Artisanal Parenting

or intuition proofing your life: it has come to my attention that many super privileged parents have devoted themselves to "artisanal parenting." Previously on the blog, I have complained about a system of "infant education" very fashionable among the well capitalized, anxious new parent set. Involved with this form of parenting is asking a preverbal infant if it is all right "if I pick you up." While it seems that these parents believe in infant choice or individual self-possession from the moment of birth, or least trust fund inception, they are actually transmitting the deepest form of anxiety possible - in the face of infant anxiety. I just heard Dr. James Grotstein speak yesterday: I wonder what this eminent Kleinian would say about this grown up fantasy about infant choice.

His thesis has to do with infantile anxiety as a condition of the transferential relationship - and talks about the immobilization of the infant in the crib as vital to understanding the analytical relationship. To pretend to give an infant a choice about being picked up when she/he is negotiating with paranoid/schizoid levels of anxiety seems a perverse at best, but is based upon a fantasy of the "perfect parent" whose respect for the child is infinite and infinitely oppressive. Compare this with the eminently pragmatic, but theoretically rigorous notion of the "good enough mother." Basically, what these rich, white parents are saying is, "the good enough mother is NOT good enough for junior" who will go on to assert his infantile needs as a form of "self-esteem" in a terrifying and perhaps even repellent manner.