Maternal-Infant Bonding

Felicity Stockwell, who is well known for her study of  The Unpopular Patient, shares her knowledge and understanding about the ‘social aspects’ of being human, and of the part played by the process of Maternal-Infant Bonding. (This will be called Bonding on the site hereafter)

The site offers a commentary account of this extremely complex process. Textbooks pay scant attention to Bonding, and although the evidence of the facts exists, it can only be found for small particulars across many disciplines.                                                                                        (J.Bowlby defined attachment and D.W.Winnicot defined adaptation but they both recognised the formation of a bond but focused on the mother rather than the infant.)

The following papers are the result of collecting together information and understandings over a lifetime, and then putting them together like jigsaw pieces to make sense of the ‘whole’ infant and mother process.

It is hoped that scientists and practitioners from the wide diversity of the relevant disciplines will identify where their particular ‘pieces’ of knowledge and understanding of maternal-infant bonding fit in to the overall picture, and then will cooperate with others to find the significance and gain the understandings that will help to address many problems of the world today.

The first pages provide the knowledge base accounts of Bonding.

The later pages give accounts of applying the understandings in various professional situations.

The most salient facts in each paper will be in bold.

Facts I have been unable to corroborate will be in italics.

My own understandings will be in green.

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(Last edited  November 2011)