ABSTRACT
This chapter is a selective account of a research journey that takes us into the lived experience of a group of Bangladeshi parents, mostly mothers, reflecting on their beliefs about what they know about their babies, including in utero, and young children. The research project was entitled “Crossing the Threshold: An inquiry into the lived experience of Bangladeshi parents with young children; their worries and sources of support”. I describe the setting for the research, which took place in selected Children’s Centres in the East London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and the rationale behind this. I intend to show how the use of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), underpinned by a psychoanalytic conceptual framework, enabled me to access the “lifeworld” of the participants (Smith & Osborn, 2008, p. 53), generating a wealth of rich data, showing the reflexive interplay between the data and the analysis of it and some unexpected findings. I then move on to identifying two of the key findings from the research, the first being the shared beliefs among the mothers about infancy and mothering, and the second about the interesting parallels between their beliefs and the understanding derived from research, notably that by Maiello (1995), Piontelli (1992), and Raphael-Leff (2003). I conclude by reflecting on the value that the psychoanalytic perspective and receptive practice of child psychotherapists can bring to the research process and the research community.
