Nursery World - A Unique Child: Infant Mental Health

Early family relationships play a key role in infant health and well-being, explains Robin Balbernie

The well-being of a very young child cannot be separated from the relationship that they have with their parents. Interpersonal well-being is the essence of infant mental health, an outlook and body of research that both revolve around the importance of maintaining good social and emotional development from the start. As Donald Winnicott famously observed, ‘There is no such thing as a baby.’ In other words, we always find a small child embedded within their family, never a baby alone.

In most, but not all, cases the prime caregiving relationship applies more to the mother than the father, certainly in terms of time. But fathers also have a central role to play in the development of their children, again based upon relationships. Infant well-being springs from the matrix of early family relationships, whatever their configuration.

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