Infant survival and the development of secure and cooperative relationships are central to the future of the species. In humans, this relies heavily on the evolving early parent-infant social and affective relationship. While much is known about the behavioural and psychological components of this relationship, relatively little is known about ...

AIM: The aim of this study was to evaluate possible relationship between infant-parent(s) bed sharing during night sleep and sleep characteristics in two-month-old infants. METHODS: One hundred and twelve healthy infants from the community setting (48 males, 64 females) who were singletons born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2007, at ...

Individual variation in infant caretaking behavior is prevalent among marmoset and tamarin monkeys. Although most group members participate in infant care, the timing and amount provided differs greatly. In this study, we quantified general trends in infant carrying behavior by using a longitudinal database that included 11 years of instantaneous ...

BACKGROUND: Parental anxiety and stress may have consequences for infant neurological development. AIMS: To study relationships between parental anxiety or well-being and infant neurological development approximately one year after birth. STUDY DESIGN: Longitudinal study of a birth cohort of infants born to subfertile couples. Subjects: 206 parent-child dyads. OUTCOME MEASURES: ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether children between 12 and 25 months of age learn words from an infant-directed DVD designed for that purpose. DESIGN: Half of the children received a DVD to watch in their home over the course of 6 weeks. SETTING: All participants returned to a laboratory for testing ...

BACKGROUND: While the burden of rotavirus infection with regard to hospitalizations has been extensively investigated, there are sparse data on the cost and impact of this infection on the ambulatory part of the health system in Israel. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the burden of rotavirus infection on the ambulatory system in ...

Before the delivery of a premature infant, a prenatal consultation between parents and physicians provides the opportunity to establish a trusting relationship and create a supportive environment for decision-making concerning neonatal resuscitation. The ideal consult enables physicians to educate parents about preterm delivery and potential outcomes for their infant while ...

We determined whether the combination of the 48-bp variable number tandem repeat polymorphism of the dopamine (DRD4) gene and infants' (fussy-difficult) temperament predicted parenting sensitivity. The sample was comprised of 147 mothers and their 6-month olds. Sensitive parenting was assessed by coding filmed interactions between mothers and infants. Infant temperament ...

Animal studies have demonstrated that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) plays a critical role in processes of parent-infant bonding through mechanisms of early parental care, particularly maternal grooming and contact. Yet, the involvement of OT in human parenting remains poorly understood, no data are available on the role of OT in ...

Nordhov, S. M., Kaaresen, P. I., Rønning, J. A., Ulvund, S. E. & Dahl, L. B. (2010). A randomized study of the impact of a sensitizing intervention on the child-rearing attitudes of parents of low birth weight preterm infants. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The background for this study was that ...

This study examined the contributions of infant temperament, marital functioning, and the division of parenting on the quality of the coparenting relationship for couples parenting 6-month-old infants. Marital functioning was assessed prenatally. When infants were 6 months old, infant temperamental characteristics (i.e., distress to limits, distress to novelty, and soothability), ...

We examined dynamic infant-parent affect coupling using the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF). The sample included 20 infants whose older siblings had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD-sibs) and 18 infants with comparison siblings (COMP-sibs). A series of mixed effects bivariate autoregressive models was used to represent the self-regulation and interactive dynamics ...

The pattern of 6- and 18-month-old infants' and their parents' attention to toys, a commercially available infant-directed video, and each other were examined in a 20 min free-play context as a function of whether the television was on or off. The results indicated that infants at both ages directed significantly ...

To further the understanding of the effects of early experiences, 9-month-old infants were observed during a frustration task. The analytical sample was composed of 348 linked triads of participants (adoptive parents, adopted child, and birth parent[s]) from a prospective adoption study. It was hypothesized that genetic risk for externalizing problems ...

BACKGROUND: Australia's public access residential early parenting services provide programs to assist parents who self-refer, to care for their infants and young children. Treatment programs target infant feeding and sleeping difficulties and maternal mental health. There is limited systematic evidence of maternal and infant mental health, psychosocial circumstances or presenting ...

This study investigated a novel approach to obtaining data on parent and infant emotion during the Face-to-Face/Still-Face paradigm, and examined these data in light of previous findings regarding early autism risk. One-hundred and eighty eight non-expert students rated 38 parents and infant siblings of children who did (20) or did ...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate an infant oral health education programme, using a pre-post test design, for parents attending a paediatric clinic. METHODS: The subjects were parents attending the well baby appointments at 3, 6, and 9 months of age. The study participants were men and ...

BACKGROUND: Many learning needs arise in the early postpartum period, and it is important to examine interventions used to educate new parents about caring for their newborns during this time. OBJECTIVES: The primary objective was to assess the effects of structured postnatal education delivered by an educator to an individual ...

A number of risk factors are associated with the development of childhood obesity which can be identified during infancy. These include infant feeding practices, parental response to infant temperament and parental perception of infant growth and appetite. Parental beliefs and understanding are crucial determinants of infant feeding behaviour; therefore any ...

Parent conflict during infancy may affect rapidly developing physiological regulation. To examine the association between parent conflict and infants' vagal tone functioning, mothers (N = 48) reported levels of parent conflict and their 6-month-old male and female infants' respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was measured in the still-face paradigm. Higher parent ...

Parental responsiveness to infant vocalizations is an essential mechanism to ensure parental care, and its importance is reflected in a specific neural substrate, the thalamocingulate circuit, which evolved through mammalian evolution subserving this responsiveness. Recent studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) provide compelling evidence for a comparable mechanism in ...

Infants enter the world prepared to learn about their environments and to become effective social partners, while most parents are equally prepared to support these early emergent skills. Through subtle, non-conscious behaviors, parents guide their infants in the regulation of emotions, language acquisition, and participation in social exchanges. For example, ...

Night awakenings are a normative part of early development. In the first year, night awakenings are associated with birth order, feeding route, sleep aid use, sleep location, infant temperament and development, infant-parent attachment, family socioeconomics, and cultural norms. In the second year, additional factors build on these foundational features, including ...

For parents anxious "lest their children should be left-handed", the American author Mary Palmer Tyler offered advice and reassurance in her 1811 child-care manual The Maternal Physician. This article provides a brief biography of Tyler and the text of her remarks, along with notes on the text and the author's ...

A 10-year experience with a unique, short-term community group therapy program, Parent and Infant Relationship Support (PAIRS) for high risk infants and their parents is discussed. The program offers ten, 2-hour closed weekly group therapy sessions for mothers and their babies, following a parallel conjoint model of group work. The ...

The Vulnerable Infants Program of Rhode Island is a care coordination program to promote permanency for substance-exposed infants by addressing parental needs and increasing collaboration among social service agencies. Over the first four years of the program, there was a decrease in time spent in the newborn nursery beyond medical ...

Dysregulation of diurnal cortisol secretion patterns may explain the link between adversities early in life and later mental health problems. However, few studies have investigated the influence of social disadvantage and family adversity on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis early in life. In 366 infants aged 12-20 months from the Generation ...

The present research examined parental beliefs about the importance of the paternal caregiving role, mothers' and fathers' reports of infant temperament, and observed marital quality as predictors of infant-mother and infant-father attachment security, over and above the effects of parental sensitivity. Infants' attachment security to mothers and fathers were observed ...

OBJECTIVE: Introduction of solid foods before the recommended age of 4-6 months is a common practice in the USA, and appears to be especially prevalent among infants who are enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Currently, little is known about how fathers influence ...

Iodine overload frequently leads to transient hyperthyrotropinemia or hypothyroidism, and rarely to hyperthyroidism in neonates. Iodine exposure can be prenatal, perinatal or postnatal. Herein we report two newborn infants who developed severe hypothyroidism due to iodine overload. The overloading was caused by excessive use of an iodinated antiseptic for umbilical ...

Parent-infant emotional expressions vary according to parent and infant gender. Such parent-infant interactions critically affect infant development. Neuroimaging research is exploring emotion-related brain function that varies according to gender, and regulates parenting thoughts and behaviors in the early postpartum. Through specific brain functions, parenting serves to program the infant brain ...

The expansion of newborn screening (NBS) is increasing the generation of incidental results, notably carrier results. Although carrier status is generally understood to be clinically benign, concerns persist that parents may misunderstand its meaning, with deleterious effects on children and their families. Expansion of the NBS panel in Ontario, Canada ...

OBJECTIVES: To determine the efficacy of a neonatal parenting intervention for improving development in very preterm infants. STUDY DESIGN: A cluster-randomized, controlled trial with a cross-over design and washout period was conducted in 6 neonatal centers. Two hundred thirty-three babies <32 weeks' gestation were recruited (intervention = 112; control = ...

Staff may be reluctant to discuss end of life decisions in chronic lung disease (CLD) as it is usual for the disease to take a prolonged course and most infants recover to be discharged home without supplemental oxygen. A minority suffer a protracted and very severe illness in spite of ...

Early adverse caregiving experiences constitute an important risk factor for the development of disorganized attachment in infancy, especially extreme insensitivity and frightening behavior associated with an unresolved loss or trauma. Using existing measures for frightening parenting and disrupted communication, we developed a new measure assessing Disconnected and extremely Insensitive Parenting ...

Evolutionary parental investment theory predicts that parents invest preferentially in offspring best able to translate investments into fitness payoffs. It has also been proposed that where the reproductive prospects of offspring are directly correlated with parental investment and variance in fertility is higher for males than females, parents in better ...

Prolactin has been implicated in promoting paternal care behaviors but little evidence of causality has been found to date except for birds and fish. This study was designed to examine the possible causal relationships between prolactin and male parenting behaviors, reproductive hormones, and physical changes in cooperatively breeding common marmosets, ...

To characterize inheritance of homozygous, rare, recessive loss-of-function mutations in surfactant protein-B (SFTPB) or ATP binding cassette, subfamily A, member 3 (ABCA3) genes in newborns with lethal respiratory failure. We resequenced genes from parents whose infants were homozygous for mutations in SFTPB or ABCA3. For infants with only 1 heterozygous ...

Infant sleep undergoes dramatic evolution during the first year of life. This process is driven by underlying biological forces but is highly dependent on environmental cues including parental influences. In this review the links between infant sleep and parental behaviors, cognitions, emotions and relationships as well as psychopathology are examined ...

It is proposed that in the early neonatal period there are moments of meeting between parent and infant, such as mutual gaze, in which parents realize that their baby is a true interlocutor with meaningful behavior who is ready to engage in interactions. These events significantly strengthen the attachment and ...

This article reviews the stresses for parents, infants, and other caregivers during the period surrounding the birth of the premature infant. Principles of assessment of infant discomfort, parental stress, the parent-infant relationship, and the match of the medical caregiving environment to the individual infant's needs are discussed. Relevant tools to ...

The experiences of 9 fathers of premature infants in the technological environment of the neonatal intensive care unit were examined using interpretive methods. Fathers were interviewed 6 to 8 times each. Findings revealed emotional costs for fathers as technology often took precedence. Fathers' feelings of frustration, fear, and alienation were ...

Drug addiction is a serious issue in today's society. Women are giving birth to infants who are born addicted to illicit drugs, and these mothers are not able to care for their infants safely and competently without training and support. This article examines the prevalence of the problem. It also ...

BACKGROUND: Hereditary and environmental factors contribute to the occurrence of atopic dermatitis (AD). However, the interaction of these two factors is not totally understood. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the early risk factors for infantile AD at the age of 6 months and to develop a predictive model for the development of ...

We test whether infants living with employed, co-resident parents where at least one parent works a non-standard work shift exhibit significantly more behavior problems than children whose parents both work traditional day shifts. We use a sample of infants living with employed, co-resident parents and two waves of data from ...

BACKGROUND: Parent-infant bed-sharing is a common practice in Western post-industrial nations with up to 50% of infants sleeping with their parents at some point during early infancy. However, researchers have claimed that infants may be at risk of suffocation or sudden infant death syndrome related to airway covering or compression ...

There are several steps you can take. Monitor the growth of exclusively breastfed babies by plotting routine weights and lengths on the World Health Organization (WHO) growth curve. Reassure parents that higher-than-normal weight gain in infants who are breastfeeding easily without supplementation has no known adverse effects. Advise parents to ...

Research findings reported in the literature about making life and death decisions for critically ill infants in the neonatal ICU focus primarily on the experiences of health care providers and the ethical dilemmas surrounding these decisions. Fewer studies focus on parents' experiences in making decisions about discontinuing life support for ...

OBJECTIVES: To assess (1) the differences in attitudes toward disabilities of 3 groups of subjects involved in neonatal care decision-making: health care workers, mothers of term infants, and parents of preterm infants, and (2) the impact of subject characteristics on these attitudes including parental education level, religion, and severity of ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine inter-relationships among stress due to infant appearance and behavior in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), parental role alteration stress in the NICU, depressive symptoms, state anxiety, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and daily hassles exhibited by African-American mothers of preterm infants and to determine whether there were subgroups ...