The infant's impact on changing identities in becoming mothers for Bangladeshi, white, African and African Caribbean mothers in an Inner London Borough

Becoming a mother can create profound changes for a woman’s sense of who she is. This paper presents findings from a study on mothering identity involving 20 first-time mothers from a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds interviewed about their experiences before the baby’s birth and during and at the end of the first year. 6 mothers and infants were also observed weekly at home for one year using the psychoanalytic infant observation method developed by Bick (1964). Each observer adopts a friendly but neutral stance and writes an account of what was observed immediately afterwards. Observers’ accounts are discussed in weekly, supervised seminars. Here, particular attention was given to the accounts’ emotional impact in understanding the meaning of cultural differences. As a whole, the study confirmed the importance of support provided by mothers’ own mothers. Infant observation was particularly effective in illuminating how babies’ demands and development pace the internal reorganisation necessary to moving from being one’s parents’ child to also being a mother oneself. Extended families, traditionally particularly present in some cultures, could provide valuable emotional as well as practical help. Across all families the negotiation of separateness mobilised by weaning and the infant’s developing attachment were crucial to the mother’s emergent sense of herself as ‘mother’. The paper highlights difficulties arising when practices adaptive in one cultural context are unsupported within the host environment.