The Good Enough Mother
Donald Winnicott · 1953
"A perfect parent destroys a child's ability to cope with reality. A 'good enough' parent intentionally fails in small, tolerable ways to build resilience."
Modern society puts immense pressure on parents to be perfect—to instantly fulfill every need their child has. Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott argued this is actually destructive. What a child really needs is a 'good enough' mother.
When a baby is born, the mother must be almost perfectly attuned to its needs to keep it alive. But as the child grows, the mother must slowly, progressively fail. She must take a little longer to bring the bottle, or refuse to buy the toy.
According to Winnicott, why is a 'perfect' parent actually harmful to a developing child?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- The Good Enough MotherThe School of Life
The People-First Approach
"Technology should be built around the Human as an irreducible constant — a 'driver' separate from mind and body who retains the right to keep changing — rather than treating people as optimization targets a system can fully model and predict."