Single-parent and co-parenting families are just as valid and important as those living within conventional familial norms. Their capacity to love is not reduced, nor is their ability to provide present, attentive and loving parenting. Bowlby’s theory of attachment carries the same weight and power in these families and is, in many cases, even more applicable.

The past year has been challenging for everyone. It has been particularly difficult for expectant mothers and families with babies and young children. The Prime Minister wants to build back better after the pandemic and two recent announcements may provide an opportunity to do this for the under threes and their families.

‘If I had known, back then, what you can now read on the research pages of What About The Children? website, – that boys’ brains are slower to develop and are more sensitive to stress, particularly in the three periods of testosterone surges (All our Sons by Allan N. Schore, 2017), I would have waited just a little longer before I changed my son’s daily pattern of life. If these research findings had been available when my son was small, I would have begged, scrimped and saved rather than have gone back to work so soon’

Winnicott’s most famous legacy is his invention of the phrase, ‘a good enough mother’, which has sometimes been interpreted as an apology for inadequate parenting. Not a bit of it, says Winnicott. All mothers need to fail sometimes, to create a resilient child who can withstand ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, to quote Shakespeare.

Zoom is wonderful and has been a blessing to families and friends, but it is not the same as putting your arms around a child or giving your mother a hug.

Since the late 1980s, Motherlove has morphed into the monetary paid-for transaction of ‘Childcare’. Focused time, energy and commitment to the needs of the very young are now, it seems, commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace.