GENDER AND INFANT PSYCHIATRY

Abstract

The practice of infant psychiatry raises theoretical and clinical issues for the feminist psychotherapist. The psychological and social development of infants, the mother‐child relationship, and the role of fathers are all areas of shared concern for infant psychiatry and a feminist project. This paper argues that attention to gender as a fundamental category of analysis is crucial in order to understand the context of infant development, to develop a realistic theory of mothering that avoids both mother blaming and the idealization of mothers, and to illuminate the political content of our approaches to therapeutic intervention and research.