ABSTRACT
A. Bharucha in her discussion of mothering in an Indian family described a shared attunement to the baby’s needs in a group context. Western attachment theory suggests that an infant’s psychic health is determined by the quality of attachment with the primary care giver, usually the mother. With the possible opposing views of Eastern and Western models about the necessary conditions for infant mental health, it was important that neither one nor the other was considered right or wrong. Donald Winnicott described the infant’s capacity for “experiencing unintegrated states, as dependent on the continuation of reliable maternal care or the build up in the infant of memories of maternal care”. S. M. Kurtz described how the Indian child is shared by the women of an extended family, which emphasises group communion rather than primary attachment. He viewed the infant’s attachment and identification with the whole group to be the necessary developmental pathway for maturation.
