Sensitive Mothering From the Nursery and Beyond
Does the mother matter? The most obvious response is that, of course, every close caretaker of a child matters to that child's development into a healthy – or less than healthy – individual. But how much and in what particular ways do mother and mothering (their general and overall style of interacting with her child/ren) affect the development of the child? This is a point that has been debated in professional conversations for decades. In many ways, the assumptions and positions that are made by scholars mirror the questions that families have: What is the best way for a mother to interact with her child/ren? How important is the relationship between mother and child compared to that between child and other caregivers? And how much of the modeling of the good mother – in this case the "sensitive" mother – is based on patriarchal attitudes that run through Western culture? This paper addresses some of the most important traditions in how motherhood is conceptualized looking primarily at children of preschool age.