"THE ORDINARY DEVOTED MOTHER AND HER BABY" WAS THE TITLE of a series of talks broadcast in 1949, by D. W. Winnicott. Its implication, that ordinary mothers are, for the most part, devoted placed a welcome stress on the positive factors in mothering at a time when professional workers, in their attempts to understand early handling problems, had perhaps become too preoccupied with the negative factors. However, when the baby is blind, "ordinary devotion" in the mother is often not assumed to be probable or perhaps even possible, and the mother is frequently blamed for things that go wrong with the child's development. Yet, the majority of mothers of blind children also become devoted, especially when they are given some degree of support and insight during the vicissitudes of the child's development. For the mothers of sighted children, such support and insight are more easily available.

This paper is based on work with the mothers of blind children, mainly under 3 years of age, during visits to and observations