OMNIPOTENCE IN CHILD PROTECTION: MAKING ROOM FOR AMBIVALENCE

Abstract

This paper examines how the mandate to detect and prevent child abuse in child protection systems in North America distorts relationships between social workers and the mothers they work with. Drawing on psychoanalytic ideas from Melanie Klein, I will suggest this premise is unworkable and results in an anxious and punitive organization that fails both workers and clients. While social workers might wish for the omnipotent capacity to keep children from harm, we need to give up this premise if we are to create more realistic and positive relations with families involved with child protection services. Just as social workers must accept their limited capacities in working with families, so mothers must abandon the idea of omnipotent perfection if ordinary good enough mothering is to be achieved. Acknowledging and tolerating maternal ambivalence in child protection practice, while difficult, can help to alleviate unmanageable anxiety for both mothers and workers. Appropriate therapeutic pessimism has the potential to minimize mother‐blame and maternal guilt, promote more in‐depth assessment of maternal capacities, and problematize conditions for mothering and other care‐giving work.

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