Infant Mental Health

This study presents findings from an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) initiative in Arizona called Smart Support. The IECMHC used an early childhood mental health consultation model as an early childhood education intervention to address the needs of preschoolers with challenging behaviors. Dis- parities in teacher‐child relationships and discipline are some of the most persistent racial disparities impacting young Black children. The goal of IECMHC is to facilitate teachers' skills to respond to challenging child behavior and to shift teachers' internal representations of young children. This study is one of the first to link a statewide IECMHC intervention to the analysis of racial and gender teacher‐child relational and discipline disparities. Multi- level growth analyses examined whether child scores at baseline and growth over time differed as a function of child race and gender. At baseline, Black children, com- pared to white peers, and Black boys, compared to white boys, had higher teacher‐child conflict scores. These scores decreased more strongly over the course of IECMHC such that Black children's outcomes surpassed those of white peers by the end of consultation. A trend was also seen for the reduction of Black boys' preschool expulsion risk, al- though this trend was only marginally significant.

A World of Babies provides a wide variety of answers to these and countless other child-rearing questions, precisely because diverse communities around the world hold such different beliefs about parenting and engage in remarkably different child-rearing practices. While celebrating that diversity, the book also explores the challenges that poverty, globalization, and violence pose for parents.
Fully updated for the twenty-first century, this edition features a new introduction and eight new or revised chapters that directly address contemporary parenting challenges, from China and Peru to Israel and the West Bank.
Written as imagined advice manuals to parents, the creative format of the book brings alive a rich body of knowledge that highlights many models of baby-rearing–each shaped by deeply held values and widely varying contexts
Parenthood may never again seem a matter of “common sense.”

There are still important gaps in our knowledge regarding the intergenerational transmission of attachment from mother to child, especially in mothers with childhood histories of abuse and neglect (CA&N). This study examined the contributions of reflective function concerning general attachment relationships, and specifically concerning trauma, as well as those of maternal attachment states of mind to the prediction of infant attachment disorganization in a sample of mothers with CA&N and their infants, using a 20-month follow-up design. Attachment and reflective functioning were assessed during pregnancy with the Adult Attachment Interview. Infant attachment was evaluated with the Strange Situation Procedure. The majority (83%) of infants of abused and neglected mothers were classified as insecure, and a significant proportion (44%) manifested attachment disorganization. There was a strong concordance between mother and child attachment, indicative of intergenerational transmission...

Using a longitudinal design, this study examined the relationship of a mother's prenatal representation of her child and her parenting behavior with that child at 1 year of age in a sample of women who were either exposed or not exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) (N = 164; M child age = 1.1 years, SD = .11 years; 52% male). Controlling for prenatal IPV, a MANCOVA analysis revealed that prenatal representational typology was significantly related to parenting behavior 1 year postpartum. Mothers whose representations were affectively deactivated (disengaged) were more behaviorally controlling with their children. Mothers whose representations were affectively overactivated (distorted) were more hostile with their children. Mothers with balanced representations demonstrated more positive parenting. Exposure to IPV did not moderate this relationship. There was no direct association between prenatal or postnatal IPV and parenting behavior. These findings suggest that prenatal representations influence postnatal parenting behavior in significant and theoretically consistent ways and that this relationship functions similarly for both abused and nonabused women. Results add to the growing literature that internal representations serve to guide behavior throughout development and suggest that maternal working models may be one important link in the intergenerational transmission of attachment relationships.

ABSTRACT: Parenting interactions are important for children’s early development, but existing observational measures of parenting are often difficult for practitioners to use in their work with parents and have been developed based on primarily European American middle-income parents. Practitioners working with parents of infants and young children need a psychometrically strong observational measure of parenting behaviors appropriate for diverse groups. We tested the reliability and validity of 89 specific parenting behavior items by having observers rate over 4,500 viderecorded observations of parent–infant interaction from the archive of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project and other research. These observations at multiple age points were from over 2,000 low-icome families, including European Americans, African Americans, and Latino Americans. Interrater agreement was tested for each item. Scale internal consistency and single-factor structure were tested within ...

When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. But how do these beliefs affect the ways the Beng raise their children?
In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how Beng religious ideology affects every aspect of their childrearing practices, from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk. She shows too how widespread poverty among the Beng sets practical limits on these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the ways we all raise our children.
Anyone interested in the culture of infancy, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From.

ABSTRACT: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project ͑BEIP͒ is the first ever randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care for young children. It involved a collaboration between American investigators and Romanian health and child protection professionals. We present a brief description of the Romanian context and the project itself before discussing a number of ethical issues raised by the project. Organized around a discussion of exploitation, risk/benefit ratio, and cultural sensitivity, we evaluate a number of ethical issues involved in the BEIP using the Ethical Clinical Research Framework and the Fair Benefits Framework. Based on this review, we conclude that notwithstanding challenging ethical dilemmas, the benefits of the project outweighed its risks. Throughout the planning and implementation of the project, ethical issues were a central focus of discussion among the investigators and in the collaboration between Americans and Romanians....

This paper summarises 9 years of research by strategy consultants into the root causes of violent behaviour and the most effective methods, worldwide, to address these root causes. It draws attention to the particular importance of parenting/care in the early years in the development of violent personalities