‘She doesn't want to look at me’ – Mother–infant observation as a bridge between clinical practice and research

Abstract

Developing a research project on the interaction between babies and their depressed mothers in a mother–infant psychiatric ward, I sought to find a good instrument with both clinical relevance and reliability as a research tool. The emotional availability scales, based on a video-taped free play observation, offered an opportunity to carry out observation from a therapeutic, containing position and to take a look at the parent–infant interaction in a research-minded way. Although participation in the research study involved just one single observation, I was struck by the impact the study had on the participating mothers. I found that their thinking developed in three separate stages. First, mothers were unsure of what it meant to play with their children as parents; second, they were doubtful about whether they wanted to watch themselves playing; and finally, they began questioning whether they could become a ‘partner in play’ to their babies. I was struck by how profound maternal feelings and thoughts are very ‘easy to reach’, even after only a single observation within a research frame, and I would like to stress the importance of the ‘dramatization’ of experience in early parent–infant play.