Kowakare: a new perspective on the development of early mother-offspring relationship

Abstract

The mother-offspring relationship has components of both positivity and negativity. Kowakare is a new concept introduced to explain an adaptive function of the negativity in the early mother-offspring relationship. Kowakare is the psycho-somatic development of the relationship as the process of accumulation in the otherness of offspring. Early human Kowakare has two frameworks, biological inter-body antagonism and socio-cultural allomothering compensating the antagonism. Some features of feeding/weaning, parental aversion to offspring's bodily products, and transition from dyad to triad relationship (proto-triad relationship) in tactile play are discussed. Early human Kowakare is promoted by allomothering with the nested systems of objects/persons/institutions as interfaces between mother and offspring. Kowakare makes mother-offspring relationship a mutually autonomous and cooperative companionship.

Fig. 1

Principal component analysis of primate mother–offspring relationships (from Neayama 1996)

Fig. 2

Mother and objects/persons/institutions as primary and secondary interfaces between environment and offspring. Arrows indicate flows of resources (from Negayama 2006)

Fig. 3

‘Dan-nyu’ by Oketani method. The child is not allowed to suckle any more after the mother typically draws a cartoon face on her breast (from Negayama 2006)

Fig. 4

Two dimensional representation of maternal behaviors and Zone of Kowakare. (from Negayama 2006)

Fig. 5

Schematic representation summarizing discussion of human early Kowakare. Examples are italicized in parentheses