Partners Becoming ParentsChristopher Clulow examines the connections between partnership and parenthood, focusing on the parents as partners, as well as parents, and on the child. He examines how children change the relationship between their parents, and what relevance the couple's relationship has for healthy child development. Becoming parents is arguable the most challenging of life changes faced by couples. There are no clear guidelines about what is involved: the routes are many and the choices range broadly. Today, diverse lifestyles, new technologies, and changing socioeconomic circumstances have combined with other factors to further complicate the demands of parenting. Against this backdrop, couples play out dramas constructed from their own histories and continuing lives together. The child is born into this context of subtle interplay between each parent's, and the couple's inner and outer experiences. This book provides a fascinating and authoritative look at the emotional process of becoming a family. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
Who Comes First Partner or Child? | 32 |
Why are ThreePerson Relationships Difficult? | 44 |
Infertility and the Couple | 55 |
Reproductive Narratives of Pregnancy and Parenting | 66 |
Daughters becoming Mothers | 86 |
The GoodEnough Father of Whatever Sex | 101 |
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Common terms and phrases
adult aggression anxiety aspects baby baby's Becoming a Family behaviour birth capacity cent Chapter Charles Darwin child cohabiting commitment conflict couple relationship couples group Cowan culture daughter depression Derek described difficult distress divorce dyad early effects emotional Enid expect experience experienced fantasy feelings foetus Furie gender girl good-enough father husband idealization ideas illegitimacy important individual infant infertility kindergarten Lacan less lives lone parents lone-parent families male marriage married maternal motherhood negative nuclear family Oedipal Oedipus complex parent-child partnering and parenting partners becoming parents partnership Penelope Leach play political positive post-partum depression pregnancy problems psychoanalytic psychological psychotherapist Raphael-Leff reality relation responsibility role sense separate sexual sexual intercourse shared social step-parent stepfamilies stepmother stories stress T. S. Eliot three-person relationships transition to parenthood two-person unconscious wife Winnicott woman women young