fm Bandit

Reasons why a mother could hate her baby
Summarized from D.W. Winnicott’s 1947 paper Hate in the Countertransference

1. wasn’t really her idea
2. it’s not someone else’s kid
3. “The baby is not magically produced” *
4. pregnancy can kill ya
5. interferes with me-time
6. one’s own mother demands the child in some way
7. breastfeeding hurts
8. they offer no gratitude & expect to be waited on
9. no other option but to love the thing
10. they seriously bite you
11. they don’t really get what’s going on, their judgments impartial
12. “His excited love is cupboard love, so having got what he wants he throws her away like orange peel.” *
13. baby’s the boss
14. it’s completely unaware of all you’ve done for it
15. often prefers the cooking of others
16. strangers think it’s cute when it’s actually been quite fussy
17. your failures will manifest in its difficult life, therapy’s expensive etc.
18. both cannibalism and incest (presupposing these would shut it up) just can’t occur

* Sometimes even the strange blowhard patois of the psychoanalytic theorist is best left unsummarized.

• ← Where can one discreetly enjoy a nice, tightly rolled news story with a pleasing liberal bias?
• The boy’s ‘not a buddhist but admires strangeness’ →