Good enough parent

Good enough parent is a concept deriving from the work of Donald Winnicott, in his efforts to provide support for what he called "the sound instincts of normal parents...stable and healthy families".^[1]

An extension of his championship of the "ordinary good mother...the devoted mother",^[2] the idea of the good enough parent was designed on the one hand to defend the ordinary mother and father against what Winnicott saw as the growing threat of intrusion into the family from professional expertise; and on the other to offset the dangers of idealisation built into Kleinian articulations of the 'good object' and 'good mother',^[3] by stressing instead the actual nurturing environment provided by the parents for the child.^[4]