“DADDY HAS NO MILK!” NOTES ON PATERNAL HOLDING DURING ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCEConsidering the emergent claim towards father involvement in daily care during the absolute dependence, this paper aimed to analyze the possibility of paternal holding in the immediate care offered to a baby. Therefore, a case study, based on observations of father-baby interactions during the child’s first three months of life and two interviews with the father before and after the child birth, was developed and is presented. The content analysis provided support for a psychoanalytic and psychosocial discussion on the potentiality of paternal holding to introduce in the baby’s subjectivity Elements of Diversity: sensory and perceptual, psycho-affective and spatio-temporal. Results show that: it is possible an amplification of the constitutive aspects on holding regarding the immediate care offered to a baby by its father; Winnicott’s theory on holding must be adapted and made more flexible regarding the relational dynamics of contemporary families and the father must be legitimized as a caregiver during pregnancy and puerperium.
Keywords:
Father-child relations; psychoanalytic theory; Winnicott