Rich interpretations of infant behaviour are popular, but are they valid? A reply to Scott and Baillargeon

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 665-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Heyes
Keyword(s):  
Infant Behaviour

Rates of Depressive and Anxiety Disorders in a Residential Mother–Infant Unit for Unsettled Infants

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 836-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Phillips ◽  
Louise Sharpe ◽  
Stephen Matthey
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Major Depression ◽  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Psychiatric Morbidity ◽  
Depression Scale ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Not Otherwise Specified ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Current ◽  
Infant Behaviour

Objective: Depression and anxiety are known to be common among women presenting to residential mother–infant programmes for unsettled infant behaviour but most studies have used self-report measures of psychological symptomatology rather than diagnostic interviews to determine psychiatric diagnoses. The aim of the present study was to determine rates of depressive and anxiety disorders and rates of comorbidity among clients of the Karitane residential mother–infant programme for unsettled infant behaviour. Method: One hundred and sixty women with infants aged 2 weeks–12 months completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and were interviewed for current and lifetime history of depressive and anxiety disorders using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV diagnosis (Research version). Results: A total of 25.1% of the sample met criteria for a current diagnosis of major depression, 31.7% had met criteria for major depression since the start of the pregnancy, and 30.5% of clients met criteria for a current anxiety disorder. Of note were the 21.6% who met criteria for generalized anxiety disorder or anxiety disorder not otherwise specified (worry confined to the topics of the baby or being a mother). High levels of comorbidity were confirmed in the finding that 60.8% of those with an anxiety disorder had experienced major or minor depression since the start of their pregnancy and 46.3% of those who had experienced depression since the start of their pregnancy also met criteria for a current anxiety disorder. Conclusions: There are high levels of psychiatric morbidity among clients attending residential mother–infant units for unsettled infant behaviour, highlighting the importance of providing multifaceted interventions in order to address both infant and maternal psychological issues.

‘A very Moloch of a baby’

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-106
Author(s):  
Tamara S. Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Rescue Work ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
Our Mutual Friend ◽  
Infant Behaviour

Dickens’s portrayal of babyhood comprises comical creations as well as complex symbols and infants as victims of social injustice, yet, especially his funny babies are often overlooked. The first chapter explores how Dickens satirizes the growing commodification of babyhood in Victorian Britain and, in playing with readers’ expectations, produces comical scenes that strengthen rather than undercut his social criticism. His exposure of failed middle-class projects of child rescue urges his readers to reconsider prevailing ideas of charitable intervention, while he uses comically exaggerated infant behaviour to render working-class practices of child care mundane and familiar without sentimentalizing them. His representation of working-class baby-minding, a practice that Victorian philanthropists notoriously misunderstood, exemplifies how Dickens could combine comedy and social criticism to draw attention to topical issues, upend clichés, and at the same time create individualized infant characters. His Christmas book for 1848, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, produces a grotesquely comical image of a baby, minded by a small boy, as ‘Moloch’, a deity demanding child sacrifice. While Baby Moloch becomes central to a reassessment of emotional attachment, the narrative complicates middle-class rescue work. The simultaneity of the comical baby and infants as symbols of suffering is then further developed in Bleak House (1853), whereas in Our Mutual Friend (1865), the failed rescue of an orphaned toddler dramatizes pressing issues involving paid child-minding and unregulated adoption. The analysis of Dickens’s fictional infants simultaneously reveals the different narrative roles of the comical baby in Victorian literature.

Early Post-Partum Contact and Later Attitudes

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter de Chateau
Keyword(s):  
Post Partum ◽  
Postnatal Period ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Maternal Behaviour ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Infant Behaviour

In a randomized, prospective study the long-term effects of early post-partum skin-toskin and suckling contact was studied. In follow-up studies 36 hours, 3 and 12 months after delivery maternal behaviour, infant behaviour, the duration of breast feeding and certain attitudes towards child rearing procedures were shown to develop differently in a group of mothers and infants with early post-natal contacts as compared to a control group. Three years after delivery parents with early contact appreciated their children's language development to be faster; the number of siblings born in these families was greater than in controls. In the discussion, the relative importance of the immediate postnatal period is emphasized, a more family oriented development seems to occur in the presence of early post-delivery interaction.

scholarly journals The Effects of Maternal Mirroring on the Development of Infant Social Expressiveness: The Case of Infant Cleft Lip

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Murray ◽  
Laura Bozicevic ◽  
Pier Francesco Ferrari ◽  
Kyla Vaillancourt ◽  
Louise Dalton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cleft Lip ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Clinical Intervention ◽  
Clinical Samples ◽  
Neuron System ◽  
Self Blame ◽  
Intuitive Parenting ◽  
Infant Behaviour

Parent-infant social interactions start early in development, with infants showing active communicative expressions by just two months. A key question is how this social capacity develops. Maternal mirroring of infant expressions is considered an important, intuitive, parenting response, but evidence is sparse in the first two months concerning the conditions under which mirroring occurs and its developmental sequelae, including in clinical samples where the infant’s social expressiveness may be affected. We investigated these questions by comparing the development of mother-infant interactions between a sample where the infant had cleft lip and a normal, unaffected, comparison sample. We videotaped dyads in their homes five times from one to ten weeks and used a microanalytic coding scheme for maternal and infant behaviours, including infant social expressions, and maternal mirroring and marking responses. We also recorded maternal gaze to the infant, using eye-tracking glasses. Although infants with cleft lip did show communicative behaviours, the rate of their development was slower than in comparison infants. This group difference was mediated by a lower rate of mirroring of infant expressions by mothers of infants with cleft lip; this effect was, in turn, partly accounted for by reduced gaze to the infant’s mouth, although the clarity of infant social expressions (indexed by cleft severity) and maternal self-blame regarding the cleft were also influential. Results indicate the robustness of parent-infant interactions but also their sensitivity to specific variations in interactants’ appearance and behaviour. Parental mirroring appears critical in infant social development, likely supported by the mirror neuron system and underlying clinical and, possibly, cultural differences in infant behaviour. These findings suggest new avenues for clinical intervention.

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