What do babies know? An exploration of the experience of Bangladeshi mothers and their infants

Abstract

This chapter presents a selective account of a research journey that takes into the lived experience of a group of Bangladeshi parents, mostly mothers, reflecting on their beliefs about what they know about their babies, including in utero, and young children. It describes the setting for the research, which took place in selected Children’s Centres in the East London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and the rationale behind this. The chapter focuses on the value that the psychoanalytic perspective and receptive practice of child psychotherapists can bring to the research process and the research community. The research took place in the north-eastern part of Tower Hamlets, where the community was predominantly Bangladeshi, mostly originating from the rural Sylhet region. The research method involved six focus groups and three individual semi-structured interviews to generate the data. Each group took place in a Children’s Centre; the interviews took place in the women’s home, and all were tape-recorded.