Discussion: Emotional-Social Factors
paper merit discussion. Of particular interest are his comments about ways in which the infant's unique temperamental characteristics influence the nature and quality of the mother-child relationship and help to enhance or inhibit the mother's ability to meet her baby's needs. Over the years, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the assumption, prevalent in our society, that the parent is the origin of the child's troubles. This notion imposes an unwieldy and unreasonable burden of blame on parents. It also places real obstacles in the way of finding the means by which parents can be helped to understand their children more fully and function as parents more effectively. The interrelationship and interdependence of mother and child, mothering style, infant disposition, learning behavior, and school functioning are being studied by a number of investigators using a variety of approaches. Annaliese Korner (1964) is among those engaged in exploring ways in which the infant determines his mother's responses to him, as well as the impact of differences in mothering on the child's development. She has noted that differences in disposition and temperament can be identified among newborn infants and found that a mother may be hampered in her efforts to read her baby's needs if he is unpredictable and gives indistinct cues leading to distortions in communication between mother and infant. This has particular relevance i f we accept the hypothesis that since learning problems in children are frequently centered around means of communication, i.e., learning to read and to write, many of these difficulties may have their origins in early disDiscussion: Emotiona'-Socia' Factors LONlS LIVERMAN, M.S.W. University of California, Los Angeles