two to five months fogel chapter 6 created by ilse dekoeyer-laros, ph.d

Two to FiveMonths

FogelChapter 6 Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.

Overview Chapter 6

• Physical and Motor Development• Perceptual Development• Cognitive Development• Emotional Development• Family and Society

Experiential Exercises

Co-regulating with Baby

Introduction

• Around 6-8 weeks: first major developmental transition– motor movements more purposeful and deliberate– perception more acute– waking time and attention span increase rapidly– able to establish and maintain eye contact,

demanding crying wanes, and social smile emerges

• These changes lead to longer adult-infant interactions & the beginnings of social play

Physical Development

• At birth, most infants are 19 to 21 inches in length & weigh between 7 and 8 pounds

– boys are slightly longer & heavier than girls

• By 6 months, height increases by a factor of 1.5, while weight increases by a factor of 2

• Individual differences become larger with age

– as infants get older, their height becomes a better predictor of their adult height


Growth is asynchronous – different parts of the body grow at different rates, and growth spurts occur at different times in each body region


• By 3 months, – infants can sleep for longer periods before

waking up and are more likely to sleep through the night

– about half of their sleep time is in REM sleep.; this percentage decreases gradually (in adults, only 20% of sleep is REM sleep)

Motor Development

• Changes along with physical development

Video Examples on YouTube:• unsuccessful eye-hand coordination: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDH1ZWqQNlU• successful reach & grasp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZRIXMPBiMA• successful hand-hand transfer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5n8GekMC4

• Areas:– control over posture– locomotion– movements of the hands &

arms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDH1ZWqQNlU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZRIXMPBiMA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5n8GekMC4

Motor Development

Motor Development

A baby’s ability to perform a motor skill depends on two factors

– the difficulty of the task

– supports & resources in the environment

Picture from: http://babyparenting.about.com/od/photogallery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Zoe-Cosette--4-months.htm

Motor DevelopmentThe difficulty of the task

• easier tasks are mastered first:– objects with graspable appendages vs. balls & cubes

– small vs. large objects

• between 2 and 6 months, hand & arm movements

– become more adapted to the size & shape of an object

– become more coordinated with eye gaze

– are related to emotional state: more likely to point when alert & attentive

Motor Development

Supports & resources in the environment

• during social play with objects, adults help infants to practice budding motor skills

• adults hold infants in postures that are most conducive to the execution of motor skills

– upright babies attend more to the environment, while supine babies are more likely to look at their mothers

– infants in upright supine positions are more likely to reach for objects within their reach

Motor Development Cultural differences

• In Mali, mothers put babies through workout

– training in sitting & standing, muscle stretching, suspending babies by their arms and legs

– many African babies have advanced motor coordination compared to Caucasian babies

• Navaho infants spend many hours strapped tightly onto cradle boards

– motor development is slower than that of other groups

Motor Development

In summary

• motor and physical development in the first half year is the result of a systems interaction between infants, adults, and the environment.

• the ability to perform a coordinated task is based on three systemic factors:

Perceptual Development

There is a major shift in perceptual development between 2 and 5 months

infants begin to recognize & prefer meaningful patterned stimuli

Perceptual Development Visual Pattern Perception

The ability to perceive whole patterns increases dramatically around 3 months

– infants dishabituate when a totally novel figure is introduced but not when a different view of the familiar figure is shown

– they scan figures drawn with dashed or dotted lines as if they were drawn with a solid line

Perceptual Development Visual Pattern Perception: Faces

• They prefer faces from their own ethnic-racial group over faces from a different group & attractive faces over less attractive ones

• They can recognize a smile

• By 3 months, infants can differentiate familiar from unfamiliar faces & prefer faces over nonface stimuli

Perceptual Development Visual Perception of Moving Objects

• Young infants look longer at moving faces and patterns than at static ones

• By 3-4 months, infants perceive moving objects as whole units

• By using movement cues, 4-month-old infants are aware that objects are solid and that they take up their own space

Perceptual Development Visual Perception of Moving Objects

Infants also detect complex patterns of motion • 3- to 5-month-olds prefer to look at normal walkers or

runners over inverted or biologically impossible ones

Perceptual Development

the infant is able to perceive meaningful wholes because human infants are

predisposed to finding the similarities and differences between things

(p. 276)

Perceptual DevelopmentAuditory Perception

• Infants recognize and prefer their mothers’ voices at birth

• By 4 months, they prefer speech to nonspeech sounds

• Infants seem able to detect different emotions expressed in the voice earlier than they can see differences between facial expressions• in one study, 5-month-olds listened longer to positive

than to negative vocalizations & smiled more to approving voices, while they frowned more to voices expressing disapproval

Perceptual DevelopmentAuditory Perception

Infants at 4 months like music

– they look more toward consonant than dissonant music

– they show more attention to maternal singing than to motherese

– they can remember songs for at least a week without hearing them in between

– they prefer being sung lullabies over recorded music

– they attend more to their own bodies during lullabies and to the singer during play songs

Perceptual DevelopmentCross-modal Perception

“The ability to integrate information coming from at least two sensory modalities”

– by 3 months, infants can localize sounds better if they have visual cues, compared to a sound heard in the dark or made from behind a screen

– after about 4 months, infants expect sights and sounds to “go together” & they perceive objects as coherent wholes

Cognitive Development

Cognition: the processing of perceived information• includes: learning, memory, and the ability to mentally

compare different situations (similarities & differences)

Between 2-5 months, important developments take place in perceiving, habituating, learning, and remembering

Cognitive DevelopmentHabituation

• Between 2-5 months, infants improve in speed of information processing

– related to brain development & ability to focus on familiar tasks

– by 3 months, infants usually habituate within 1½ to 2 minutes; by 6 months, this drops to 30 seconds

• Speed of habituation is an early index of cognitive differences

– it is a fairly good predictor over a period of 4 or 5 months (but not over longer terms)

Cognitive DevelopmentHabituation – Individual Differences

Infants who habituate fast at 3 months are more likely to habituate fast at 6 months

– faster habituators tend to have parents who stimulate their ability to focus visual attention & are more efficient in their information processing

– slow habituators are more likely to have perinatal risk factors, illness, malnutrition, and poor state control

Cognitive DevelopmentMemory

• From birth, infants have short-term memories lasting several hours or days

• Long-term memory: by 3 months, infants can remember situations for up to 2 weeks

– this has been tested in the mobile experiment, by Dr. Rovee-Collier and her colleagues

Picture from: http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/rovee_fig1a.jpg

http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/rovee_fig1a.jpg

Cognitive DevelopmentMemory

• Mobile experiment

– Babies were placed in cribs with brightly colored mobiles overhead & trained for 15-20 minutes of training

– Experimenters decided that they would move the mobile if the baby kicked with either the right or the left foot

– The mobile was moved more the harder the infant kicked

• Infants who were tested less than 2 weeks after training managed to repeat the same leg movements

• After a delay of more than 2 weeks, infants behaved as if they had never seen the mobile

Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Studies suggest that infants can remember for an indefinite period, so long as they continue to receive non verbal reminders of the early situation

• In one study, infants were given a reminder 24 hours before 2 weeks had elapsed since their original training• this was effective in helping the infants remember the earlier

procedure as much as 4 weeks after training

• However, when retested in different situations, infants are less likely to remember the event• incl. different cribs; same cribs with different colored bumpers;

different mobiles; different odors or music in the room


Lack of stability in the environment may have negative consequences for cognitive development

– In a mobile-kicking study, the experimenters changed the mobile during the training phase

– Infants who did not cry when the mobile was changed could easily reactivate the kicking, but infants who cried could not


These findings

• suggest that infants remember whole situations, including the emotions, and the specific sights, sounds, and smells of the surrounding environment

• suggest that infants have a sense of self-history – the experience that the past can be connected to the present by means of recreating one’s own actions in similar situations

• call for a reevaluation of the common observation that people do not remember their experiences as infants, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia


Can we remember experiences from infancy?

• One would have to be in almost exactly the same situation and the same emotional state as during the original experience

• Since this is unlikely, adults and older children are unlikely to be able to retrieve early memories for specific events

• People may have memories of early infancy, but because it is difficult to replicate the exact context, they may be unable to locate the memories in a specific time and place


Can we remember experiences from infancy?• “Reaching in the dark” (Clifton et al.)

– 2½-year-olds who had the experience of reaching for objects in the dark when they were 6 months of age were better at this task than children who did not have this experience, even though it is unlikely that these children remembered the actual experience of doing this when they were 6 months old

• “Still Face” (Bornstein et al.)– 2½-year-olds who had experienced a “still-face” experiment at 5

months looked less at a photo of the person who had done the still-face compared to two other photos, while other 2½-year-olds showed no preference between these faces


Can we remember experiences from infancy?

• These studies support the idea of participatory memories (see Ch. 2) of early infancy, reported by people during somatic awareness and psychotherapeutic encounters

– It may be possible to experience a feeling, an odor, a body posture, or a pattern of movement without remembering a specific time or place when it first occurred

Picture from: www.globalsomatics.com/about/faculty-bios.htm

http://www.globalsomatics.com/about/faculty-bios.htm

Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

Piaget viewed infant actions as adaptations to the environment that involve the whole infant

– Sensorimotor Stage I (newborn period)

• the majority of the infant’s actions are in the form of reflexes to adapt to the environment

– Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)

• infants begin to act more purposefully – they are able to recognize the connections between their own behavior & events in the environment

Picture from: http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html


Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months) – primary circular reactions

– repetitive movements in which the infant focuses on his or her own actions

Picture from: babyparenting.about.com/od/photogallery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Zoe-Cosette--3-months.htm

– by 2 to 3 months, the baby can recognize simple connections between behavior & its effect, and will repeat the same behavior many times, often with great delight

– infants at this stage do not appear to be interested in the object for its own sake


According to Piaget, the meaning of a particular object or person to the infant is the action and experience the child brings to it.

(p. 282)

For example, a rattle means “graspable, seeable, suckable”


Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)

• infants’ actions are not intended to explore the object, but to experience the effects of their own behavior

– this suggests that infants are developing a sense of self-agency, the feeling that they are a causal agent that can successfully affect one’s own body & environment

• Later in this stage, infants begin to combine different primary circular reaction schemes into more unified behavior patterns

– for example, visually guided reaching at about 4 months


Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months) • Babies in Stage II have the ability for cross-modal

perception; their memories are integrated wholes of sights, sounds, smells, and movements

• This suggests that infants have a sense of self-coherence – the feeling that they and the objects around them are integrated whole that have distinct boundaries


Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)

• One aspect of self-agency and self-coherence at this age is the experience of contingency (see Ch. 5)

– In one study (Watson, 1973), the movements of a mobile were linked to an infants’ head presses on an automatic pillow

– if infants discovered that the mobile would move with their head presses, they usually smiled and cooed

– if the pillow inconsistently rewarded head presses, infants became frustrated and distressed


In sum,• In early infancy, exploration, cognition, and motor

behavior are all part of the same underlying developmental process

• Primary circular reactions create powerful motivations for babies to become engaged in the environment– especially when adults create highly ritualized and repetitive

situations as in feeding, playing, bathing, and diapering

• Babies of this age do not enjoy deviations from the routines, which makes it difficult for them to adapt quickly to new caregivers

Emotional Development Emotional Expression & Experience

Three related topics:

• emotion expression

• emotion experience: the inner world of feelings

• emotion regulation: self-control over emotions

Picture from: babyparenting.about.com/od/photogallery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Anya--3-and-a-half-months.htm


Distress, anger & wariness

• One-month-olds’ functional expressions are primarily related to the emotion of distress: crying, generally with eyes closed

• By 4 months

– infants can still show distress

– they also cry with open eyes, looking at their parent, an expression that has been interpreted as anger

• See Video Example at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmgceSSnhTE

– they also show “wary” or hesitant expressions by turning or looking away from unpleasant or confusing situations

Picture from: video.yahoo.com/watch/1171950/4194428

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1171950/4194428


Attention & enjoyment

• One-month-olds show a range of expressions between alertness and drowsiness; they have difficulty switching attention

• Around 2 months, infants become more complex & animated and better coordinated with events in the environment

• Infants learn cognitive tasks more slowly when smiling, which shows that smiling corresponds to a non-analytical emotional experience


After 2 months, babies also develop new expressions of attention and enjoyment

– look for longer periods & can more easily shift gaze from one thing to another (related to brain development)

– more complex expressions of attention

• suggests that the infant is also developing different attention-related emotional experiences such as concentration, excitement, and astonishment


Attention & enjoyment• Smiling during face-to-face interaction develops between

2-5 months• By 3 months, infants show multiple types of smiles that

communicate different positive emotional experiences

• Duchenne smiles are likely to occur during mother-infant face-to-face play when the infant is held upright and is able to see the mother smiling and talking

non-Duchenne smile Duchenne smile


Attention & enjoyment• The play smile – an extremely wide-open mouth and

dropping of the jaw – is observed when infants are held closer to the mother, kissed, or tickled

• About 15% of smiling is followed immediately by looking away from the social partner

• Some researchers have interpreted this as an early manifestation of “coyness,” an emotion that may indicate an awareness of self in interaction with others (Reddy, 2000)


Attention & enjoyment

• During the first 2 months, vocalizations are of three sorts: cry, discomfort, and “vegetative”

• After 2 months, two kinds of non-distress vocalizations appear

– Speech-like sounds, such as cooing, are produced in the front of the mouth and have a more resonant quality – increase between 2 and 5 months

• Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTjIXHlB-m0

– Non-speechlike sounds: produced in the back of the mouth, lack projection, and have a more nasal quality – decline between 2 and 5 months

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTjIXHlB-m0


According to the dynamic systems theory of emotion (see Ch. 2), emotion is closely related to the social communication system

– For example, different types of communication (e.g., different types of play) require different forms of facial communication & will be accompanied by different types of internal feelings

– In specific types of communicative situations, infants show organized patterns of expressive movements

• e.g., positive engagement, passive withdrawal, active protest

Emotional Development Emotional Regulation

• During the first 4 months, increases in emotion regulation are shown by

– a decrease in crying

– an ability to easily shift gaze from one thing to another

– mastery of continuous and repeated bouts of smiling

• smiling is a relaxation response, and it seems to be a way of reducing arousal without looking away from the situation.

• Infants can now handle a wider variety of stimulation with more abrupt changes


• sensorimotor skills

– infants can calm themselves when they can get their hand into their mouth & keep it there

– movements such as reaching for an object can calm them down

• caregivers

Contributors to emotion regulation


A small percentage of infants has a regulatory disorder

– disturbances of sleep, feeding, state control, sensory and perceptual processing, and self-calming

– these infants may be diagnosed with autism or other developmental disorders

– untreated children show more emotional and social problems such as depression and aggression


From a dynamic systems point of view, emotion regulation is the result of both infant and adult contributions and the unfolding of

the parent-infant relationship around regulatory issues

(p. 290)

Social Development

• Young infants show the widest range of emotion expressions in the company of adults

– infants are more likely to smile, vocalize, and make relaxed arm movements with responsive adults than with peers, inanimate faces, or animate or inanimate toys

• Adults adapt themselves to infants

Social Development The Effects of Infants on Adult Behavior

• Exaggeration

– adults tend to exaggerate aspects of their speech & body movement

• Slowing down & simplification

– each action is held longer than with an adult

– particular syllables are prolonged and speech is slower, giving it a melodic or singsong quality

– adults reduce the complexity of their behavior and their speech when talking to infants

Picture from: www.familymagazinegroup.com


• Rhythm and repetition

– adults may say the same word or phrase many times with minor variations or make a series of exaggerated head nods punctuated with a clap or a vocalization

– adults use different melodic contours to prohibit, elicit attention, encourage infant participation, encourage imitation, approve and soothe

– exaggeration, slowing down, rhythm, and melody in speech are called infant-directed (ID) speech (“motherese“)


• Matching and Attunement

– although infants can imitate adults, adults imitate babies much more; they may match infant vocal sounds, pitches, rhythms, facial expressions, body movements, and so on

– in attunement (Stern, 1985), the adult’s behavior is similar to the infant’s but not an exact copy

• for example, the infant may shake his or her arm up and down in a rhythmical motion & the parent may respond in a different modality, such as vocalizing “yea-yea-yea-yea” in exactly the same rhythm as the baby’s arm movements


• Turn Taking

– protoconversation – in the early months, adults fill in the natural pauses of the infant’s actions with their own actions, creating the appearance of turn taking (M.C. Bateson, 1975; Trevarthen, 1977)

– between 4 and 6 months, infants begin to shift to a more interactive mode of behavior: they learn to wait until the adult pauses before beginning their own actions


Frames (Fogel, 1993) – regularly recurring communication routines

– frames that emerge during this period are social games like face-to-face play, tickle and other tactile games, peekaboo, and frames for playing with toy objects

– there are also frames for caregiving such as bedtime, bathing, and feeding routines

– parents and infants develop frames that are unique to their relationship

Picture from: tvlesson.blogspot.com

Social Development Individual differences between infants

Adults are drawn to

• infant vocalizations that are relaxed and resonant and have greater pitch contours.

• facial features that have babylike characteristics, such as large eyes, a round face, thin eyebrows, and a small nose bridge

• attractive infants

– in one study, mothers with less attractive infants were more attentive to other people besides the infant & were more likely to spend time in caretaking rather than affectionate behavior


Gender differences

• with girls, mothers and fathers are more likely to comment on the present situation & the infant’s current state

• with boys, they comment more on absent or future events

• mothers of boys stimulate them more in general, while mothers of girls are more likely to stroke and caress their infants

Picture from: www.nevadafamilies.org


Expressiveness

• studies have shown that infants who are less expressive are actually more aroused by stimulation

– low-expressive infants tend to have higher heart rates, higher cortisol, and higher muscle tension

• these children have been referred to as inhibited

– they are physiologically predisposed to be highly responsive to stimulation but tend to withdraw from stimulation rather than express signs of engagement or enjoyment

Cultural DifferencesIn adult-infant communication

A pattern of close physical contact and rapid response to crying (called attachment parenting) is common among hunting and gathering cultures

– for instance, Elauma infants spend almost all their time in physical contact with an adult & adults (physically) respond more often and more quickly to infant crying than British parents

– more egalitarian societies seem to promote closer and more lasting contact with infants

Picture from: www.amazon-indians.org


• In the West

– we try to affect sleeping, feeding, and interactive social behavior from an early age

– we want our babies to be scheduled, to smile, and not to cry

– we encourage independence through teaching behaviors leading to infant socialization

• In Japanese and Native American cultures, adults believe that infants are precious & close to God

– infants should be kept quiet & not influenced by adults until they begin to make some of their own initiatives (around 6 months)


Japanese vs. U.S. mothers– spend less time in physical contact with their babies

when awake, although they sleep with babies at night– hold, rock, bounce, touch, and kiss their babies less– tend to use more negative vocalizations throughout the

day, and use more nonsense sounds and baby talk during play (vs. sentences & adult words)

– are more likely to talk about how to incorporate objects into social play than to label objects

Effects of Adult Behavior on InfantsContingent Responsiveness

From 2 months of age, babies seem highly sensitive to how others interact with them

– when responses are contingent, infants tend to smile, coo, and look more at the adults

– when responses are noncontingent, infants are more likely to fuss, cry, or look away

– infants also look and smile more when adults are producing exaggerated behavior, such as motherese

Picture from: www.parenthood.com

Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants Experimental disturbances of play frames

When play frames are disrupted, infants smile and gaze less during the interaction

– In one type of study, infants and mothers are viewing videotaped images of one another. The researchers show the infant a videotape of the mother that was made on an earlier occasion, so that she is not contingent with the infant’s behaviors

– In another type of study, peekaboo games are played in a disorganized way, such as by saying “peekaboo” before covering the face or not uncovering the face at the expected time


The still-face procedure – the experimenter asks the mother to be silent & nonexpressive

– Some babies continue to smile and look at the mother for a few seconds; then they stop smiling and look away

– If the still face goes on for more than a few minutes, the baby becomes increasingly distressed and withdrawn.

– When mothers are asked to resume their normal interactions, most of the infants begin to cry if they have not cried already

– The same effects are observed in different cultures and with both mothers and fathers


The Still-Face Procedure• At 3 to 4 months, infants are more distressed at the still

face than at separation from the mother

• The still-face suppresses the parasympathetic (relaxation) nervous system & increases cortisol

• When mothers touch their infants during the still face, the effect of the still face on the infant is significantly less

• If mothers are more contingently responsive during the normal play episodes, infants recover more quickly & show less physiological suppression of the parasympathetic and cortisol systems

Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants Effects of maternal depression & stress

• Depression occurs in 10-13% of women following childbirth

• Infants of depressed mothers

– are more likely to be fussy, to show negative facial expressions, to have low levels of physical activity, and to be withdrawn

– have higher levels of cortisol

– have brain asymmetries indicative of a withdrawn mood state

• Effects on infants are more likely if the depression lasts long & the infants have few opportunities to interact with nondepressed adults

Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants Effects of maternal depression & stress

Mothers who are stressed after birth often over-arouse their babies & do not recognize infant cues to slow down or to change behavior

– this behavior creates stress and physiological arousal for the baby, who begins the neuroception patterns of flight or freeze

– this in turn makes the mother more anxious and more insistent, creating a mutually escalating spiral of chase-and-dodge and physiological and emotional dysregulation

– left untreated, these dyads go on to develop an insecure attachment relationship (see Ch. 8)

Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants

In summary

• During play frames, parents modify their behavior so that infants can most readily appreciate; infants’ smiling and gazing encourage the parents to continue

• The mutual influence is co-regulated and dynamic

– the effects of one partner on the other can only be determined by looking at individual differences between infants (such as infants who are difficult) or parents (such as maternal depression) or during experimental perturbations of adult behavior

Self-AwarenessThe Sense of an Ecological Self

The ecological self is characterized by

1. Self-agency – the sense that one is capable of generating one’s own actions and expecting that these self-generated actions will have consequences

2. Self-coherence – the sense of being a whole physical entity with boundaries and limitations

3. Self-affectivity is the sense of having inner emotional feelings that routinely go together with specific experiences

4. Self-history is the sense of enduring, of having a past, of going on even through changes, as when one acts and feels similar ways with familiar people or in familiar situations


• By 3 ½ months, infants begin to watch their hands moving in front of them & they feel their arms and hands at the same time

– it is likely that this cross-modal experience gives the infant a sense of self-recognition through self-coherence

• Young infants explore their own bodies, feeling the touching hand & the part that is being touched

– In the first few hours of life, newborns touch their own head in an ordered sequence beginning with the mouth, then moving to the face, head, ear, nose, and eyes


• The ecological self is also experienced in relation to the social environment

– interacting with another person, it is possible to feel the part of the interaction that comes from the self in comparison to that part contributed by the other

• This kind of participatory co-regulated relationship with another person also gives the infant information about the other person in relation to the self, a sense of intersubjectivity

Family and Society

• Family systems theory: each member of the family is a part of a feedback system with every other family member

– when families have three or more members, the relationship between two of them can affect the third and vice versa

• The birth of a baby brings major changes for a family

– after a child is born, parents must learn to cope with a lot of new conditions, including a total alteration of lifestyle, lack of sleep, and the adjustment of the marital relationship to include new family members

Picture from: www.canamcryo.com

Family and Society Success in the Transition to Parenthood

New parents must address four type of problems

1. The energy demands associated with infant care, such as loss of sleep and extra work resulting in fatigue

2. New parenthood places stress on the marital relationship

3. The responsibility of caring for and rearing a child

4. Parents must cope with the additional costs of raising a child, in the form of food, clothing and education


• Adult developmental factors:

– the adults’ relationships with their own parents, prior experience with child care, self-esteem and belief in self-efficacy as a parent & readiness to have children

• Concurrent factors:

– the marital relationship, other family members, the amount of social support available to the parents, & nonfamily factors, such as income and job satisfaction


Marital quality

– Predicted by prenatal marital quality: couples who have the most conflicts prenatally also have the most postnatally

– Equality of role relationships before childbirth predicts marital satisfaction after birth

– Positive and warm relationship with one’s own parents

– A postbirth experience that is not more difficult than anticipated


• Mothers’ ability to parent and to cope with child rearing is predicted by high level of marital satisfaction & the amount of father involvement

• For fathers, marital satisfaction is associated with more positive attitudes toward the parenting role and with more time spent with the infant

– Men’s involvement in infant care depends primarily on social factors, such as marriage, job, and social acceptability of parenting

Picture from: www.flickr.com/photos/93648313@N00/154159152/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93648313@N00/154159152/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93648313@N00/154159152/

Experiential Exercises The ecological self

• As humans, we can see part of our bodies in our field of vision at all times– Try this by closing one eye and looking straight ahead – you will

see your own nose

• Thus, whenever you perceive your environment, you perceive yourself. Perceiving the environment is co-perceiving yourself.

• The ecological self is the sense of self as situated in the environment.

• This sense of self is still present in adults, but much more in the background of experience. You can explore your ecological sense of self during everyday activities.

Experiential ExercisesMutual Gazing

• This exercise is about the parental role & the infant experience during face-to-face interaction

• The class is divided up into pairs who do not know each other very well. Pairs sit on the floor or in chairs facing each other

• Students will play the role of either the parent or the child (2 min.)– parents: your responsibility is to witness the child with a steady gaze.– children: you can do anything you want; feel free to look at your parent

or look away as much as you need or want to

• Repeat the same process, only this time the adult acts distracted by something in the room

• Repeat the same process, only this time the adult acts intrusive, trying to get the “baby’s” attention.

• Change roles• Sit in pairs & discuss the experience

two to five months fogel chapter 6 created by ilse dekoeyer-laros, ph.d

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