A Child's Second Birth

At 18 months, Baby knows Mother is separate

Some of life's greatest turmoil is over by the age of three. Though infancy may seem to be a time of games and gurgling, the baby is caught up in earnest and sometimes desperate attempts to make sense of the world, control aggression, and come to terms with the awesome power of parents. In a remarkable new book, Oneness and Separateness, Psychologist Louise Kaplan, 48, offers a baby's-eye view of the child's struggle to become an individual. Behind that struggle, says Kaplan, are opposing needs of the child--to cling to mother and to strike out on its own. The child's solution to the dilemma will powerfully affect its adult attitudes toward love, initiative and trust.

Kaplan is director of child clinical services at the City University of New York. In her book, she draws on both her own studies of children and the work of other researchers, chiefly Psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler, who describes the child's efforts to establish its own identity as "a second birth" or "psychological birth" that occurs around the age of 18 months. In the first four months of life, says Kaplan, the baby is merged with the mother in "the bliss of unconditional love" that later becomes the model for adult conceptions of ecstasy and perfect union.

Starting at five months, as the baby becomes alert and exploratory, the merger begins to break down. The baby's growing independence is tinged with uncertainty and loss. "Peekaboo" is a serious game; the baby toys with separateness without fearing that he or she will be abandoned. In "Catch Me," a separation game found in many cultures, the child creeps quickly away, looking back over its shoulder to make sure the mother is in pursuit. The child both wants to be caught and wants to escape.

Until the age of ten months, the baby's world is in fragments. It is still not sure where its body begins and ends and does not fully realize that the mother is a separate individual. Outbursts of rage, sometimes violent ones centering on feeding, rise from this stress, Kaplan says; they result from "a vague wish to make life whole again." A parent who responds with rage just reinforces the fear of fragmentation. What the child needs, says Kaplan, is a "calming yes-saying voice," conveying assurance that its aggressive urges are not dangerous.

From ten to 15 months, the child is a high-spirited conquering hero, exploring and manipulating the physical world. It is also the period, Kaplan notes, when mothers damage daughters out of a mistaken notion that girls are more fragile than boys. If a girl is encouraged to cling, she says, "the being-done-to element in her personality isn't sufficiently balanced by the sense of mastery and active doing-to." When the mother goes out, the child is almost always depressed, but baby sitters should avoid trying to cheer the child up or distract it with a game. The reason: the child is learning how to manage loss. Advises Kaplan: "Accept the child's sadness. It's part of life."

The emergence of the child's thinking mind, at around 15 months, brings wrenching change. The static world of symbols, images and concepts replaces the world of simple motion and action--the child can no longer simply flow through life. Children will begin to play the role of mother with their dolls, a sign of their dawning awareness that the mother is separate. The child's central idea is that it is not a conqueror after all, but a small and vulnerable self. Instead of wooing the mother, the child makes more and more coercive demands that she act as an extension of itself. As the child moves toward psychological birth, and the first use of the word "I," the mother's role becomes even more frustrating. If she gives in to the coercion, she undermines the child's independence. If she does not, she enforces its sense of aloneness. Kaplan's message: "The drama has no happy solutions. It is well nigh impossible for a mother to satisfy a toddler in the throes of the complex dilemmas of second birth."

The author recommends that parents react tolerantly to the child's willfulness and compulsive no-saying at this stage. Parents should resist some demands, give in to others. A child who wins too often emerges "with an overly extended, overly grand notion of its power." But a child who loses too many battles "emerges from its second birth with a pervasive sense of humiliation and self-doubt." If so, it will develop into a compliant child whose protest may emerge late as bedwetting, foolish behavior or theft.

The child's resolution of the oneness-separateness conflict between the ages of 18 and 36 months, says Kaplan, will shape, but not determine, the adult it will become. "To the extent that a child is trapped in imperfect reconciliation at the age of three, it will be more difficult for it to take advantage of what life offers later on, but it won't be impossible."

The father's role in a toddler's life is important but subsidiary. He must make certain that the psychic separation of mother and child actually takes place. Mother and the baby "play dangerously on the brink of not being able to separate," and without an active father, the baby may grow up to be a dependent, adult-sized infant. But, says Kaplan, "mother is the one partner with whom the baby plays out the separation drama."

Does this mean that day care is damaging to a young child? "In an ideal world," she says, "the mother would stay at home until the child was 2 1/2. But I don't want working mothers to be overcome with guilt." Her advice to mothers: stay home until the baby is six months old, then, if necessary, work only part time until the child is 2 1/2.

Through the book, one message predominates: there is no one right way or wrong way to rear a baby. Much of the child's moodiness and aggression is the result of ordinary development, so parents should not feel guilty if things seem to go badly for a time. "The strivings to become an individual are built into the baby," says Kaplan. "Just become attuned to them --that's about all you need to do."

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