ABSTRACT
A book about fathers is necessarily also about the mothers of their children. Mothers have a major influence on the father’s relationship with their baby. They may facilitate, partner or gatekeep their relationship. Baradon discusses different factors that shape a mother’s emotional and behavioural expressions of her internal representations of him (the father in the mother’s mind): her representations of the couple dynamics – how she views her partner as a man and how she sees herself reflected in his eyes; her management of her maternal ambivalence towards the father – which Baradon links with maintaining a basic capacity to mentalise about their partner even while struggling deeply with their own anxieties; and a solid internal representation of a functioning triad.
