ABSTRACT
The aim of this book is to improve the services that are designed to care for pre-term and other sick babies and their families. In particular, we focus on the relationship of parent 1 and child, its potential vulnerability and the ways in which it may be fostered and supported. Our concern is both with the elimination of medical practices and hospital routines that may distort or inhibit the initial phases of parental relationships and with the development of procedures that may positively encourage their growth and provide good experiences for mother, father and other family members. To have any chance of success, a programme designed to support parenthood must be based on a clear understanding of the nature of relationships between parents and children, their growth and development and the factors that may damage or enhance them. To claim that we have such a·full understanding would be overoptimistic, if not a little arrogant. But I believe that some of the broad principles are reasonably clear and it will be these that I shall describe in this chapter.
