Increasing parenting self-efficacy: The Fussy Baby Network® intervention

High levels of infant crying place families at risk for disrupted relationships, parenting stress, and even for child maltreatment. We conducted an evaluation of the Fussy Baby Network^® (FBN), a program supporting families struggling with infant crying and related concerns. The study contrasted 29 families who sought help from FBN with 27 families with excessively crying infants who did not seek services. Researchers measured parenting self-efficacy, depression, and stress in each group before and after the intervention. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated greater improvements over time in parenting self-efficacy for parents receiving FBN services. Furthermore, the greater improvements in parenting self-efficacy in the intervention group were not directly attributable to reductions in infant crying. These findings provide preliminary evidence that the FBN approach may be effective at boosting the confidence of parents struggling with caring for their infants. Future research with larger samples with baseline equivalence and stronger research designs should explore this intervention further. This study also suggests that interventions for families with excessively crying infants should move beyond the focus of reducing infant crying to a broader strategy of supporting parents and strengthening relationships between parents and their infants to build parenting capacity.     

The Michigan infant mental health home visiting model

Selma Fraiberg's pioneering work with infants, toddlers, and families over 40 years ago led to the development of a field in which professionals from multiple disciplines learned to work with or on behalf of infants, very young children, their parents, and the relationships that bind them together. The intent was to promote social and emotional health through enhancing the security of early developing parent–child relationships in the first years of life (Fraiberg, 2018). Called infant mental health (IMH), practitioners from fields of health, education, social work, psychology, human development, nursing, pediatrics, and psychiatry specialize in supporting the optimal development of infants and the developing relationship between infants and their caregivers. When a baby is born into optimal circumstances, to parents free of undue economic and psychological stressors and who are emotionally ready to provide care and nurturing for an infant's needs, an IMH approach may be offered as promotion or prevention, with the goal of supporting new parent(s) in developing confidence in their capacity to understand and meet the needs of the tiny human they are coming to know and care for. However, when parental history is fraught with abandonment, loss, abuse or neglect, or the current environment is replete with economic insecurity, threats to survival due to interpersonal or community violence, social isolation, mental illness, or substance abuse, the work of the IMH therapist may require intervention or intensive treatment and becomes more psychotherapeutic in nature. The underlying therapeutic goal is to create a context in which the baby develops within the environment of a parent's nurturing care without the psychological impingement that parental history of trauma or loss or current stressors such as isolation, poverty, or the birth of a child with special needs, can incur.     

The risk of low risk: First time motherhood,prematurity and dyadic well-being

Premature birth has a well-documented impact on infants, mothers and their dyadic interactions. First time motherhood in the context of low risk premature birth—relatively unexplored in the literature—is a specific experience that sits at the nexus of premature infancy, motherhood and the processes that underpin dyadic connection. This qualitative study analyzed semistructured interviews with first time mothers of low risk premature babies. Findings were generated in response to research questions concerning mothers’ meaning-making, bonding and identity. Findings demonstrated that maternal meaning-making emerged from a dyadic framework. When mothers or their infants were considered outside of a dyadic context, surplus suffering inadvertently occurred. Findings have important implications for infant mental health practice in medical settings, for postnatal support in the aftermath of premature birth, and for understanding the meaning of risk.     

Finding focus in a difficult landscape: Therapists’ experiences with challenging video guidance processes for parent–infant dyads

Marte Meo video guidance uses filmed interaction of the actual parent–infant dyad in the guidance of caregivers. Exploring the challenges that therapists meet in the guidance of parent–infant dyads may illuminate important aspects of the method itself as well as the therapists’ role and requirements. This could lead to method development and improved practice, but is hitherto little addressed. In this paper, we explore how skilled therapists experience and handle challenging or failing guidance processes with parent–infant dyads. We analyzed interviews with 13 Marte Meo therapists/supervisors using team-based reflexive thematic analysis. Four main themes were identified: promoting relational growth in a coercive context, building an alliance that feels safe for the parents, looking at positive moments in difficult lives, and handling intense feelings as a therapist. Our findings show that therapists experience specific therapeutic and ethical challenges with a vulnerable subgroup of parent–infant dyads where child protective issues arise, where caregivers’ insecurities impede the therapeutic relationship, and where caregivers have unsolved relational or mental health problems. The therapists’ role becomes pivotal and demanding with regard to the therapeutic alliance, the therapeutic interventions in the guidance process, and their own need for regulation, supervision, and structure. Identification of these vulnerable dyads early in the process could facilitate a better adaptation and practice of video guidance. Our findings suggest a need for supporting structures, clinical supervision, and training that address these challenges.     

Maternal postpartum depression is a risk factor for infant emotional variability at 4 months

Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) is a risk for disruption of mother–infant interaction. Infants of depressed mothers have been found to display less positive, more negative, and neutral affect. Other studies have found that infants of mothers with PPD inhibit both positive and negative affect. In a sample of 28 infants of mothers with PPD and 52 infants of nonclinical mothers, we examined the role of PPD diagnosis and symptoms for infants’ emotional variability, measured as facial expressions, vocal protest, and gaze using microanalysis, during a mother–infant face-to-face interaction. PPD symptoms and diagnosis were associated with (a) infants displaying fewer high negative, but more neutral/interest facial affect events, and (b) fewer gaze off events.  PPD diagnosis, but not symptoms, was associated with less infant vocal protest. Total duration of seconds of infant facial affective displays and gaze off was not related to PPD diagnosis or symptoms, suggesting that when infants of depressed mothers display high negative facial affect or gaze off, these expressions are more sustained, indicating lower infant ability to calm down and re-engage, interpreted as a disturbance in self-regulation. The findings highlight the importance of not only examining durations, but also frequencies, as the latter may inform infant emotional variability.     

Maternal perinatal representations and their associations with mother–infant interaction and attachment: A longitudinal comparison of Portuguese and Brazilian dyads

Prior research in Western countries (mostly the US, Canada and northern Europe) indicates that mothers' representations are associated with mother–infant interaction quality and their child's attachment security later in the first year. Fewer studies, however, have evaluated whether these associations hold for mother–infant dyads in other countries, such as Brazil and Portugal. Although these countries share a similar language and culture, they differ on societal dimensions that may affect parenting attitudes and mother–infant relationships, such as economic stress, social organisation, social policy, and the availability of services for young families. In this longitudinal study, we followed two independent samples of Brazilian and Portuguese mother–infant dyads from the perinatal period to 12 months post-partum. We assessed mothers' perinatal representations using semi-structured interviews in the first 48 hours after the infant's birth, and evaluated the associations of these representations with mother interaction quality at 9 months and infant attachment at 12 months. Results were similar in each country, corroborating prior research in single Western countries: Mothers with more positive perinatal representations were more sensitive to their infants during free play at 9 months and were more likely to have infants classified as securely attached at 12 months.     

Motion tracking of parents’ infant‐ versus adult‐directed actions reveals general and action‐specific modulations

Parents tend to modulate their movements when demonstrating actions to their infants. Thus far, these modulations have primarily been quantified by human raters and for entire interactions, thereby possibly overlooking the intricacy of such demonstrations. Using optical motion tracking, the precise modulations of parents’ infant‐directed actions were quantified and compared to adult‐directed actions and between action types. Parents demonstrated four novel objects to their 14‐month‐old infants and adult confederates. Each object required a specific action to produce a unique effect (e.g. rattling). Parents were asked to demonstrate an object at least once before passing it to their demonstration partner, and they were subsequently free to exchange the object as often as desired. Infants’ success at producing the objects’ action‐effects was coded during the demonstration session and their memory of the action‐effects was tested after a several‐minute delay. Indicating general modulations across actions, parents repeated demonstrations more often, performed the actions in closer proximity and demonstrated action‐effects for longer when interacting with their infant compared to the adults. Meanwhile, modulations of movement size and velocity were specific to certain action‐effect pairs. Furthermore, a ‘just right’ modulation of proximity was detected, since infants’ learning, memory, and parents’ prior evaluations of their infants’ motor abilities, were related to demonstrations that were performed neither too far from nor too close to the infants. Together, these findings indicate that infant‐directed action modulations are not solely overall exaggerations but are dependent upon the characteristics of the to‐be learned actions, their effects, and the infant learners.     

婴儿的痛觉

婴儿痛觉对婴儿的生长发育有重要意义, 已经日益引发研究者的兴趣。痛觉本质上是一种不愉悦的感官和情绪体验, 是通过早年与伤害有关的经历习得的。在心理学角度, 在介绍婴儿痛觉概念、神经生理机制、评估工具的基础上, 系统梳理痛觉对婴儿生长发育的影响及其影响因素十分必要。后续研究需继续完善婴儿痛觉的测量方法, 考察疼痛反应在不同文化和不同群体间的差异。     

Visual-Motor Integration Problems in Low Birth Weight Infants

This paper represents a review of the research that focuses on a population of strong clinical interest on a national and international scale—infants born with low birth weight (LBW). Among the numerous developmental deficits commonly associated with this group, one of the most frequently cited problems is poor fine- and visual-motor integration. In addition to the direct perceptual-motor development concern, the literature provides a reasonable case that such deficits place this population at increased risk for subnormal academic performance and difficulties with specific daily living (self-help) activities. By assessing the infant at an early age and designing specific strategies for intervention, clinical psychologists can play a major role in improving fine- and visual-motor behavior in this population.