Babies in Groups

Front matter

OXFORD

Expanding Imaginations

Ben 5. Bradley, Jane Selby & Matthew Stapleton

Preface

We celebrate babies—their creativity, generosity, and the pleasure they give us. We aim to convey the excitement of being in contact with their wonder and joy. The prism we develop forefronts groups evolving and working. Like us, babies need people. And, lifelong, they will live and learn as group members, both at home and in class, at work or at play, in their prayers, and in their imaginations, plus in all the places where we link to others in the forging and re-forging of our identities and actions, through scholarship, employment, entertainment, art, and meditation.

As we develop our ideas about the broad implications of babies’ capacities for participation in groups, we find ourselves at odds with the entrenchment of conventions, in policy, practice, and thought, which idealize a one-to-one ‘attachment’ between baby and mother as a universal source of child and adult well-being. Exalted claims are made for this vision. And yet our research and our practice, both laboratory-based and in early education centres—not to mention ordinary observations in playgrounds and living-rooms—daily prove babies act in ways which are multiple in nature and which an attachment perspective does not countenance. Hence the need to examine the ‘clan infant’ to open up imaginative space for shifting ideas about ourselves and our very young. We hope our sketch of this more spacious human world will give pleasure to the reader.

Readers wishing to view videos referenced in this book—or who wish to read about new findings and discussions arising out of the work discussed in this book should visit babiesingroups.com.

Between the three of us we have decades of inspired input from those around us, academic, professional, personal. Intellectually and politically, Denise Riley’s work stands as representative of one tradition to which we would like to think this book belongs. In 1978, Denise advocated the construction of what she called an adequately socialized biology—a biology which was not limited to research on hormones and infant-mother interaction, but also encompassed the societal roots of such research and of the experiences common to mothers in contemporary Britain.!

We want to express gratitude to those who have helped us in our work. In particular, we thank the babies studied, their parents for permitting their viii Preface children’s participation, and the educators who agreed to help us with our research. We also thank Jennifer Sumsion, who spear-headed the grant which first introduced Jane and Ben to Matt. Valerie Sinason and Joan Raphael-Leff helped seed the idea of the book by inviting Ben and Jane to present their work to the lively Zoom-group of analytic clinicians based at the Academic Faculty for Psychoanalytic Research, Anna Freud Centre, London, in October 2020. Thanks too to James Cook University, Mark Morrison of Charles Sturt University, the Australian Research Council, and the British Academy for funding. Last but not least, we thank the Tavistock Centre for providing space and support for our British Academy-funded research via the agency and participation of the much-missed Cathy Urwin.

More personally, Ben and Jane acknowledge their Cape community, the Rossato family (four generations, especially Guilio, Marisa, and Anthony), John and Karen Rennie (and Brandy the dog) and Mark Comollatti, with parents Joy and Bryan—you have all helped to create this best of work environments. Thank you.