Transcript Document

Six to Nine
Months
Fogel
Chapter 7
Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
Overview Chapter 7
• Physical and Motor Development
• Perceptual Development
• Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
Experiential Exercises
Co-regulating with Baby
• Social and Language Development
• Family and Society
Experiential Exercises
Co-regulating with Baby
Introduction
• Between 6 and 9 months,
babies grow more adventurous
– physical: they start to creep
or crawl on their own
– psychological: they begin to take initiative and call attention
to themselves
•
Infants now develop a serious interest in the object
world, and come to understand that objects are whole
entities with an existence separate from their own
Picture from: http://flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/2511777779/
Physical and Motor Development
• Between 6 and 9 months, infants develop
— independent sitting
— supported standing
— rolling over
— creeping or crawling
• By 9 months, infants can
— take a few steps while holding on to furniture or an adult
— pick up small objects using just the tips of the thumb and
index finger
Picture from: http://www.imaginarybinky.com/2008/04/let-sun-shine-down.html
Physical and Motor Development
Hand Movements and Hand Preference
Functions of the hemispheres of the brain
— right hemisphere: spatial patterns
& nonlinguistic (e.g., emotional)
information processing
— the left hemisphere: sequential
processing of the sort used in
understanding language
— linked to handedness – the preference for the use of
one hand over another
Picture from: www.morphonix.com/.../specimens/hemispheres.html
Physical and Motor Development
Hand Movements and Hand Preference
• Infants begin to show hand preference around 2
months, when visually guided reaching begins
— 30-50% of infants under age
1 show a right-hand
preference when reaching –
this preference is relatively
stable over the 1st year
— 10-30% have a left-hand
preference in reaching
• More permanent hand preferences do not emerge
until the 2nd year
Picture from: path31.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
Physical and Motor Development
Hand Movements and Hand Preference
Around 6 months, infants
– begin reaching with a single hand
– learn to sit without support & extend the non-reaching
hand backward to balance their upper bodies
– two-handed reaches become more sophisticated
• with larger objects (like a big ball)
• cross the mid-line of the body
Physical and Motor Development
Crawling
Being able to extend one arm independently of
the other is believed to be important for the
development of crawling (see Table 7.2)
– while babies are still reaching with two hands at
the same time, they either creep or rock
– infants begin to crawl when they can reach with
one hand
Picture from: http://www.sover.net/~sweeneyc/babygirlold.html
Physical and Motor Development
Crawling
Not all infants go through this sequence
— infants who creep before they crawl are better at
crawling: they move faster and their movements
are larger and more efficient
— non-creepers become proficient crawlers after a
couple of weeks
Picture from private collection
Physical and Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
Dynamic systems theory: new motor skills
develop by adding additional components to
existing skills
— crawling: even when infants can get on hands & knees,
they cannot crawl because they can’t alternate extension
of the arms and legs
— walking: 9-month-olds can pull themselves to standing,
take steps while holding onto something, and alternate leg
movements – but they can’t walk, because they lack the
capacity to balance
Physical and Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
The moving room recreates the visual experience of
moving without taking steps at the same time
— infants under 1 year will fall in the direction in which the
wall appears to be moving
— infants older than 1 year may sway but are less likely to
lose their balance
Physical and Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
Motor development is a complex systems interaction of
— the different parts of the motor system (legs, trunk, arms)
— the perceptual system
— the environment in which the child is moving
For example,
— infants can make walking movements
if they are supported by an infant
walker or an adult
Picture from private collection
Perceptual Development
Recognition of Objects & Depth
• Under 6 months
— object recognition and depth perception are
easier if the objects are moving and if real objects
are presented
• After 6 months, infants can
— infer object properties & depth from visual cues
alone
— “see” three dimensions when they are shown
objects in two dimensions (e.g., in a drawing)
Perceptual Development
Recognition of Objects & Depth
By 7 months, infants use visual cues to judge
depth & distance
— infants with a patch over one eye will reach toward
the larger of two identical pictures of a face,
apparently perceiving it as closer
— infants’ ability to recognize objects in two
dimensions leads to increased interest in picture
books and television at this age
Perceptual Development
Recognition of Objects and Depth
Haptic perception – perception of the properties of
an object using touch
– newborns can distinguish different properties of
objects by using their mouths
– between 4 and 6 months, infants explore objects
actively, combining hand, mouth, and vision
– after 6 months, infants develop specialized hand
movements to detect information about specific object
properties such as size, texture, and shape
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
By 6 months, babies
• recognize differences between simple melodies
• can use cross-modal perception to infer information
about object properties
– infants who are familiarized with an object only by touch
can recognize the object by sight alone
– if babies hear a sound in the dark, they will reach for an
object in the direction of the sound
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• In short, 6- to 9-month-olds use subtle cues to infer
regularities in their perceptual world
– they can learn from pictures
in books and on television
– they pick up relationships
between different senses
to pay attention to things that
interest them most
• These perceptual abilities lead to clear preferences
(e.g., for particular pictures, objects, and tastes)
Picture from: flickr.com/photos/offwithyourhead/80276937/
Cognitive Development
Memory
• By 7 months,
— infants can remember how to make a mobile move
for as long as 21 days, without a reminder
– memories are less context dependent
• infants can remember a salient event that has been
learned in different (but related) situations
– infants can remember longer sequences of events,
like longer melodies
• However, memory is still tied to the situation
Cognitive Development
Information Processing
• At 7 months, infants are able to group stimuli
into higher-order conceptual categories
— 7-month-olds (but not 5-month-olds) recognized
the same faces shown in different positions
— they distinguished smiling from non-smiling faces
— they recognize a prototype from distorted versions
— they distinguish horses from other four-legged
mammals
Cognitive Development
Information Processing
Infants of this age also
— understand that moving objects should follow along
their prior path of movement & larger objects can
support smaller objects
— respond differentially when the same object is placed
above or below another object, showing that they
have a category for these spatial relationships
— seem to have a concept of number
– they dishabituated when a puppet’s jumps changed, from
two to three or from three to two
Cognitive Development
Secondary Circular Reactions
Sensorimotor Stage III (4 to 8 or 9 months) –
Secondary circular reactions
— infants begin to repeat actions that, by chance,
produce some effect on the objects and people in
the environment
– once the chance discovery is made, infants make
deliberate, intentional attempts to repeat that
action
Cognitive Development
Secondary Circular Reactions
• Infants also vary the actions in order to explore
changes in the effect
– they will drop objects off the edge of their high chairs
– they shake objects in different ways to notice the effect or
repeatedly dump things out of containers
• Repeated occurrences in the environment take on
meaning for the baby (see Observation 7.2)
– by 7 months, Laurent knew that he would be fed shortly
after he heard his mother’s bed creak
Cognitive Development
Secondary Circular Reactions
Infants are becoming more goal
directed & can perceive others’
intentional behavior
— in one study, 9-month-old
infants looked longer when a
grasping hand contacted a toy
than when the toy was touched
with the back of a hand
Picture from: flickr.com/photos/36908756@N00/301474833
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Object permanence – the ability to remain aware of
an object even after it has gone out of sight
infants will not actively search for an object that has
been hidden until after 9 months
Picture from: http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/08/do_babies_know_if_hidden_objec.php
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• In one study, 7- to 8-month-olds saw an object
disappear behind one of two screens
• a hand reached behind the screens and reappeared
holding the object in either a possible situation or an
impossible situation
• Infants looked longer at the hand following the impossible
situation compared to the possible one
• In a similar study, infants not only looked longer at the
impossible situation, they also looked more at their
parents as if to share their puzzlement
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Infants of this age are becoming aware of objects
and people as whole entities
– people, as opposed to objects, are understood by
infants as having intentions
– the ability to perceive another’s intentions
corresponds with infants’ awareness of their own
intentions, their ability to have an effect on the
environment
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
• Anger arises when infants cannot succeed at
being an effective causal agent
— accompanied by crying, but facial expression and
underlying feeling are different from distress
• In one study
– 2- and 4-month-olds reacted to inoculations with
physical distress, crying with tightly shut eyes
– 7-month-olds responded with more angry
expressions, crying with open, vigilant eyes
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
Anger can be adaptive and useful
— In one study, infants were taught to pull a string to
activate a slide projection & music
— After this, the experimenters stopped turning on the
slide projector and music when the infant pulled
— Most infants reacted with anger, but some showed
sadness
— the infants who expressed anger immediately became
interested again when the contingency was renewed
— those who showed sadness reacted with less enjoyment
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
• Expressions of anger are also seen in 7month-olds when they are frustrated
— e.g., when a teething biscuit is removed from
their mouths or when their arms are restrained
• Separation distress
– after 6 months, infants respond to parental
separation with some anger, especially if the
parent happens to be a part of the infant’s
activity (e.g., play) when he or she leaves
Picture from: http://meidays.blogdrive.com/
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
• Wariness
– infants may become quiet and stare at a stranger
or a strange situation, knit their brows, become
momentarily sober, and look away
– wariness allows the infant to observe what is
happening & is a more adaptive reaction to
strange situations than the withdrawal of infantile
fussing and crying
Emotional Development
Positive Emotions
Positive emotions become more complex
• Different types of smiles had different meanings
depending on whether the infant gazed at the mother
or not
– Simple smiling & gazing at mother during peekaboo:
– enjoyment of recognition or of readiness to engage in play
– Simple smiles without gazing at mother after a tickle
– often accompanied by gasping for air and sighing & perhaps
associated with enjoyment of relief or of relaxation
Emotional Development
Positive Emotions
• Duchenne smiles occur with gazing at mother when
she uncovers her face during peekaboo
– may reflect an enjoyment of agency, sensing oneself as an
active rather than passive participant in the game
– Duchenne smiles without gazing at mother occur
most during a tickle, often as infants turn their bodies
away as if trying to hide or protect themselves
– may reflect an enjoyment of hiding or perhaps an
enjoyment of escape
Picture from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/image/123286/index.html?cat=25
Emotional Development
Positive Emotions
• There is a growing ability to communicate with others
about emotions
— around 8 months, infants who smile when looking at an
object will turn to smile at a nearby adult
• By 6 months, babies will laugh
— at jokes
— at very abrupt and highly arousing stimuli
— at things that once made them cry, such as a loud noise or
a loss of balance
— in one study, they cried when a stranger wore a mask, but
laughed when their mothers did
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
Infants are beginning to use cognition to decide what to
feel, a process known as appraisal
— there is a growing relationship between infant emotion &
attention to emotion-related events and processes
Picture from: www.spicetart.com/growing_ivy/page/2/
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
Gender differences
• In one study, 6-month-old boys and girls were
observed during face-to-face play, followed by
maternal still-face
• Boys were more likely than girls to
– smile & vocalize as well as show anger or distress during
the still-face
– have a more positive interaction with the mother during the
normal face-to-face period
• Girls gazed more at objects & showed more interest
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• Between 6 and 9 months
– babies seem more capable of recognizing smiles than
other expressions
– their ability to distinguish between other expressions, such
as fear and anger, is relatively poor
• Individual differences
— 7-month-old infants whose mothers show a lot of positive
emotions are more likely to respond to negative facial
expressions, perhaps because of their relative novelty
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• 7-month-olds ability to distinguish between emotions
improves when
— facial expressions are combined with voices expressing the
same emotions
— faces are presented dynamically
• They also recognize whether a facial expression is
paired with a matching vs. a mismatched intonation
– e.g., when an angry expression is matched with an angry
vs. happy tone of voice
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• Infants of this age prefer to look at faces judged by
adults to be attractive
– apparently, attractiveness, like recognition of particular
people, can be inferred from more global features of the
face that do not involve specific expressions
• Infants can also distinguish between the faces of
children and adults
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Temperament
— a persistent pattern of emotion and emotion regulation in
the infant’s relationship to people and things in the
environment
• Some aspects of temperament are partly inherited
— negativity and inhibition appear early in life and are
persistent in 5-10% of \ infants up until 5 to 7 years
– similar proportions of persistently inhibited children are
found in different countries and even in infant monkeys
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
Infants who were the most inhibited
• were more likely to be subdued in unfamiliar
situations, have a dour mood, report anxiety, and
have an overactive sympathetic nervous system
response as teenagers
• showed a higher activation in the amygdala (part of
the limbic system responsive to fear) when viewing
pictures of unfamiliar faces as adults
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Infants and children who have difficulties with
attention and emotion regulation (rated as highly
reactive, emotional, inattentive, or inhibited) have
different patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex
compared to well-regulated infants
• For example, inhibition is related to brain wave and heart
rate patterns as well as to stress responses to frustration
• Stress responses to frustration – such as heart rate
acceleration, cortisol secretion, and sympathetic
nervous system activation – are present at an early
age for some inhibited infants and may persist for
periods of up to 1 year
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Role of parents
– infants who are more inhibited are more likely to
have parents who are introverted & anxious
– infant inhibition & negativity are related to lower
scores on maternal adaptation to pregnancy,
sensitivity to the infant after birth, and self-esteem
– mothers who rate infant cries as more aversive
are more likely to rate their infants as difficult
• These findings do not rule out a genetic
explanations
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• A finding that may call the genetic explanation into
question is that children do not necessarily exhibit
continuity of temperament
– inhibited children may, with sensitive child rearing,
eventually lose their extreme sensitivity
– normal children may become more inhibited in extremely
stressful environments
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
Continuity & discontinuity
• extreme fussiness at birth predicts later emotionality
in full-term infants, but not in premature infants
• temperament most likely does not contribute to longterm cognitive deficit or enhancement
– parental behavior may attenuate the long-term effects of
early temperamental characteristic
• inhibited children who showed more positive emotion
were less likely to be inhibited at age 3 than inhibited
children who tended to be more negative
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Parental and child factors can interact to influence the
stability of temperament over time
• Temperament assessed at the end of the infancy
period, between 2 and 4 years of age, tends to show
long-term stability
– 2-year-olds who were rated as more difficult had more
attention problems and aggressive behavior at 12 years
– 3-year-olds who were rated low on self-control had more
adjustment problems and interpersonal conflicts as adults
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Temperament is difficult to measure in a reliable and
valid manner
– some researches have conducted observations
– usually, parents are asked to rate their child’s
temperaments
• However, when mothers and fathers are asked to
rate the same child, their reports agree only about
half the time
– there is more agreement about the difficulty of an infant
than about any other dimension of temperament
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• The correlation between parental reports and
behavior observed in a laboratory improves if infants’
behaviors are extreme
• Explanations of differences between parent reports
and observed behavior include
— infants behave differently in different situations
— questions on rating scales don’t reflect child’s individuality
— parental reports reflect parents’ personalities or
psychological state
— for instance, multiparous & extroverted mothers were more likely
to rate their infants as easy
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
The best research strategy:
— a combination of parental
reports, direct observations,
and physiological measures
(such as cortisol and
sympathetic nervous system
activity) made at repeated
intervals in the child’s life
Picture from: http://ethiopia.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/african-american-dolls
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• As infants become increasingly interested in objects,
between 4 and 6 months of age, earlier face-to-face
frames give way to social-object play frames
– the infant’s developmental task is to integrate interest in
objects with the desire to remain socially and emotionally
connected to the parents
• At first, infants are primarily focused on the objects
— it is up to the parents to provide frames for mutual
communication about the objects
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
Coordination of attention to people & objects is enhanced
if parents regularly create object-directed frames
– the more attentive & animated parents are, the more likely
that the infant will learn to co-regulate attention with others
– infants who are more attentive to what adults do and say are
more likely to learn language and to learn, by age 3 or 4
years, to share the mental perspectives of other people
Picture from private collection
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
At 6 months, infants appear to be in a receptive mode,
ready to participate in the frames created by the parents
By 8 months, they are beginning to
take initiatives in social frames
— they start making jokes
— they “ask” to be picked up by making
sad facial expressions or raising
their hands above their heads
— they smile and laugh more toward
familiar and trusted adults than
toward unfamiliar ones
Picture from private collection
Social and Language Development
Babbling
Babbling begins after 6 months
• sounds as though babies are talking to themselves
as they roll off a string of related vowel and
consonant sounds to accompany their eating or
playing
• has the intonation contours (the rising and falling
pitches) of sentences
– the intonation contours of babbling match the intonation
contours of the speech spoken in the infant’s home (e.g.,
French, Chinese, or Arabic)
Social and Language Development
Babbling
• In one study, some mothers were asked to respond
contingently to infant babbling, while another group
was asked not to respond to the babbling
– infants whose mothers were contingent produced more
“mature” babbles that had more recognizable syllables,
strong contrasts between consonants and vowels, and a
more fully voiced sound
– this suggests that babbling may be speech-like because it
occurs during parent-infant contingent vocal interaction.
Social and Language Development
Babbling
• Right-handed reaching and rhythmical banging
increase at the same age infants begin to babble
– the right hand is controlled by the left brain, known to be
the primary location of speech processing
– vocalizations come increasingly under the control of the
left brain, setting the stage for linking vocalization and
cognition, necessary for the development of speech
• Babbling is more likely to be accompanied by (right-)
hand & arm movements than leg movements
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• Before 6 months, infants can distinguish sound
contrasts from many different languages
— they start to lose this ability between 6-9 months
• In one developmental study
— younger infants (4-6 months) could distinguish the syllable
contrasts from all three languages tested (English, Salish,
and Hindi)
– older infants (10-12 months) could only distinguish
between the contrasts of the language heard in the home
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• The loss of perceptual sensitivity may be related to
the selective processes of brain development
– at first, synapses are overproduced
– later some are selected and strengthened; synapses for
sounds that are not frequently heard disappear
• By 9 months, American infants prefer to listen to
words having a strong-weak stress pattern
— 6-month-olds showed no such preference
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• By the second half of the first year, infants begin to
recognize & produce some of the characteristics of
language as a system of sounds
• However, babbling infants are not trying to talk
— they are exploring how to make familiar sounds, rather
than as trying to communicate with sounds
– it seems as if they first learn the music and then the words
– this music is learned in the context of parent-infant
frames, including social games
Social and Language Development
Parent-Infant Games
• By 8 months, new social frames emerge in the
parent-infant relationship
— infants take more initiative
• As infants get older, they learn to play new social
games, such as “point and name” and “give and
take” at 12 months
– games like “gonna get you” and “horsie,” in which the 6month-old played a relatively passive role, occur only
rarely at 12 months
Social and Language Development
Cultural Differences
Climate is one factor that accounts for cultural
differences in child-rearing patterns
– in warm countries, infants tend to be
carried, remain in close physical
contact, and to be breast-fed longer
than infants reared in cold climates
– infants in cold climates are more
likely to be separated from their
mothers at an earlier age
Picture from: saindonienne.wordpress.com/
Social and Language Development
Cultural Differences
Cultural differences in parental beliefs about
emotion regulation and communication about
emotions
– in North America & Korea, parents were concerned
about stimulation to foster development
– Italian mothers had similar feelings about love and
emotional closeness as North American mothers
but were less focused on cognitive stimulation
– Similar patterns are found in Latin-American cultures
Social and Language Development
Cultural Differences
In a study of physical contact during play between
Hispanic- and Anglo-American mothers and their 9month-old infants
– the overall amount of physical contact did not differ
– Hispanic mothers touched, kissed, hugged, and held
their infants physically closer than Anglo mothers
– on questionnaires, the Hispanic mothers reported
placing a higher value on touch and affection than
Anglo mothers
Picture from: www.momease.com
Social and Language Development
Cultural Differences
• In technical and industrial societies, including Japan,
Korea, Europe, North America, and urban families
everywhere
– parents will begin to interpret the infant’s intentions
– the next step is to help the infant carry out the intended act
– parents often create new intentions that were not there in
the first place
– In nontechnical agricultural and hunter-gatherer
communities, adults are more directive and ritualistic
– Chomorro mothers (from the Pacific island of Guam), were
highly directive & repetitive when interacting with infants
Social and Language Development
Cultural Differences
• Each style has evolved to fit the needs of the
particular culture; problems may arise, however,
when cultures are forced to interact
– Hispanic Americans, as a minority culture in the United
States, often feel self-conscious in the company of their
Anglo-American neighbors and think of themselves as
“too affectionate” with their infants
• According to ecological systems theory, this is a
conflict between the microsystem of the family and
the macrosystem of the culture
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness
• Between 6 and 9 months, babies call attention to
themselves in ways that did not exist previously
• These features make up a sense of a differentiated
ecological self
1. asking for help
2. taking initiative
3. clowning and showing off
4. demanding
5. hiding and escaping
Picture from private collection
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness
• At this age
– emotions become more complex
– infants begin to take initiative
– infants begin to seem to have their own personalities
• But: they do not have a sense of subjectivity
– they have feelings—getting angry or happy—but cannot
yet stand apart from those feelings
– they do not have a sense of an “I” that feels, and,
consequently, they do not have a sense that other people
are separate subjects with their own feelings
Family and Society
Maternal Employment
In 2001,
– 64% of U.S. mothers with children under the age of
6 were in the work force
– mothers also do a substantial amount of unpaid
work (e.g., child care, household work), estimated to
be worth about $27,000 per woman per year
Family and Society
Maternal Employment
• In general, infant-mother attachment is not seriously
altered by maternal employment
• If attachment is going to be affected, it is most likely
to decline between employed mothers and their
infant sons rather than their daughters
– boys are perceived as more independent and as requiring
less parental nurture and attention than girls, who are seen
as more vulnerable
– there is a correlation between a son’s insecure attachment
and a mother’s perceived level of stress
Family and Society
Maternal Employment
• A number of studies find that the important variable is
the mother’s desire to work
— problems with coping, dissatisfaction with life, depression,
and loneliness are significantly higher in young mothers
who do not work outside the home than in those who do
— there are higher levels of functioning in families in which the
mothers are employed
Family and Society
Maternal Employment
• Whether mothers work by choice or necessity, they
typically end the day fatigued because role overload
– the demands of a role are more than an individual can
easily cope with or when the same person is required to
perform too many roles
• Role overload increases if the child has a difficult (age
1) or hostile aggressive (age 3) temperament
– in this case, mothers a more likely to perceive themselves
as less competent in both the parenting and work roles, and
are more likely to feel depressed
Family and Society
Maternal Employment
• When women work, fathers can also experience a
form of role overload
– such fathers show more negative behavior with their
infants during the first year
– after the first year, they are just as sensitive to their infants
as other husbands
• When women remain at home, fathers can choose
when and how to become involved with their infants
– these fathers show more positive emotion toward their
infants and are more attuned to the infants’ needs,
especially if the infants are boys
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• Even when mothers are paid, they earn only 71 cents
for every dollar earned by a man in the same position
• Some alternatives exist, but they are not widespread
– more flexible work schedules (flextime) began to be
instituted in Europe in the early 1960s
– Swedish workers are entitled to maternity and paternity
leaves
– Swedish women earn about 90% the wages men do for
similar jobs; 86% of women with young children are in the
workforce
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• In 1993, the U.S. Congress enacted the Family and
Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA, Public Law 1033), which established a family leave policy
– provides unpaid leave from employment for up to 12
weeks without loss of rank or position in the workplace in
businesses with more than 50 employees
– applies to both mothers and fathers as well as to nonpregnancy-related illnesses
– unfortunately, 95% of businesses are exempt from the
FMLA because they have fewer than 50 employees
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• Mothers are more likely to take a parental leave
– on average, about 3 months
– mothers who take shorter leaves are more likely to feel
stress & symptoms of depression, show negative emotions
toward their infants and spouses, and to have less interest
in their infants
• The average length of leave for fathers was 6.5 days,
with 71% of fathers taking 5 or fewer days
– fathers who took shorter leaves worked for employers who
were did not have a positive reaction to the employee’s
fatherhood, were less involved with their infants, and had
less communication with their spouse about the infant
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• Compared to other industrialized countries, the
United States is not a nation that fully supports
children and families
• With little opportunity to take time off from work
— mothers cannot breast feed for as long as recommended
by the American Academy of Pediatrics (for 12 months)
– mothers may choose drug-assisted childbirth or Csections, even if they would have preferred a natural birth,
to get back to work sooner
Family and Society
Nurturance Toward Infants
• Interest and ability to care for babies
— is present in young boys and girls
— will continue in both if fostered by the environment
• In one study,
— girls approached a baby more than did boys
— once the children were near the baby, both boys and girls
spoke to, reached out for, and touched the baby equally
• In another study,
– boys and girls approached babies equally
– at 2 and 3 years, boys were more likely to approach male
babies, girls were more likely to approach female babies
Family and Society
Nurturance Toward Infants
• Preschoolers’ speech to babies
– both boy and girl preschoolers modify their speech to
babies to make it sound more like motherese
– most preschoolers rarely asked questions of the baby
(question asking is a major form of adult speech to infants)
– 25% of preschoolers used endearing terms toward the
baby and asked soliciting questions (Are you hungry? Are
you getting frustrated?)
Family and Society
Nurturance Toward Infants
• Girls aged 8 to 14 interact more with babies and
ignore them less than boys do
– boys and girls are equally physiologically aroused or
unaroused by the sight of an infant
– differences in male vs. female interest in babies continue
through high school but seem to vanish for college students
& young adults
• Parents vs. nonparents
– the most responsive group is usually new mothers
– men’s child-rearing status does not affect their
responsiveness to babies
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• Mothers tend to be more accurate in identifying the
type of cry (pain, distress, etc.) than fathers
• Both mothers and fathers can distinguish their own
infant’s cry from cries of unfamiliar infants
Picture from: http://www.julienna.com/pictures/Dad%20and%20Baby%20on%20Slide.jpg
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• Father-infant interaction
— used to be less contingently responsive than mothers; but
no differences were found in recent studies
— play and interaction are more directive & show abrupt
changes of activity
— cultural differences in the amount of father involvement
• Mother-infant interaction
— games are quieter and depend more on the pace set by the
infant
— engage in more caregiving
Family and Society
Grandparents
• One study found that grandparents of infants were
more responsive to babies than were parents of
adolescents or of grown children who had left home
– grandmothers were more responsive than grandfathers
– grandfathers were more responsive than men at other
ages
• Grandmother-infant attachment at 1 year
– when grandmothers spend much time with the baby,
mothers & grandmothers are nearly interchangeable as
attachment figures
– the more time a grandmother spends with the baby, the
more secure the attachment relationship
Family and Society
Grandparents
• In the 1990s, mothers and grandmothers were
generally in agreement over beliefs
– mothers were more accepting of messiness and nudity
indoors, more relaxed about when to begin toilet training,
and less rigid in differentiating sex roles in child play
• Some studies have shown that African-American
grandmothers are more involved with their infant
grandchildren than Caucasian-Americans
– extended family is important in the reduction of family
stress, esp. for low-income, teenage, and single mothers
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
This exercise is about the connection between the core and its
influence on an infant’s movements
— Lying on your back, place an object on the floor directly above your head.
— Turn your head to the right and try to look at your object, so that your back
begins to arch. Relax for 30 seconds, then repeat.
— You may notice that your back is arching so much so that you end up on your
side. Once this happens, try and balance yourself like a see-saw.
– Once you are balanced, relax your core & see if you fall to one side or the
other
– After the roll, you may notice that one arm is trapped underneath you. Flex
your core so as to create a space between your chest and the floor to allow
you to free your arm.
– Now look at your object. Can you reach it?
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Crouched on your hands and knees on the floor, slowly, raise
one knee, hold it for a few seconds, and bring it back down.
– Notice how your weight shifts when you do this motion.
• Again, very slowly, raise your other knee and repeat the
movement. Do this also with both of your hands.
• Bring your knees together so that your feet are close enough to
touch. Repeat the slow-motion raising and lowering movements
with both of your legs. Notice how this feels
• Now, spread your knees on the ground far apart. Repeat the
same slow-motion movements. Notice how this feels.
• Experiment with different spacing between your knees. Where
is the best balance between instability and stability?
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
— Slowly lift your right hand and your right knee at the same time.
How is your weight shifted and distributed? Do the same with your
left hand and knee.
— Next try lifting opposite hands and knees. Is this easier?
— Rock back and forth on your hands, shifting your weight to and
from your heels. Does this feel like getting ready to move?
— Crawl a few steps forward. Notice the order of limbs that you
move. If you lift your hands and knees diagonallym this is called
contralateral crawling. If you lift your hands and knees on the
same side, this is called homolateral crawling.
— Try crawling a few steps backward. Is this easier than going
forward? Babies often crawl backwards before they crawl
forwards.