and my daughter’s ability to be a GEM of a parent to her daughters. It will be a good Thanksgiving.
To consider: This Thanksgiving, take a moment to watch someone you love skillfully love to someone else you love. Whom do you know that is a GEM, a “Good-enough Mother?” And, please do tell them. It just might make their day.
To read: Bruno Bettelheim. The Good Enough Parent. NY: Knopf, 1988. A philosophical and fascinating exploration of parenting by one of the masters in child development.
(Coche of Stone Harbor educates the public in mental health issues. She can be reached at jmcoche@gmail.com or 215-859-1050.)

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