Mother-Child Interaction: One- or Two-Way Street?

In the last twenty years, an increasing number of investigations have demonstrated the crucial importance of adequate mothering for early child development and sound ego growth. Maternal deprivation studies, scrutiny of the early ego development of institutionalized children, and the cumulative evidence from clinical case histories all point to the inescapable relationship between inadequate or insufficient maternal care and a variety of ego deficits in the child. Research findings clearly demonstrate that individual differences in disposition and temperament do exist among newborn babies, but there is a lag in incorporating this fact in child-rearing practices and in considering these basic differences in diagnostic and therapeutic formulations. Often when parent-child interaction is discussed, reference is really being made to what a mother does with or to a child. Unwittingly, the interaction is seen as a one-way street rather than as a true reciprocal exchange. The notion that the parent is at the root of his child's problems and is also responsible for the normality of his development has become especially popular in the U.S.