Making meaning of parenting from the perspective of alienated parents

More than 13% of parents identify as being alienated by at least one of their children. Parental alienation often occurs after divorce when one parent (un)intentionally persuades his or her children to distance themselves from or reject the other parent. This study, couched in relational dialectics theory, explores the meaning of parenting from the perspective of 40 alienated parents. This analysis yielded two competing discourses: the culturally dominant discourse of parental norms (DPN) and the culturally marginalized discourse of parental victimization (DPV). Throughout the narrative interviews, the DPV resisted the DPN in four ways (diachronic separation, entertaining, countering, and negating). This study's findings provide insights into the perspective of the alienated parents, advance what we know about family distancing, and provide practical implications.     

Temperament and play interaction behavior across infancy

Temporal stability and convergent validity of infant temperament ratings and play interaction behaviors were examined across early to late infancy. Stability was noted for the temperament dimensions activity, rhythmicity, intensity, mood, and persistence. Stability also was noted for the infant play interaction behaviors looking, smiling, and vocalizing. In addition, convergent validity was noted for attentive-affective behaviors and comparable temperament ratings; for example, gaze aversion and nondistractability, and distress brow behavior and negative mood. Generally easier temperament infants were noted to vocalize more and to cry less frequently during their play interactions.     

Affective behavior and weight changes among hospitalized failure-to-thrive infants

The affective behavior and weight change of 12 nonorganic failure-to-thrive, 12 organic failure-to-thrive, and 12 control infants (M age = 8 months) were compared across their hospitalization. Infant affect was evaluated at approximately the beginning, middle, and endpoints of hospitalization using the Behavioral Assessment Scale. Among the failure-to-thrive infants, positive responses to stimulation at the initial assessment were related to weight loss across the course of hospitalization, while positive responses to the same stimulation at the middle assessment were related to weight gain. These unexpected results coupled with the finding that 70% of the failure-to-thrive infants gained weight and 30% lost weight across hospitalization led to a comparison between infants who gained and infants who lost weight. An increase in positive affect across hospitalization occurred only for the infants who gained weight. Paradoxically, the losers may have experienced hospital stimulation as less adequate than maternal stimulation, while the gainers may have experienced hospital stimulation as more adequate than home stimulation.     

Teenage parenting in different cultures,family constellations,and caregiving environments: Effects on infant development

Teenage parenting was investigated in different ethnic groups (Cuban and American Black), family constellations (single-parent, nuclear, and extended families), and primary caregiving arrangements (mother versus other). One hundred sixty-four infants born to a representative sample of teenage mothers were observed during interactions with their mothers and were given developmental assessments when they were 12, 18, and 24 months of age. Being a Cuban mother, living in a nuclear family, and being a secondary caregiver were each associated independently with stronger social support systems and more positive child-rearing attitudes and mother-infant play interactions. Despite these early advantages, maternal stimulation and infant performance decreased over the second year of life irrespective of ethnic group, family constellation, and caregiving arrangements.     

Vocal and facial expression matching in infants of mothers with depressive symptoms

This study investigated vocal and facial expression matching in 24 10-month-old infants. Half of the mothers had reported depressive symptoms [i.e., elevated scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Index (CES-D)] during the previous week. Infants were tested using a two-screen preference procedure in which they were presented side-by-side videos of different facial expressions modeled by one female reciting a children's story. A centrally located speaker was used to present a vocal expression soundtrack that matched one of the facial expressions. Separate analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were conducted to analyze the proportion total matching and proportion total looking to the happy and sad expressions. Infants of mothers who reported depressive symptoms displayed less accurate matching of the happy facial and vocal expressions and looked more to sad facial expressions compared to infants of mothers who had not reported depressive symptoms above the normal range. Infants' performance on the expression matching task appears to be related to their primary caregivers' reports of depressive symptoms during the previous week. However, other factors that may be related to the group differences also need to be considered. For example, maternal reports of depressive symptoms may be a marker for other underlying factors that may have affected their infants' performance. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Altering withdrawn and intrusive interaction behaviors of depressed mothers

Interaction coaching was given to 44 depressed mothers who had either a withdrawn or intrusive interaction style with their infants. The intrusive and withdrawn mothers were given instructions either to imitate their infants' behavior or to keep their infants' attention. The results suggested that the specific type of interaction coaching for the specific type of depressed mother (imitation for the intrusive mothers and attention-getting for the withdrawn mothers) significantly improved their interaction behaviors with their infants.     

Mothers with Depressive Symptoms Touching Newborns

Previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of early contact on mother–infant touching behaviours. The present study investigated whether the type of maternal touching, shortly after birth, is also determined by the mother's mood state. Mothers with depressive symptoms were compared to non-depressive mothers 1 day after delivery on how they touched their newborns following an initial feeding. The results were counter-intuitive in that no differences were found between mothers with depressive symptoms and non-depressive mothers in type of maternal touching. However, mothers with depressive symptoms talked to their infants less often and talked on the phone more often. In addition, mothers with depressive symptoms showed more neutral and negative facial expressions and fewer positive and more neutral vocal expressions.     

Coping Self‐Efficacy and Psychological Distress Following the Oklahoma City Bombing1

Findings from a study of 27 victims of the Oklahoma City bombing are reported. This research focused on the importance of subjective appraisals of coping self‐efficacy in predicting psychological distress following this tragedy. Results supported the hypothesis that judgments of coping self‐eficacy taken 2 months after the bombing added significantly to the explanation of general and trauma‐related distress after controlling for income, social support, threat of death, and loss of resources. Coping self‐eficacy judgments taken I year later were also important in explaining psychological distress after controlling for loss of resources and social‐support perceptions. Although coping self‐efficacy perceptions taken at 2 months were related to distress levels 1 year later, they did not remain significant in a regression analysis controlling for loss of resources and income. Implications of these findings for post‐terrorist bombing interventions are discussed.     

The Rational Character of Belief and the Argument for Mental Anomalism

If mental anomalism is to be interpreted as a thesisunique to psychology, the anomalousness must begrounded in some feature unique to the mental,presumably its rational nature. While the ground forsuch arguments from normativity has been notoriouslyslippery terrain, there are two recently influentialstrategies which make the argument precise. The firstis to deny the possibility of psychophysical bridgelaws because of the different constitutive essences ofmental and physical laws, and the second is to arguethat mental anomalism follows from the uncodifiabilityof rationality. In this paper I argue that bothstrategies fail – the latter because it conflates primafacie and all things considered rationality and theformer because it rests on a false premise, theprinciple of the rational character of belief. Idistinguish four different formulations of thisprinciple and argue that those formulations which areplausible cannot support the argument for mentalanomalism.