Healthy Maternal Ambivalence

Abstract

This paper critically reviews the psychoanalytic omission in theorising maternal subjectivity and the subsequent idealisation of the early mother-baby bond that excludes negative maternal feelings. It suggests that painful maternal experiences of resentment, persecution and hatred remain underexplored. Perhaps even more alarming, this exclusion compels mothers to hide conflictual and shameful feelings from professionals-and from themselves. The paper suggests that healthy maternal ambivalence is an inevitable feature of mothering. Drawing on psychoanalytic theoretical accounts and on empirical study it offers a model of different manifestations of maternal ambivalence. These maternal orientations-Facilitator, Regulator, Reciprocator and Conflicted mothering-manifest antenatally, preceding knowledge of the child's actual characteristics. The various permutations of ambivalence in parenting are a function of the mother's inner world and the child's affective communications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)