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This book is an intimate exploration of parental thoughts and fantasies surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. The author describes this process as providing an 'emotional placenta' through which the unborn child is embedded in the parents' inner worlds. The reader has the opportunity to discover the emotional permeability and vulnerability of the pregnant woman through rich verbatim accounts of their contacts with the author. These accounts bring an authenticity to Raphael-Leff's observations and models, which are drawn from discussion groups and workshops held in different parts of the world as well as her clinical practice in London. She is aware that she could be challenged in some quarters for methodological flaws in terms of sampling, which is biased towards middle-class, white and Western paticipants, however, her social-psychologist roots are evident in her efforts to include material from other cultural sources and to avoid sweeping statements that could be culturally determined.
While some of the ideas in this book are familiar from the author's previous work, there are some important developments which should be noted. In particular, her model of common styles of response to pregnancy and parenthood, which was originally conceived of as being a continuum between two points—Regulators and Facilitators—has been enlarged. An intermediary group is now identified, which the author calls Reciprocators. This group of expectant mothers are more reality-based than the Facilitators while still being able to engage in a 'give-and-take' relationship with their child, who is experienced as a separate individual from pregnancy. The relationship that develops between them, in utero as well as in infancy, is one of negotiation, in which ambivalence is tolerated and used as a creative tension in the relationship, promoting emotional growth in mother and baby and indicating flexibility in her approach to parenting.
The categorising of different approaches to parenthoo