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Physical play with fathers may help children control emotions, study finds | Children | The Guardian

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Children whose fathers spend time playing with them at a very early age may find it easier to control their behaviour and emotions, which has a beneficial impact as they get older and start school, according to a new study.

Research carried out by Cambridge University' s faculty of education and the LEGO Foundation looked at how mothers and fathers play with children aged 0 to 3 years and how it affects child development.

While there are many similarities, it found that fathers tend to engage in more physical play like tickling, chasing, and piggy-back rides, which researchers claim appears to help children to learn to control their feelings.

The research is based on a review of data from 78 studies, carried out mainly in Europe or the US between 1977 and 2017, which found a consistent correlation between father-child play and a child's ability later to control their feelings.

Researchers found that on average most fathers play with their child every day, but even with the youngest children play tends to be more physical, with fathers enjoying boisterous rough-and-tumble play with toddlers.

Those children who benefited from "high-quality" playtime with their fathers were, according to the study, less likely to display hyperactivity, emotional or behavioural difficulties. They also appeared to be able to control their aggression, and were less likely to lash out at other children during disagreements at school.

Paul Ramchandani, professor of play in education, development and learning at the University of Cambridge and one of the authors of the study, said: "Physical play creates fun, exciting situations in which children have to apply self-regulation. You might have to control your strength, learn when things have gone too far - or maybe your father steps on your toe by accident and you feel cross."

"It's a safe environment in which children can practise how to respond. If they react the wrong way, they might get told off, but it's not the end of the world - and next time they might remember to behave differently."

Children who only live with their mother need not be at a disadvantage, the authors point out. All parent-child play interactions in the early years are linked to more positive cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes for children.

"One of the things that our research points to time and again is the need to vary the types of play children have access to, and mothers can, of course, support physical play with young children as well," Ramchandani said.

Fellow author Dr Ciara Laverty, from the LEGO Foundation, said the findings had policy implications, suggesting structures were needed that give fathers, as well as mothers, time and space to play with their children during the early years.

"Even today, it's not unusual for fathers who take their child to a parent-toddler group, for example, to find that they are the only father there. A culture shift is beginning to happen, but it needs to happen more."

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Physical play with fathers may help children control emotions, study finds

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Children whose fathers spend time playing with them at a very early age may find it easier to control their behaviour and emotions, which has a beneficial impact as they get older and start school, according to a new study.

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Georgette Mulheir: The tragedy of orphanages

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Orphanages are costly and can cause irreparable damage both mentally and physically for its charges -- so why are they still so ubiquitous? Georgette Mulheir gravely describes the tragedy of orphanages and urges us to end our reliance on them, by finding alternate ways of supporting children in need.

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Veerle Provoost: Do kids think of sperm donors as family?

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How do we define a parent -- or a family? Bioethicist Veerle Provoost explores these questions in the context of non-traditional families, ones brought together by adoption, second marriages, surrogate mothers and sperm donations. In this talk, she shares stories of how parents and children create their own family narratives.

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Moshe Szyf: How early life experience is written into DNA

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Moshe Szyf is a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, the study of how living things reprogram their genome in response to social factors like stress and lack of food. His research suggests that biochemical signals passed from mothers to offspring tell the child what kind of world they're going to live in, changing the expression of genes.

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attachment in the early years | openlearn

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This free course, Attachment in the early years, covers theory and research in the area of attachment in early childhood. In the 1950s, John Bowlby was the first person to develop a theory about ...

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All in the Mind - Romanian Orphanage Babies: 21 Years On - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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Knife offenders lack male role models, says senior police officer - BBC News

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A lack of male role models is a key factor behind the increase in knife crime and gang violence, a senior police officer has suggested.

Bedfordshire Assistant Chief Constable Jackie Sebire said some young people who do not have the "protective factor" of a father figure instead look up to drug dealers and gangsters.

She said it was "too easy" to blame police cuts, social media and drugs.

The government said early intervention projects were a focus of its efforts.

ACC Sebire, who leads on serious violence for the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), said an absence of father figures affects children in affluent areas as well as those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"We don't talk enough" about the issue, she added.

A report published last year estimated that about 27,000 children in England considered themselves to be in a gang.

However, a much lower figure of 6,560 children were actually known by youth offending teams or children's services to be involved in gangs.

Sheldon Thomas, founder of Gangsline, which provides support to young people involved or at risk of gang activity, said "bad parenting, absent fathers and bad male role models" are among the biggest problems when tackling gang violence.

Mr Thomas, who speaks of his own experience as a gang member in the 1970s, said that if parents do not spend time with their children, then their child "is more likely to end up down the wrong road".

ACC Sebire said: "Where you do have positive male role models, they are potentially the drug dealers, or the exploiters or the organised criminal networks - they become the positive male role model."

The "worst thing", she said, was when both parents refused to attend a police station after their children had been arrested.

"That's for me, one of the saddest things that I see... because actually they [the parents] can't be bothered."

But speaking to reporters at the NPCC conference in Westminster this week, ACC Sebire acknowledged a number of factors contributed to the problem of knife crime.

In 2018 the Home Office said drugs, and in particular a surge in the supply of cocaine, was the main "driver" behind the rise in serious violence.

Other possible factors were said to be the growth of social media and an increase in school exclusions and children in care.

But there were only two passing references to "role models" in the department's 114-page strategy document and no mention of how the absence of such father figures might lead young people down the path towards drug dealing and violent crime.

Discussions about ways to reduce violent crime have also tended to focus on other issues, such as resources, stop-and-search powers and sentencing.

It has been left largely to youth workers, mentors and former gang members to highlight the importance of positive role models, which is why the comments of Jackie Sebire, a former Scotland Yard detective with over 25 years' experience in policing, are so significant.

Patrick Green, chief executive officer of anti-knife charity the Ben Kinsella Trust, said ACC Sebire was "absolutely right" to cite the role of positive male models.

"When this is absent, young boys tend to be more vulnerable to negative influences."

However, he added there is "no single answer" and stressed the need for other root causes such as poverty, deprivation and inequality to be tackled.

A government spokesperson highlighted plans to recruit extra police officers over the next three years and initiatives to tackle the root causes of serious violence.

They added: "We recognise the role trusted role models have to play and to steer young people away from crime and to stop young people being exploited by gangs, we are investing heavily in community-based early intervention projects."

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A lack of male role models is a key factor behind the increase in knife crime and gang violence, a senior police officer has suggested. Bedfordshire Assistant Chief Constable Jackie Sebire said some young people who do not have the "protective factor" of a father figure instead look up to drug dealers and gangsters.

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How you attach to people may explain a lot about your inner life | Science | The Guardian

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How you attach to people may explain a lot about your inner life

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Attachment theory suggests that early interactions with caregivers can dramatically affect your beliefs about yourself, your expectations of others, and how you cope with stress and regulate your emotions as an adult

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Love matters: How parents' love shapes children's lives - Neuroscience News

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Summary: Children whose parents reported loving marital relationships stayed in school longer and entered into marriage later than children whose parents were less affectionate toward each other.
Source: University of Michigan
Parents often put their own relationship on the back burner to concentrate on their children, but a new study shows that when spouses love each other, children stay in school longer and marry later in life.
Research about how the affection between parents shapes their children's long-term life outcomes is rare because the data demands are high. This study uses unique data from families in Nepal to provide new evidence. The study, co-authored by researchers at the University of Michigan and McGill University in Quebec, was published in the journal Demography.

"In this study, we saw that parents' emotional connection to each other affects child rearing so much that it shapes their children's future," said co-author and U-M Institute for Social Research researcher William Axinn. "The fact that we found these kinds of things in Nepal moves us step closer to evidence that these things are universal."

The study uses data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal. The survey launched in 1995, and collected information from 151 neighborhoods in the Western Chitwan Valley. Married couples were interviewed simultaneously but separately, and were asked to assess the level of affection they had for their partner. The spouses answered "How much do you love your (husband/wife)? Very much, some, a little, or not at all?"

The researchers then followed the children of these parents for 12 years to document their education and marital behaviors. The researchers found that the children of parents who reported they loved each other either "some" or "very much" stayed in school longer and married later.

"Family isn't just another institution. It's not like a school or employer. It is this place where we also have emotions and feelings," said lead author Sarah Brauner-Otto, director of the Centre on Population Dynamics at McGill University. "Demonstrating and providing evidence that love, this emotional component of family, also has this long impact on children's lives is really important for understanding the depth of family influence on children."

Nepal provides an important backdrop to study how familial relationships shape children's lives, according to Axinn. Historically, in Nepal, parents arranged their children's marriage, and divorce was rare. Since the 1970s, that has been changing, with more couples marrying for love, and divorce still rare, but becoming more common.

Education has also become more widespread since the 1970s. In Nepal, children begin attending school at age 5, and complete secondary school after grade 10, when they can take an exam to earn their "School-Leaving Certificate." Fewer than 3% of ever-married women aged 15-49 had earned an SLC in 1996, while nearly a quarter of women earned an SLC in 2016. Thirty-one percent of men earned SLCs in 2011. By 2016, 36.8% of men had.

The researchers say that their next important question will be to identify why parental love impacts children in this way. The researchers speculate that when parents love each other, they tend to invest more in their children, leading to children remaining in education longer. The children's home environments may also be happier when parents report loving each other, so the children may be less likely to escape into their own marriages. Children may also view their parents as role models, and take longer to seek similar marriages.

These findings still stood after researchers considered other factors that shape a married couple's relationship and their children's transition to adulthood. These include caste-ethnicity; access to schools; whether the parents had an arranged marriage; the childbearing of the parents; and whether the parents had experience living outside their own families, possibly being influenced by Western ideas of education and courtship.

"The result that these measures of love have independent consequences is also important," Axinn said. "Love is not irrelevant; variations in parental love do have a consequence."

About this neuroscience research article

Source:
University of Michigan
Media Contacts:
Morgan Sherburne - University of Michigan
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: CLosed access
"Parents' Marital Quality and Children's Transition to Adulthood". Sarah R. Brauner-Otto, William G. Axinn, Dirgha J. Ghimire.
Demography doi: 10.1007/s13524-019-00851-w.
Abstract Parents' Marital Quality and Children's Transition to Adulthood
Unique longitudinal measures from Nepal allow us to link both mothers' and fathers' reports of their marital relationships with a subsequent long-term record of their children's behaviors. We focus on children's educational attainment and marriage timing because these two dimensions of the transition to adulthood have wide-ranging, long-lasting consequences. We find that children whose parents report strong marital affection and less spousal conflict attain higher levels of education and marry later than children whose parents do not. Furthermore, these findings are independent of each other and of multiple factors known to influence children's educational attainment and marriage timing. These intriguing results support theories pointing toward the long-term intergenerational consequences of variations in multiple dimensions of parents' marriages.

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Love matters: How parents' love shapes children's lives - Neuroscience News

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Summary: Children whose parents reported loving marital relationships stayed in school longer and entered into marriage later than children whose parents were less affectionate toward each other. Source: University of Michigan Parents often put their own relationship on the back burner to concentrate on their children, but a new study shows that when spouses love each other, children stay in school longer and marry later in life.

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Role of the father and cultural variations 

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Role of the father and cultural variations 

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Finland to give dads same parental leave as mums - BBC News

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Finland's new government has announced plans to give all parents the same parental leave, in a push to get fathers to spend more time with their children.

Paid allowance will increase to a combined 14 months, which works out as 164 days per parent.

Neighbouring Sweden has Europe's most generous system of parental leave with 240 days each after a baby's birth.

Finland says it wants to "promote wellbeing and gender equality".

Health and social affairs minister Aino-Kaisa Pekonen told reporters that "a radical reform of family benefits" had begun, with the aim of strengthening the relationship of parents from the start.

Pushing fathers to take their leave

Under the current system in Finland, maternity leave is 4.2 months, while fathers are given 2.2 months until the child turns two. On top of that, another six months' parental leave can be shared.

However, on average only one in four fathers take what they are given. The current plans now talk only of parental leave.

Each parent would receive 6.6 months' leave (164 days under Finland's six-day-week benefit system) and pregnant women would get an additional month's allowance.

Parents would be allowed to transfer 69 days of their quota. Single parents would be allowed to use both allowances.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said last month that her country still had some way to go to achieve gender equality, and complained that too few fathers were spending time with their children when they were young.

Rest of Europe heading the same way

Anne Lise Ellingsaeter, a University of Oslo professor who led a Nordic inquiry into parental leave, told the BBC that the Nordic countries had been leading the way on giving fathers entitlement that could not be transferred to the mother.

The EU is also heading that way, with a 2019 directive giving member states three years to provide each parent with at least four months' leave, including two months that can not be transferred.

Portugal already has a gender-neutral system, with 120 days paid at 100% of salary and another optional 30 days at 80% of salary.

Prof Ellingsaeter said giving fathers increased rights had not been a complete success in the Nordic countries.

"Norway was the first country in 1993 to have non-transferable leave for fathers and then Sweden followed suit. But Denmark instituted a father quota in 1998 and abolished it later, and it hasn't been re-introduced," she said.

Fathers in Denmark get two weeks after a birth and the mother and father can share a further 32 weeks between them.

Since December, Finland has been governed by a five-party coalition and each party is led by a woman. Ms Marin, 34, has said it is "not that big a deal" in Finnish terms to have women in power.

The government estimates that the changes will cost an extra €100m (£84m; $110m).

Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Portugal were praised in a Unicef report last year for offering the best family-friendly policies.

It ranked the UK, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus and Switzerland the lowest of 31 "rich countries".

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Finland to give dads same parental leave as mums

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Finland's new government has announced plans to give all parents the same parental leave, in a push to get fathers to spend more time with their children. Paid allowance will increase to a combined 14 months, which works out as 164 days per parent.

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Parentese helps parents, babies make 'conversation' and boosts language development - Neuroscience News

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Source: University of Washington
Used in virtually all of the world's languages, parentese is a speaking style that draws baby's attention. Parents adopt its simple grammar and words, plus its exaggerated sounds, almost without thinking about it.
But if parents knew the way they speak could help baby learn, would they alter their speech?

A new study from the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, at the University of Washington suggests they would, to baby's benefit. Researchers examined how parent coaching about the value of parentese affected adults' use of it with their own infants, and demonstrated that increases in the use of parentese enhanced children's later language skills.

The study, published online Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that parents who participated in individual coaching sessions used parentese more often than control-group parents who were not coached, and that coaching produced more parent-child "conversational turns" and increased the child's language skills months later.

"We've known for some time that the use of parentese is associated with improved language outcomes," said Patricia Kuhl, I-LABS co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW. "But we didn't know why. We believe parentese makes language learning easier because of its simpler linguistic structure and exaggerated sounds. But this new work suggests a more fundamental reason.

"We now think parentese works because it's a social hook for the baby brain - its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging and invite the baby to respond."

Parentese is not what is often called "baby talk," which is generally a mash-up of silly sounds and nonsense words. Instead, it is fully grammatical speech that involves real words, elongated vowels and exaggerated tones of voice. Spoken directly to the child, it sounds happy and engaged, and helps infants tune in socially to their parents and respond, even if only through babbling.

In a 2018 study, I-LABS researchers tracked use of parentese among adults and their 6-month-old infants, and found that babies whose parents participated in parentese coaching sessions babbled more and produced more words by age 14 months than infants whose parents were not directed in the technique.

The new study focuses on the long-term outcomes of parent coaching and how it led to changes in the parents' language, in parent-child conversation, and eventually, in the child's speech at 18 months.

"We had no idea that parents would respond so positively to information about how their own speech to the child affects the child's language development. Parent coaching gave parents a measurement tool, almost like a Fitbit for parentese, and it worked," said lead author Naja Ferjan Ramírez, a UW assistant professor of linguistics.

To assess child language output, all families in the study were given a lightweight recorder, which the child wore in a specially designed vest during four separate weekends at ages 6, 10, 14 and 18 months. The device recorded both parent and infant speech over the entirety of two consecutive days, so that researchers could measure parents' use of parentese, parent-child conversational turns, as well as infant language production - either babbling or actual words. Parent coaching sessions occurred at 6, 10 and 14 months.

For the 48 families randomly assigned to receive coaching, the sessions provided guidance and feedback on specific communication strategies, such as using parentese, speaking directly to the child and engaging the child in back-and-forth exchanges known as conversational turns. In reviewing recordings with parents, researchers played back recordings of parents' language behaviors and measured them against research-based targets for child language development. Parents were encouraged to include language as part of daily routines and were given language-interaction tips in the form of cards with "brain building" tips from Vroom, a program of the Bezos Family Foundation.

All parents in the study already used parentese at the beginning of the project, but their use varied greatly, the researchers said. Those in the coaching group learned more about the cognitive and social benefits of parentese, when and how to use it to promote interaction with their child, and the positive effects that parentese could have on their child's language development.

The results show that parent coaching resulted in an increased use of parentese and infant vocalizations that continued to grow after the end of the parent coaching sessions. Between 14- and 18-months, coached families showed a drastic jump in conversational turn-taking and child vocalizations. Children of coached parents produced real words - such as "banana" or "milk" - at almost twice the frequency of children whose parents were in the control group. Parent surveys estimated that the children's 18-month vocabulary averaged around 100 words among children of coached families, compared to 60 words among children in the control group.

"We know that language skills in infancy predict subsequent stages in language development, so enhancements in language behaviors in infancy could therefore have cascading effects on speech development over time," said Ferjan Ramírez.

Kuhl added, "Language evolved to facilitate the social communication skills that are essential for survival of the species. In this study, we observe firsthand how parents' language and social engagement can promote baby's initial responsive coos, which become words, and then sentences - educating infants in the art of human communication."

Funding: The study was funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation and UW I-LABS Ready Mind Project. Sarah Roseberry Lytle, outreach and education director at I-LABS, was a co-author.

About this neuroscience research article

Source:
University of Washington
Media Contacts:
Kim Eckart - University of Washington
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Open access
"Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development". Naja Ferjan Ramírez, Sarah Roseberry Lytle, and Patricia K. Kuhl.
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1921653117.
Abstract Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development
Parental language input is one of the best predictors of children's language achievement. Parentese, a near-universal speaking style distinguished by higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation, has been documented in speech directed toward young children in many countries. Previous research shows that the use of parentese and parent-child turn-taking are both associated with advances in children's language learning. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether a parent coaching intervention delivered when the infants are 6, 10, and 14 mo of age can enhance parental language input and whether this, in turn, changes the trajectory of child language development between 6 and 18 mo of age. Families of typically developing 6-mo-old infants (n = 71) were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Naturalistic first-person audio recordings of the infants' home language environment and vocalizations were recorded when the infants were 6, 10, 14, and 18 mo of age. After the 6-, 10-, and 14-mo recordings, intervention, but not control parents attended individual coaching appointments to receive linguistic feedback, listen to language input in their own recordings, and discuss age-appropriate activities that promote language growth. Intervention significantly enhanced parental use of parentese and parent-child turn-taking between 6 and 18 mo. Increases in both variables were significantly correlated with children's language growth during the same period, and children's language outcomes at 18 mo. Using parentese, a socially and linguistically enhanced speaking style, improves children's social language turn-taking and language skills. Research-based interventions targeting social aspects of parent-child interactions can enhance language outcomes.

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Parentese helps parents, babies make 'conversation' and boosts language development - Neuroscience News

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Source: University of Washington Used in virtually all of the world's languages, parentese is a speaking style that draws baby's attention. Parents adopt its simple grammar and words, plus its exaggerated sounds, almost without thinking about it. But if parents knew the way they speak could help baby learn, would they alter their speech?

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An early life full of neglect, deprivation and adversity leads to people growing up with smaller brains, a study suggests.

The researchers at King's College London were following adopted children who spent time in "hellhole" Romanian orphanages.

They grew up with brains 8.6% smaller than other adoptees.

The researchers said it was the "first and most compelling" evidence of the impact on the developing brain.

The appalling care at the orphanages came to light after the fall of Romania's communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

"I remember TV pictures of those institutions, they were shocking," Prof Edmund Sonuga-Barke, who now leads the study following those children, told the BBC.

He described the institutions as "hellholes" where children were "chained into their cots, rocking, filthy and emaciated".

The children were physically and psychologically deprived with little social contact, no toys and often ravaged by disease.

The children studied had spent between two weeks and nearly four years in such institutions.

Previous studies on children who were later adopted by loving families in the UK showed they were still experiencing mental health problems in adulthood.

Higher levels of traits including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a lack of fear of strangers (disinhibited social engagement disorder) have all been documented.

The latest study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to scan the brains for answers.

There were 67 Romanian adoptees in the study and their brains were compared to 21 adoptees who did not suffer early life deprivation.

"What we found is really quite striking," Prof Sonuga-Barke told the BBC.

First the total brain volume - the size of the brain - was 8.6% smaller in the Romanian adoptees on average.

And the longer they spent in the Romanian orphanages, the greater the reduction in brain size.

However, the impact on the brain was not uniform.

Prof Mitul Mehta, one of the researchers, said: "We found structural differences between the two groups in three regions of the brain.

"These regions are linked to functions such as organisation, motivation, integration of information and memory."

The researchers say these findings could help explain lower IQ and higher rates of ADHD in these adults.

What the study cannot explain is what exactly about early life neglect and deprivation has this effect on the brain.

It means it is hard to work out the effect of other early life traumas such as abuse or being a refugee.

However, the study is clear that the impact on the developing brain goes far beyond just poor nutrition.

Prof Sonuga-Barke said: "This study is important because it highlights for the first time, in a compelling way, the power of the early environment and early adversity to shape brain development.

"It drives impairments over this long period of time - over 20 years - even when children have received top-notch care in loving adoptive families."
Follow James on Twitter.

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An early life full of neglect, deprivation and adversity leads to people growing up with smaller brains, a study suggests. The researchers at King's College London were following adopted children who spent time in "hellhole" Romanian orphanages. They grew up with brains 8.6% smaller than other adoptees.

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Mother leaves a cardboard cut-out of herself in her one-year-old son's room to stop him from crying

Fuki Sato from Japan puts the print up so that her toddler feels like she is there

The boy first caught on in 20 minutes, but his father got another cut-out made

One showed Mrs Sato standing, while the other one had her kneeling on the floor

The boy now plays with his toys in front of his mother's cut-out blissfully unaware

A mother leaves a cardboard cut-out of herself in her one-year-old son's room to stop him from crying in an ingenious hack for parents.

Fuki Sato from Japan puts the print up around the house so her toddler feels like she is there.

The boy caught on within 20 minutes the first time, but his father - who posted the video on his Twitter page @sato_nezi - bought another life-size cut-out which now successfully dupes him.

One shows the mother standing up, while the other has her kneeling on the floor smiling.

In the footage, which has been seen more than 2million times, Mrs Sato puts one of the cut-outs at the entrance to the kitchen as her son plays in front of the TV.

Her husband films from the sofa as she sneaks out the room and closes the door.

The father is heard chuckling as the toddler looks around for his mother and appears to be content that she is in the kitchen.

The boy is seen continuing to play with a box of toys in front of the cardboard image.

His father captioned the clip: 'It's hard because my one-year-old child cries as soon as mom disappears.

'As a countermeasure, I experimented with what would happen if I set up a ''life-sized panel mother''.'

He added: 'As a result, it is not noticed for about 20 minutes. This panel may be useful occasionally...'

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Mother leaves cardboard cut-out of herself in one-year-old son's room

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Fuki Sato from Japan puts the print up so that her toddler feels like she is there The boy first caught on in 20 minutes, but his father got another cut-out made One showed Mrs Sato standing, while the other one had her kneeling on the floor The boy now plays with his toys in front of his mother's cut-out blissfully unaware A mother leaves a cardboard cut-out of herself in her one-year-old son's room to stop him from crying in an ingenious hack for parents.

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4 month old baby tries to sing to Karen Carpenter song,  Melts Hearts.

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This is how giving birth changes your brain.

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Add to recipe box
By Rachael Mogantosh
So you are a human with genitals and you've decided to replicate yourself? Well, congratulations! Not only is the reproduction process fun, at the end you get to keep an actual adorable baby.

But how, exactly, do you do this parenting thing, you may wonder? What are the cultural rules? Should you buy a two-story pram with flashing turn signals or a baby sling made of non-allergenic, sustainably farmed cat fur? If your baby has no hair and a face like a career-end rugby player, is it OK to sticky-tape bows on her head? How do you figure out the kind of parent you want to be, when modern parenting is more complicated than the Eurovision scoring system?

Fear not, my fecund friends. Today, I present you with a breakdown of the parenting subcultures you may find in your area, so that you can decide which suits you best.
Tiger Parent
Life is non-stop action for the Tiger Parent. If you wish to join this gang, you will need energy, substantial funds and room in your seven-seater SUV for large takeaway lattes and anxiety medication. There are many instruments to learn, many sports to try and much work to be done in order to Maximise your Child's Potential ™.

You may like to use red traffic lights and otherwise wasted 'toilet time' to quiz children on geography and current affairs. Keep perspective though, and schedule some 'free play' windows between trapeze, Mandarin, kung-fu and Mock UN. It's best to tightly manage these interactions with other children to avoid the horror of a 'bad-influence' situation where you suggest it is time to complete the daily chess move and your child says 'Jeez, I come in before and done it already.'
Crunchy Parent
This style of parenting requires a strong spine and a large bed. Breastfeeding is encouraged until such time as the baby is old enough to say "I'm trying to watch Masterchef, Mum, get those things outta my face!".

Co-sleeping means that you share the bed with your baby so that he or she can feel comforted by the warmth of your body, but you should note that 'sleeping' in this instance refers only to the baby and not the parents. Baby-wearing is encouraged and strollers highly frowned upon, so you may wish to open an account with your osteopath. Children should ideally be clothed in organic hemp neutrals woven by a feminist Fair Trade collective from a third world nation.

The difficulty facing Crunchy Parents is that a consciously hands-off, free range approach can often produce rowdy kids. This can be wonderful, but keeping an unruffled, peaceful demeanour while simultaneously shouting 'Spirulina! Get your Birkenstocks out of my goat cheese! It is FERMENTING!' will be challenging.
Rock Parent
Many aspects of being a Rock Parent are easy. Dress your child in vintage t-shirts, swear a lot around them, and take a relaxed approach to bedtime and haircuts. Let your kid taste your beer, take photos of this and post it on Facebook as a fun visual illustration of your laid-back attitude. (Note - this is not so funny with an Orchy bottle bong and may result in a visit from the authorities.)

The main difficult Rock Parents will face is in avoiding the pervasive pull of the Wiggles. Without your knowledge your child will be drawn into their web and imprinted for life. One day at a hipster BBQ your child will be asked to sing a song and instead of their usual adorable rendition of the Ramones classic 'The KKK Took My Baby Away', from their throat will issue, to your horror: 'Wags the Dog, He Likes to Tango.'
Gay Parent
Studies show that same-sex parents are often better at managing disagreements and anger. In this way and others, same-sex parents may occasionally wish to bring some opposite-sex behaviours into their household to give their child a broad view of gender relations. Gay men, you may wish to suddenly and inexplicably throw a tantrum over a household chore or system that has previously never caused concern. For instance; packing school lunches or emptying the compost bin. Try to time these rages to occur approximately every 28 days and make sure to add universal statements to your impassioned monologue, as in 'I always! This never! Not once!' and so on.

Lesbians who have skills in craft may like to try fashioning a set of hairy balls out of some old pantyhose and wear shorts with these hanging out of the bottom so that kids get the real 'dad' experience. If possible, open the door to religious people while wearing your 'house-pants.'
In Conclusion
Parents, you may see yourselves above, or you may not. You will find modern parenting to be a wonderful melting pot of cultures and lifestyles. Perhaps you are a Traditional Parent? A Status Parent? A Homeschooling Wiccan Artisanal Cheesemaker Parent? Whatever tribe you relate to, you are part of a larger culture of families and friends, working together to one shared end: raising the next generation who, will, in the final reckoning, be changing our nappies in the nursing home.
About Rachael Mogantosh Read more from Rachael here Rachael lives with her sexy geek husband and three small children in a beach town south of Sydney. Here she cooks, teaches her children the art of interpretive dance, kisses the baby's face off and tries, at least once a day, to laugh hard enough that she wets her pants a little bit. It makes for more washing, but great happiness. (trust me when I say: it's one of the best reads out there - Michelle)

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Modern Parenting: A Guide To Subcultures - MamaBake

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Add to recipe box By Rachael Mogantosh So you are a human with genitals and you've decided to replicate yourself? Well, congratulations! Not only is the reproduction process fun, at the end you get to keep an actual adorable baby. But how, exactly, do you do this parenting thing, you may wonder?

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Wed 27 Dec 2006 05.25 EST

Lacramioara Lungu has a promising future that once seemed impossible. The talented oboe player has won a place at reknowned music school the Conservatoire in Bucharest. It's an achievement all the more remarkable because of her bleak beginnings, as one of hundreds of thousands of orphans facing starvation and neglect in Romanian orphanages.

When communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu was toppled in 1989, the state of the country's orphanages was exposed in shocking television pictures broadcast worldwide. The resulting wave of pity sparked a remarkable aid operation in which dozens of individuals joined established charities running aid convoys to ease the children's plight.

The scale of the problem was immense: 300,000 orphans were confined in state orphanages across the country, where they lived cut off from the outside world. Beds were packed into huge dormitories, children were neglected, given few if any toys, and the little schooling on offer was conducted within orphanage walls.

But 17 years on Lacramioara, who is 19, is one of the success stories the British charity Fara points to as a sign of how the situation has changed.

"She came to us from a state orphanage six or seven years ago," said chairwoman Jane Nicholson. "She has a great talent which she would not have been able to pursue in a state orphanage. But we were able to offer her lessons and now she won a place to study the oboe with one of the best auditions of anyone in the country."

Jane first joined an aid mission to Romania after seeing the horrific pictures of orphanages on television. "I'm a trained nurse and went out there with 25 volunteers. We took medical supplies, food and clothing. I just wanted to help."

A year later Jane - a former chairwoman of health charity Sue Ryder Care - co-founded Fara after realising the scale of the work needed to transform the children's lives. They decided to set up their own children's homes because the massive state orphanages - which often housed 200 children - could only be reformed so much.

Their first home, for 16 children, opened in 1997 in the Suceava district in northern Romania, and they set about trying to integrate the children - fighting to have them educated in local schools. Later the government asked them to open a second home in Bucharest and around each home they run a foster care programme, childcare services and prevention of abandonment schemes. The UK charity office is run by an administrator with income generated from Fara's 40 charity shops. In Romania the charity has a network of over 100 foster mothers, psychologists, social workers and other specialists.

Two years ago they set up an organic farm to teach young people skills, such as horticulture and carpentry, to help them find work when they leave care. Next year they plan to open a specialist learning centre for children with disabilities in Bucharest.

The situation has improved dramatically: The number of children in orphanages has fallen by 90%, to 30,000; many of the big state orphanages have closed; and the government has developed foster care programmes. But because the closure of the orphanages was a condition of EU accession, Jane says many closures happened too fast to arrange alternative provision for all the children. Some ended up on the streets or were pushed back to families that didn't want them or treated them badly.

Abandonment is still a problem. Earlier this year four children under the age of eight were abandoned in temperatures of minus 20 degrees in a northern Romanian village. A neighbour found them, hungry and cold, and brought them to Fara's children's home. "We took all four in our home - we felt it was very important to keep them together - and they are doing very well," Jane said.

Another charity working in northern Romania, Children on the Edge, believes poverty and the lack of an efficient social work system are largely to blame for the continuing problem of abandonment. Expected EU money should help alleviate the worst rural hardship.

The charity's assistant director, Simon Dowe, says they have seen great changes for abandoned children, and have adapted their support programmes too, moving from aid to integration programmes, and now helping teenagers leave care.

"Unfortunately abandoned children face discrimination and are often seen as thieves or beggars so we have to work hard to get them jobs," he said.

Simon has been working in Romania since 1990. After initial aid work he and a fellow volunteers started the charity to train staff and campaign to reform the childcare system.

Children used to be shunted from institution to institution as they grew, moving from a baby orphanage when they reached five years and so on.

"A baby orphanage was one of the ones we refurbished and we campaigned to keep those 50 children in there together as a group and not have them moved around, and we got agreement to send them to a local school," he said.

"They are still together now in six apartments where they live with carers. Some have turned 18 and have left but most are 15 and 16 and they are preparing to leave. But even when they leave we still have a kind of parental role and they can come back to us if they have problems."
Topics

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Link text: What happened to the Romanian orphans?

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Thousands joined aid convoys to help neglected orphans in Romania when their appalling lives in state institutions were revealed. Now, as the country prepares to accede to the EU, Sara Gaines talks to charities to find out what happened to some of those children - and why they still need charity help.

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Flawed theory of Maternal Deprivation

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Professor Sir Michael Rutter speaking on the flawed theory of Maternal Deprivation

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Uploaded by even Toddlers Need Fathers on 2016-02-26.

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Mary Ainsworth, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4

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Claudia Hammond looks at Mary Ainsowrth's research on the parent-child relationship.

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Used alongside parenting classes lesson

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The baby bond: forming a relationship - Parentchannel.tv

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Bonding with your baby can take time. We look at the positive effects of a few simple ideas like skin to skin contact, cuddling, and simply talking to your baby, to form a great relationship with your baby. For more baby advice, please visit http://www.familylives.org.uk/advice/pregnancy-and-baby/

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For use in animal studies for and against lesson

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For use in animal studies for and against lesson

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For use in animal studies for and against lesson

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Every year, millions of animals are routinely cut open, tortured, and killed―all in the name of researc

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Monkeys and Morality: Crash Course Psychology #19

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You can directly support Crash Course at http://www.subbable.com/crashcourse Subscribe for as little as $0 to keep up with everything we're doing. Also, if you can afford to pay a little every month, it really helps us to continue producing great content.

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The Life Scientific - Podcast

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Professor Sir Michael Rutter has been described as the most illustrious and influential psychiatric scientist of his generation. His international reputation has been achieved despite the fact that as a young

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Professor Sir Michael Rutter, The Life Scientific - BBC Radio 4

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Professor Sir Michael Rutter has been described as the most illustrious and influential psychiatric scientist of his generation. His international reputation has been achieved despite the fact that as a young

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Great podcast discussion attachment and mental health

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Great podcast discussion attachment and mental health

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Lynne Malcolm: Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN. I'm Lynne Malcolm. Today, taking care of very young minds.

Louise Newman: We think about infancy, the nought to three year period roughly as foundational, meaning that a whole lot of both the psychological and neurological factors that are related to ongoing mental health are literally laid down during those critical early years. And we are very interested in understanding those developmental pathways, so the consequences of having good or maybe adverse experiences very early. But in general our infant period of development is absolutely critical when we think about a range of both neuropsychological and psychological and emotional developmental factors that are set up during that period.

Kathy Lu: I'm Kathy, Tomas is 16 months, he is a very active little boy. He is a lot of joy, he is a lot of hard work. But the first emotion that I had was I need to protect this little thing. Every time I have an interaction with him sometimes I imagine the little networks in his brain connecting, and I am just very conscious of the fact that whatever relationship or experience he has in the beginning will influence the rest of his life.

Louise Newman: The babies currently in places like Nauru are in particularly hazardous environments in terms of development, and from what we know in other examples of child neglect and trauma, that these effects are likely to be extremely long term.

Lynne Malcolm: Louise Newman, professor of psychiatry at Melbourne University and director the Centre of Women's Mental Health at the Royal Women's Hospital. She's a passionate advocate for the mental well-being of children, particularly those in vulnerable situations.

She explains what influences a baby's brain development.

Louise Newman: What we do know about brain development is that it's very much shaped by context. So regardless of having the appropriate genetic make-up, if you like, for brain development, we need the right sorts of social and interactive experiences for the brain to grow and develop in a normative way. So we know, for example, that brains grow better in the context of caretaking relationships that are positive, warm, where there is a sharing of emotional states and where infants are not overly stressed or left in a state with emotions that they can't regulate because they don't yet have those capacities.

So what we've been studying and what follows is that trauma, in the broad sense, or high levels of stress that are not moderated in this critical period of early brain development can have both short-term consequences but importantly long-term consequences. A lot of that is mediated by stress-related hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, which have direct impact on the developing brain during this critical time.

So a stressed brain, excessive amounts of exposure in infancy to things like cortisol will impact those pathways. In essence the infant brain in situations of stress is set up in a way to try and survive as best it can in quite difficult environments, but what that means in the long term is a stress regulatory mechanism that is set on high. It's like taking a thermostat and setting it on high. So stress responses are likely to be exaggerated. There is a vulnerability to the whole range of mental health problems that is established by the impact of early stress.

And interestingly this has been looked at in terms of fairly large-scale epidemiological studies looking at the rates of childhood adversity in the infant period, including disruptions of care, high levels of stress, abuse, which sadly is something very significant in the infant period, all those stressful experiences are risk factors for the entire range of adult type mental health problems. So this is extremely significant work.

Lynne Malcolm: Professor Louise Newman.

Sally Watson is the national president of the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health. She describes what social and emotional wellbeing means in babies and young children.

Sally Watson: They are able to express their emotions freely, that they know that they are going to be responded to, that they can make what they need clear to their primary caregiver, that they are able to regulate their emotions as well, and that they can trust, that they actually have trust in the relationship, that they see that relationships are their source of security and safety.

Lynne Malcolm: Aren't children too young to have their emotional well-being a priority? Aren't there needs really basic, for sleep and for food?

Sally Watson: Well, it's actually really interesting you should say that because what we are increasingly finding is that certainly it's important for infants' physical needs to be met, but it's actually those emotional needs and sensitive responsivity from their parents that is really the keystone for good outcomes in the long term. If we don't have good infant mental health, then the trajectory for the future can be very compromised.

I think for a long time we thought that infants, they don't understand, they don't remember. But what we now know is that infants do remember, and in fact for example if trauma happens at infancy, that the child actually because they don't have communication in terms of using words, that they have implicit memory, so it is remembered in the gestures and what they see in their body. So in fact we now know that trauma in those early months, early years can be more enduring than trauma later on. That's something I think that people are quite amazed to hear.

Lynne Malcolm: Sally Watson.

Kathy Lu works in the field of child health herself, and she's very aware of the importance of trying to meet her baby's needs.

Kathy Lu: So the things that I'm really conscious of is being aware of what he needs from us. So sometimes when he wants to go explore I make sure that that is what he can do. So we give him a lot of time to do his own exploration of the park while we follow him, within boundaries of course. And then another time he comes to me or comes to my partner for comfort and we make sure that we are available. I think a lot of what we do is putting aside our own emotions and our own agenda as much as possible, which is impossible in all scenarios, so that we are able to meet his needs more appropriately.

Lynne Malcolm: The key theoretical framework which practitioners use in taking care of children's mental health is what's known as attachment theory. It was developed by British psychoanalyst John Bowlby during the 1970's

Sally Watson explains:

Sally Watson: Really it's the idea that when a child needs safety, needs security, when there is a threat, that they have somebody that they can go to that is going to keep them safe, like at a physical level but also at an emotional level, that they can trust that that fear, those feelings that they have are going to be able to be managed and regulated by their primary carer.

So where that can go really wrong is if the carer themselves is actually very dis-regulated, so the young child has the experience that the person that they are going to as their source of safety is not able to provide that safety. They may be the person who has caused the danger themselves, they might be the person that has hurt them, they might be the person that has yelled at them. Or they may see that the person that they go to is very, very frightened themselves, or they may have a look on their face that makes them even more scared. Or if the child is very distressed and they have a caregiver that's just not able to manage that distress and gets quite distressed themselves or tries to cajole them out of it rather than actually being able to be in the emotion with the baby, not actually being distressed with the baby but able to actually hold it.

So the child has the experience of knowing that I have this feeling that's a really big feeling and I don't really like it, but I can manage it because the person that is with me can manage it and that is going to make it manageable. So they, through that, learn to...first they sort of co-regulate and then eventually as they get older they can self-regulate. And what ideally we are wanting is for the baby to have the straightest line to know to go to their secure base, their safe haven in the most immediate way, knowing that their needs are going to be responded to.

Lynne Malcolm: Sally Watson.

One of the big challenges in taking care of a young baby is managing their sleep patterns, especially when the caregiver is probably lacking sleep themselves. When her son Tomas was 5 weeks old, Kathy sought help from early childhood professionals.

Kathy Lu: Sleep is massive, sleep is still massive, and it's such a contentious topic. When I was seeing the early childhood nurses and I was seeing the professionals, they were saying, no, it's okay to let him cry, he won't remember. And even though it didn't really agree with me, I was feeling so vulnerable I didn't really challenge that. So some of the stuff they were saying to me was, you know, babies don't have memories. So when you leave the room it's like they forget you are there, unless you are directly in front of them, they don't know that you exist.

So what the early childhood nurse was saying or what they tend to say is that once mum or dad leave the room, the babies will eventually learn to self-soothe because that's the only thing that's available to them and they won't be upset because you are not there and their crying is quite normal for them. Now looking back and I reflect on it I think, for an adult we can justify that they are in a room, they are in a cot, they are nice and safe, for a five-week-old, they have no perception of the reality that they have, all they know is that if Mum is not there, my primary caregiver is not there, I'm not safe, I don't have access to food, I don't have protection.

And the other thing that they often say unless the baby is crying for a real need, then you don't really need to address it, and the real need for them is food or if they are in an unsafe position. So that emotional aspect doesn't seem to play a role at all. And that doesn't agree with how I want to parent.

Lynne Malcolm: So one of the recommendations which is I think still fairly widespread is the use of controlled crying where you let the baby cry for longer and longer periods. Did you ever try that, or what is your feeling about that?

Kathy Lu: I couldn't because I just imagine how distressing it is for him to be in a room by himself crying without having that basic need being met.

Lynne Malcolm: So how did you and how do you manage the crying then?

Kathy Lu: I meet his needs. So if he is crying in the middle of the night, doesn't matter if it's 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock, I go to him and to make sure he is okay. So I gently try to encourage him to be able to sleep on his own and without needing Mum to soothe him, but it's a challenge.

Lynne Malcolm: So when you try and meet your child's needs and you don't practice controlled crying, you are trying to meet your child's needs at every point, are you concerned that perhaps you are not building the child's resilience for the future?

Kathy Lu: So there's a couple of things. As a newborn I think when they cry we need to meet their needs. As a toddler that's a little bit different. So Tomas would often cry. The other day he wanted my glasses to play with and I wouldn't let him play with my glasses. It's not about me giving him everything he wants all the time, it's about saying no when appropriate but then also addressing the emotion. So when he was crying and upset because he couldn't get what he wanted, it was about me saying, 'Tomas, Mummy can see you are really upset and that you really want it, but you can't have that right now because it's dangerous.' I guess that's the way we want to parent. So it's about naming the emotions and setting the boundaries.

We are starting to teach him about emotions. So one of the emotions he knows is 'sad'. So when he falls he would tell us what had happened, he would pat on the ground to say that's what happened, point at his head, then he will show us his sad face. Recently I was changing his nappy on the bed and he crawled away from me and he fell off headfirst, which made me panic. He then started to cry and was quite upset. Once he settled down I was talking him through what had happened and there was a doll next to me so I picked it up and showed him what had happened with the doll. When my husband walked into the room he showed his dad with the doll, he is saying, without words but with motion, he put the doll on the bed, pushed the doll off and said this is what happened to me, then he was able to laugh about it.

I think what we are trying to do is help him grow his understanding of himself and his emotions, and I'm hoping by the time he turns two it also means we will be able to manage a lot of his tantrums a lot better as well.

Lynne Malcolm: And your parents are both Chinese, you have a Chinese background. Are you aware of different cultural perspectives on infant mental health?

Kathy Lu: Definitely. So one of the things the Chinese always say is we think it's a positive when the baby will go to anyone and doesn't complain. So when he goes to someone he doesn't know and he starts to cry, they see that as a negative, that he is unable to separate.

The other thing my mum was saying to me the other day actually was that he found a photo of me from high school at my mum and dad's place, he was walking around with the photo and he was sucking on the photo and he was self-soothing with the photo. When my mum told me that story I said, 'That's actually really good, he is separating from me but he is able to self-soothe with an object.' And my mum's response was, 'Actually that's not good, he is too attached to his mum.' So even at 15, 16 months they're expecting him to be more independent than he is able to be. So there is definitely that.

Lynne Malcolm: Kathy Lu.

Sally Watson from the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health describes some of the ways to support a young child's mental wellbeing.

Sally Watson: One of the things I think we've done for a long time in our culture is a 'toughen up' kind of attitude. You know, if you fall over and the child cries or is upset, that sometimes parents can not actually see that for what it is, that it's actually the child might be a little hurt and they just need some nurturing, and then they are fine. So being really responsive to your child's emotional needs is really important. Being able to really read your baby's cues and not get your feelings caught up in what is happening. Being predictable is really important. And just giving time for the young child to have their own initiatives I guess, for want of a better word.

There's a lot of pressure on parents to be doing things with their babies all the time, to have them knowing their colours and numbers, but if you can actually just be with your baby with a face that when they look up they can see, yes, this person enjoys being with me. But if we can actually just see those little initiatives that they have when they are just kicking their legs, when they might have a little smile or a little sound, we can actually confirm that sound that they are making, just really being there, reassuring the child.

Lynne Malcolm: So how do you build a child's resilience if you are trying to cater to their every need?

Sally Watson: So it's really very interesting. What the research has shown is the more responsive we are to infants in the first two years of life, the more autonomous they will be as adults. That is what security is about. They have what we call that internal working model, that people are there when I need them. So that actually gives them more confidence to be able to take risks. Awful things happen in the best of families, and so what is important is that the children learn that when things happen that they have a way of being able to get through that.

In fact one of the big things that we talk about in working in the area of infant mental health and about relationships is the idea of rupture with repair. You know, you are not always going to get it right. What's important is that when there is that rupture in the relationship, that there is a repair. That is what builds the resilience. It's not that we are saying, well, if I pick up my baby all the time it's going to spoil them, actually what we know is that if we respond to our baby, that they start to actually feel more secure and will know that when I really need my mum or my dad they are going to be available to me.

Lynne Malcolm: So at what stage should a parent be concerned about their child's mental health?

Sally Watson: The signs of babies not going really well is that they are crying a lot, they are not able to be consoled and that they kind of startle very easily, that they seem to blank out a lot and are not very responsive, that they don't seem to have a lot of affect. Those are the sorts of things that it would be worth just going to talk to somebody about what you've noticed. And that can start really, really young. Because it's all about the relationship, and if you are feeling stressed then you are going to start not to be as responsive to the baby and you may start to have not the same positive feelings that you've got for your baby as well. That's the other thing, if you're starting to find you've got feelings towards this baby that are surprising you, you are feeling really negative or you just want to leave it, those sorts of things, that's a really important sign that, yes, I need to go and speak to somebody about what's going on.

Lynne Malcolm: So it's really important for a parent to look after their own mental health as well.

Sally Watson: It is, yes. We talked about the important relationship for the baby. Really it's about...in fact John Bowlby talked about the community, we need a community to raise a baby. There is the primary relationship of the parents, and then it might be the grandparents that support the parents, and then there's the community. But of course the thing is that in our communities today, a lot of people are very isolated. That makes a family quite vulnerable, that if they don't have somebody supporting them to be able to support the baby, it's all about relationships at every level.

Lynne Malcolm: Sally Watson, president of the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health.

You're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm and we're focussing today on the mental health of very young children. When a child's mental wellbeing is disturbed by stress or trauma, it can affect them well into their adult life.

Louise Newman is Professor of Psychiatry at Melbourne University and director of the Centre for Women's Mental Health at the Royal Women's Hospital. She's a passionate advocate for taking care of children's mental health. And sadly, she says that children of asylum seekers who are being held in detention are at very high risk of lasting psychological damage.

Louise Newman: These infants, particularly the infants who are born in detention, have the double situation of risk of having parents who are usually depressed, extremely anxious, deeply troubled by the situation they find themselves in, and being themselves in a restricted environment, so not getting the right sort of input. And when we've looked at the outcomes for these infants, they are very compromised.

In very early studies where we looked at infants in places like Woomera and Baxter in the first round of detention and found that these young children had attachment difficulties, so difficulties in relating to others, they were developmentally delayed in a global sense, very much as a result of what is a neglecting and traumatising environment. That finding is quite strong and I think it makes it even more troubling that we are in fact replicating the conditions for these very poor outcomes by keeping any infants and parents in detention.

So the babies currently in places like Nauru are in particularly hazardous environments in terms of development, and from what we know in other examples of child neglect and trauma, that these effects are likely to be extremely long term. So the only comparable group I think that have been studied extensively would be the Romanian and Bulgarian orphans who we in Australia are very quick I think to point out and wish that this was just over there, but in fact we are replicating extremely high risk situations that are quite similar, and it's well known that the outcomes for those children has been particularly poor.

Lynne Malcolm: Louise Newman, who takes a strong stance against children and their caregivers being held in detention, because of the risk to their mental health.

Last year, while working at the Royal Children's Hospital, she treated a female asylum seeker and her child in Melbourne. The woman was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and post-natal depression. They were flown from detention in Nauru to Australia for hospital treatment in late 2014. After treating them, they were discharged to an immigration transit centre in Broadmeadows, where their condition immediately deteriorated. They were readmitted to the Royal Children's Hospital.

Even though the pair's health had improved by mid-2015, Louise Newman and other doctors refused to discharge them unless the Department of Immigration agreed to not return them to detention.

Louise Newman: The very disturbing situation though is that there are many mothers and infants who have had extremely traumatic experiences on Nauru. The sorts of difficulties that the mothers have sadly fall into that whole spectrum of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which immediately impact on the quality of interaction they have with their babies. So at that time there were several cases that were very similar held in the MITA in Broadmeadows, the detention facility.

Fortunately we have had the release of mothers with babies into various forms of so-called community detention, which is a partial reprieve, if you like, given that Minister Dutton has made clear comments that from his perspective once medical treatment is no longer necessary then return to Nauru is possible. I think that means in practice that many of these families remain in a situation of high stress, and there are ongoing difficulties with parenting. So the children that I've been following certainly have ongoing signs of trauma and stress themselves, difficulties in their development, and are needing ongoing input.

So it's always of course terribly concerning when government policy results in damage to children, and this frankly is damage as a result of government policy. And the health system then is in the position of needing to treat in an ongoing way the consequences of policies that we do not support. And I think those of us who have spent time in detention centres do raise the issues, but it should be said that even in discussing this we have in place a Border Force Act, so-called, where we are liable to prosecution and two years imprisonment in raising these issues. But we will continue to do so.

Lynne Malcolm: Louise Newman. She and her colleagues at Melbourne University and the Royal Women's Hospital are now developing research based interventions to protect children in other vulnerable situations who are at risk from trauma and stress. For example, there are some specific challenges faced by Australian Indigenous communities.

Louise Newman: We are currently involved in my centre in some work looking at some issues such as substance abuse issues during pregnancy, and also some work looking at supports for early parenting in Indigenous communities. We know a lot about the risk factors and challenges facing parents in those communities where there might be real challenges in terms of high levels of community breakdown, the consequences really of transgenerational parenting breakdown given the Stolen Generation and other factors, so it's a very highly complex issue to actually support.

But within the Indigenous communities themselves, particularly in Victoria at the moment, there is high levels of interest in taking programs around early parenting and actually adapting them so that they are acceptable and culturally appropriate for use in the communities, and we are involved in some of that work on now.

The same principles though apply, that it really is about supporting parents as much as possible to be the sorts of parents and provide the sort of consistent care that is needed for psychological and brain development in those critical early years.

The other piece of work that we are moving into will be looking at situations where women might be in high risk relationships, where they are at risk of interpersonal violence or psychological abuse, because, again, that's a high stress situation, there is a lot of concern, particularly following the Royal Commission here in Victoria into domestic violence, about the impact of violent households and relationships on child development. And so we are going to be providing intervention programs and looking at outcomes in those situations.

So all these interventions, in a nutshell, are essentially about preventing as much as possible exposure to high stress situations for infants and bolstering resilience. And so resilience on a neurological level is very much about that capacity to adapt to and cope with stress. So building those psychological capacities in the infant brain. And the neurological underpinnings that allow that brain and that infant to actually tolerate and adapt to stressful situations. And that will have positive mental health outcomes, we believe, across the lifespan.

Lynne Malcolm: Professor Louise Newman, a psychiatrist at Melbourne University and director of the Centre for Women's Mental Health at the Royal Women's Hospital.

Go to the All in the Mind website for links related to today, and leave a comment on the site about infant mental health while you're there.

You'll also find a link to a previous All in the Mind program which investigates the large study on the impact of neglect and trauma on the brains of Romanian children who were discovered in large orphanages after the fall of the government in 1989.

Thanks to producer Diane Dean, researcher Olivia Willis and sound engineer Judy Rapley. I'm Lynne Malcolm, and I'll leave you with a beautiful traditional lullaby from Iran.

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Lynne Malcolm: Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN. I'm Lynne Malcolm. Today, taking care of very young minds. Louise Newman: We think about infancy, the nought to three year period roughly as foundational, meaning that a whole lot of both the psychological and neurological factors that are related to ongoing mental health are literally laid down during those critical early years.

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This is "Secret of the Wild Child" by juniorjpereira on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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Growing up in a Romanian orphanage - BBC News

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Separation from primary attachment figure

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A Two Year Old goes to Hospital (Robertson Films)

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Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys

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Harlow's Monkeys, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4 Extra

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Revisiting Harry Harlow's surrogate mothers experiment, which revolutionised parenting.

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Cartoonists animated the idea of imprinting.

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Pages on the web site of leading UK SocioPsychologist Keith E Rice addressing the development of human beings over their lifespan and the different kinds of relationships they engage in

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In 1975, Edward Tronick and colleagues first presented the "still face experiment" to colleagues at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. He described a phenomenon in which an infant, after three minutes of "interaction" with a non-responsive expressionless mother, "rapidly sobers and grows wary. He makes repeated attempts to get the interaction into its usual reciprocal pattern. When these attempts fail, the infant withdraws [and] orients his face and body away from his mother with a withdrawn, hopeless facial expression." It remains one of the most replicated findings in developmental psychology.

Once the phenomenon had been thoroughly tested and replicated, it became a standard method for testing hypotheses about person perception, communication differences as a result of gender or cultural differences, individual differences in attachment style, and the effects of maternal depression on infants. The still-face experiment has also been used to investigate cross-cultural differences, deaf infants, infants with Down syndrome, cocaine-exposed infants, autistic children, and children of parents with various psychopathologies, especially depression.

Why has this experiment, first published in the mid-1970s, become so important?

The still face experiment demonstrated that very young infants already have several basic building blocks of social cognition in place. It suggested that they have some sense of the relationship between facial expression and emotion, that they have some primitive social understanding, and that they are able to regulate their own affect and attention to some extent. The infants' attempts to re-engage with their caregivers also suggest that they are able to plan and execute simple goal-directed behaviors.

In addition, the still face experiment is among the more reliable and valid measurements of infant cognition and behavior; infants find it more disturbing than other violations of normal social interactions (such as the Ainsworth Strange Situation). The response is very complex, with infants displaying subtle facial cues such as dampened smiles, yawns, and sideways glances at the mother. Further, and perhaps most importantly, the still face experiment was the most revealing experiment conducted in terms of infant social cognition. By 1975, researchers had already devised ways to describe and quantify the reciprocal social exchanges that are characteristic of infants and their caregivers. However, the still face experiment allowed researchers to examine the ways in which infants spontaneously initiate social exchanges and the way they modulate their affect and attention, and provides rich data on the ways in which infants re-organize their behavior after the re-establishment of the reciprocal interaction. Importantly, it is a very easy experiment for researchers and parents to properly execute, which is perhaps why it is so popular.

The still face experiment has also proved useful in determining the extent of an infant's social world. That is, the still face effect is not only elicited by the mother (i.e. the primary caregiver), but also by fathers, strangers, and even by televised images of other adults. However, infants do not respond in similar ways to objects, no matter how interesting, interactive, or dynamic they appear to be. This provides more evidence that young infants readily categorize the world into potential social partners and inanimate objects.

The still-face experiment has likewise been useful in answering questions about how the still face effect may be related to earlier experiences and how it may predict later social-emotional variables. For example, variations in the still-face effect have been associated with mothers' baseline sensitivity and interactive style, and the infants' later attachment classification at age 1, internalizing (e.g. depression, anxiety) and externalizing (e.g. aggression, impulsivity) behaviors at 18 months, and behavior problems at age 3.

For an experiment that is so useful, so robust, so popular, one might think that it has outlived its usefulness, at least as far as research is concerned. But despite the robustness of the effect, nobody has been able to fully explain it. No theoretical paradigm has been able to account for the infants' response. Therefore, it is an area open for more investigation.
Adamson, L., & Frick, J. (2003). The Still Face: A History of a Shared Experimental Paradigm Infancy, 4 (4), 451-473 DOI: 10.1207/S15327078IN0404_01
Tronick, E., Adamson, L.B., Als, H., & Brazelton, T.B. (1975, April). Infant emotions in normal and pertubated interactions. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, CO.

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Ed Tronick and the "Still Face Experiment"

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In 1975, Edward Tronick and colleagues first presented the "still face experiment" to colleagues at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. He described a phenomenon in which an infant, after three minutes of "interaction" with a non-responsive expressionless mother, "rapidly sobers and grows wary.

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The "Big Bang" in Learning: Brain Changes and Childhood Learning | Aspen Ideas Festival

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The big bang in human learning happens in childhood. The big bang has two components: (a) critical periods for learning certain material that are time sensitive, and (b) the social environment that provides "brain food" to build a brain. We'll describe the essential components that make early childhood learning a big bang that no child should miss, and society can't ignore.

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Abstract

The purpose of this review is to present the basic concepts of attachment theory and temperament traits and to discuss the integration of these concepts into parenting practices. Attachment is a basic human need for a close and intimate relationship between infants and their caregivers. Responsive and contingent parenting produces securely attached children who show more curiosity, self-reliance, and independence. Securely attached children also tend to become more resilient and competent adults. In contrast, those who do not experience a secure attachment with their caregivers may have difficulty getting along with others and be unable to develop a sense of confidence or trust in others. Children who are slow to adjust or are shy or irritable are likely to experience conflict with their parents and are likely to receive less parental acceptance or encouragement, which can make the children feel inadequate or unworthy. However, the influence of children's temperament or other attributes may be mitigated if parents adjust their caregiving behaviors to better fit the needs of the particular child. Reflecting on these arguments and our childhood relationships with our own parents can help us develop the skills needed to provide effective guidance and nurturance.

Keywords: Attachment, Parenting, Temperament, Development, Child

Introduction

The birth of a child initiates a life-long process of mutual adaptation between the child and his or her caregivers and the broader social environment. Relationships and patterns of interactions formed during the early stages of life serve as a prototype for many interactions later in life and might have life-long effects 1). Young children do not have the language ability to express to their caregivers what they need, so children often communicate through their behavior. Parents are often unaware of their child's feelings or the mental representations of their emotions. Thus, attentive attunement to all aspects of a child is a very demanding task. Parents want their infants to grow up healthy and to develop behaviors that allow them to take charge of their own lives. Parents want to know how to provide the best parenting possible, especially when they do not want a mere repetition of their own individual family histories. A review of previous research findings will provide some guidelines to answer this question.

Bowlby's key ideas about infant-caregiver attachment

According to John Bowlby's theory 1) of attachment development, a child is "attached" to someone when he or she is "strongly disposed to seek proximity to and contact with a specific figure and to do so in certain situations, notably when he is frightened, tired or ill." He noted the close attachment relationship between responsive caregivers (typically the mother, but not always) and infants from about 6 months to 2 years of age.

The emotionally charged connection between caregiver and child ensures that the two will remain in physical proximity, especially when the child is between 8 and 18 months of age. When the infant becomes more mobile, he will rely on the caregiver less often for proximity maintenance, although he does not abandon it altogether. Once the child experiences the security of this physical closeness, he will develop the courage to explore away from the caregiver. This fascinating paradox, the conversion from pursuing closeness to moving away from dependence, is the core of attachment theory. In other words, when a child is securely attached to his mother and the feeling of closeness is restored, the seeking of proximity and closeness recedes and the child turns to other interests, comfortably using the caregiver as a base of operations from which to explore.

Ainsworth's research model for testing attachment quality

Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist who studied with Bowlby, developed a controlled laboratory situation called the "strange situation," so named because it is a novel experience for the child 2). Ainsworth had mother and 12-month-old infant pairs play in a room with toys and observed the infant's reactions to several situations, including separation, for 20 minutes. First, would the infants use the mother as a secure base to explore the room and the new toys when the mother sits in the playroom, or would they cling to their mother and refuse to explore? Second, what would happen if the mother was told to leave the room briefly and a stranger entered? Would the child be distressed but then comforted, or would they remain distressed for the entire period the mother was gone? Third, what happened when the mother returned? Would the child be relieved, would they be indifferent, or would they be distressed?

From the children's responses to these situations, Ainsworth found that most infants had secure attachments. They played and explored comfortably when their mothers were present, became visibly upset when they left, and calmed quickly upon their return. Some infants, however, sought little contact with their mothers and were not distressed when they left. Ainsworth labeled these patterns avoidant attachment. Finally, some infants showed anxiety even when their mothers were near. Although they protested excessively when their mothers left, they were not particularly comforted when they returned, a pattern Ainsworth labeled ambivalent (anxious-ambivalent, resistant) attachment. These three patterns are described according to the caregiver's style ( Fig. 1 ). A fourth category, termed disorganized attachment, was subsequently identified by Main and Solomon and later added to Ainsworth's original tripartite classification 3) ( Table 1 ).

Table 1

What makes the difference in attachment quality or style?

Although Bowlby acknowledged that feeding may facilitate mother-infant proximity, attachment is not merely a function of feeding 4). Harlow and Zimmermann's monkey study 5) and Bowlby's observation 1) in orphanages suggest that infants need emotional support and contact in addition to food and shelter. Ainsworth et al. 2) also closely observed mothers and children in their homes and paid careful attention to each mother's style of responding to her infant's behaviors, such as feeding, crying, cuddling, eye contact, and smiling, before the infants' behavior was assessed in the "strange situation." Responsive mothers were mothers who provided physical care, emotional communication, and affection to their children in clear relation to their signals of need. The mother's reciprocal or contingent responses (reinforcement depending on the behavior of the child) by eye contact, cuddling, touching, or praise may reinforce the child's communicative attempts, such as babbling or laughing. Responsive mothers also gave their children enough "space" when they were playing, crawling, or otherwise exploring their environment independently. The critical aspect of responsive caregiving is that the mothers are aware of their children's needs and wants and respond to that information. The responsive caregiver "resonates" with the child's messages even though they are difficult for others to decipher at first.

Traditionally, most Korean mothers practiced what pediatrician William Sears calls "attachment parenting" 6); they usually engaged in long-term breastfeeding, carried their infants in fabric slings on their backs while doing housework (babywearing), and cosleeping (an infant and mother sleeping side by side in the same room). This close proximity of the infant to her mother could provide an optimal environment for better interactions and attachment.

Infant attachment styles and adult personality

Longitudinal data using adult attachment interviews suggest that attachment insecurity does indeed serve as a risk factor for psychopathology 7- 11). Insecurely attached children are likely to develop fewer social skills and have lower levels of communication skills. An insecurely attached child may frequently become anxious, even in benign circumstances. Chronic vigilance and anxiety will then increase the probability of a future anxiety disorder 7). Anxiety is a very powerful stimulus of emotional distress that puts a person in a high arousal state (a state of hyper-responsiveness to sensory stimulation or excitability). Either too little arousal (lack of sensory input or boredom) or too much prolonged arousal is detrimental. Consequently, optimal performance cannot be attained because of an inability to maintain an appropriate level of arousal.

Indeed, the Adult Attachment Interview draws its validity from the high correspondence between the attachment classification of parents and their infants' classifications in the Strange Situation 8). Thus, "secure," "avoidant," "ambivalent (anxious-ambivalent, resistant)," and "disorganized" infants tend to have primary caregivers who are "autonomous," "dismissing," "preoccupied," and "unresolved," respectively, with respect to attachment 12). Categories of attachment behaviors of infants in the strange situation and corresponding attachment categories among adults are proposed in several studies 9, 12) ( Table 1 ). Jang 13) observed exact agreement between infant category and corresponding adult category (maternal working model) in 11 out of the 20 dyads (55%) she studied, and she argued that attachment styles can transmit over generations. Another study in South Korea by Jung 14) with 239 dyads of preschool children and their mothers confirmed that children's attachment patterns were related to their mothers' attachment patterns to their own mothers. Parental insecure attachment styles also have a crucial impact on the development of psychiatric manifestations in school-aged children. Yoo et al. 15) reported that parents who were judged to be preoccupied had children with more internalized symptoms than those who were judged to be secure, whereas dismissing/avoidant parents had children with higher scores on attention problems, and fearful/avoidant parents had children with more externalized symptoms.

Temperament traits of children

The possibility that attachment security is partially influenced biologically in relation with temperament needs to be examined. Temperament can be described as a neurobiological element of the individual that differs from person to person in emotions, sociability, and self-control. Temperament is epigenetic, originating in genes but also affected by child-rearing practices. Although certain dopamine receptor D4 polymorphisms (a 48 base-pair repeat in exon 3 of DRD4) are associated with low neuronal reactivity, increased exploratory behavior, and novelty seeking 16), such associations require replication studies before they can be viewed as causative. The concept of temperament can help parents understand and accept the characteristics of their children without feeling responsible for having caused them. Identifying children's temperaments may also allow for adjustment in parenting styles.

The New York Longitudinal Study was started in 1956 by Thomas and Chess 17). This classic study of temperament traits in children followed 133 individuals from 84 families, predominantly educated families in New York, from 3 months of age to adulthood, and observed how well they fit in at school, with their friends, and at home. Results of the study revealed nine temperamental dimensions 17, 18).

Dimensions and broad types of temperament traits

In addition to the nine dimensions, Thomas and Chess 17) also classified children's temperaments into three types. Approximately 40% of the children in the total sample were deemed to be "easy children" who are generally cheerful and adapt quickly to new foods and new people, 10% were "difficult children" who tend to be easily frustrated and contribute to negative social interactions, and 15% were "fearful children" who have relatively low activity levels and tend to withdraw on their first exposure to new stimuli ( Table 2 ). The remaining 35% did not seem to be easily classified into one of these groups. There have been numerous other investigations to characterize the structure of temperament. Among them, the three dimensions of extraversion/surgency, negative affectivity, and effortful self-control forged by Rothbart and Bates 19), and two basic dimensions of uninhibited and inhibited, with intermediate phenotype by Kagan and Fox 20) are now most widely accepted ( Table 2 ).

Table 2

Parenting and parenting styles

Parents are children's first and foremost nurturers, teachers, guides, counselors, and protectors. Parents wonder what their children will be like when they grow up and want them to become the most capable adults they can be. However, parents differ on how they raise and interact with their children. Growing up with great parents is a great blessing in life, and the way a child is raised influences the kind of person he or she will become. As attachment styles seem to transfer over generations, so do parenting styles. From this context, it is a real success in life and realization of human potential if an individual who grew up in a disadvantaged or ill-treated family breaks the vicious cycle and practices positive parenting.

Children who misbehave often do so not out of malice, but out of ignorance, boredom, or frustration, and simply need to be taught, listened to, or redirected. A child who is ignored by his parents often misbehaves as a way to seek attention. When parents respond immediately to attention-seeking misbehaviors, such as temper tantrums or screaming, it inadvertently reinforces that behavior. Instead, rewarding the child's appropriate behaviors with praise and hugs can be more effective. It is important to catch them being good and to avoid expressing negative judgments or using incorrect labels that demean the child. What we believe about others or ourselves can become true due to a self-fulfilling prophecy because we tend to act in accordance with what we believe. Children develop their opinions about themselves by observing the way significant others respond to and communicate with them. A parent's feedback or opinions about them are social mirrors and are used to form self-images and self-judgments.

Baumrind 21) defined three categories of principal parenting styles. The categories, which were later extended to include indifferent or negligent parents, were as follows: authoritative (demanding and responsive to child with respectful attitude), authoritarian (demanding but not responsive, "do-as-I-say" style), permissive or indulgent (more responsive than demanding), and indifferent or neglecting (neither demanding nor responsive). Authoritative parenting is, by far, the most effective parenting styles because it promotes a child's ability to withstand potentially negative influences, including life stress and exposure to antisocial peers. Authoritarian parents are likely to produce anxious youth with low self-esteem, lack of spontaneity, and lack of intellectual curiosity 22) ( Fig. 2 ).

Adequacy of parental responses to temperament (goodness-of-fit)

Parenting is a reciprocal process in which the parent influences the child's development, and in return, the child influences the parent. The influence of temperament and other attributes of children may be mitigated or negligible as long as caregivers modify their behavior to fit the needs of the children 23). However, when a mother's capacity to do so is limited by her own personality or stressful conditions, then infants with a difficult temperament or problem behaviors are at risk for developing attachment insecurity. Studies have shown that most securely attached infants develop distinctly different attachment bonds with each parent and their various caregivers 24). This suggests that parents can modulate their children's temperament by influencing their children's environment. For instance, Chess et al. 18) have recognized that behaviors that lead to a child being classified as "easy" or "difficult" can vary depending on parental and cultural values, attitudes, and practices. Hence, they emphasize that interaction should be considered in terms of "goodness-of-fit," which is the compatibility of a person's temperament with their family, school, and community. Any temperament trait may not be inherently problematic; rather, it is the interaction that determines the "acceptability" of that trait.

"Reflective parenting" is a theory of parenting derived from Fonagy et al.'s concept 25) of "reflective functioning," which refers to the human capacity to understand the behavior of the self and others in light of underlying mental states and intentions. Mothers in a high-stress or overcrowded environment, or who are deprived of employment security, would be more likely to have securely attached infants if they respond to the children's motivations rather than their actions.

Conclusions

From several core ideas of early life experiences, we can discern valuable insights into parenting practices. Sensitive and responsive care from parents is vital for the optimal growth and development of each child. Children who are rarely spoken to, who are left to cry themselves out, who have little opportunity to explore their environment, or who experience frequent anger or boredom cannot fully develop their potential and stable personalities, despite their normal genetic endowment.

References

12. Ma K. Attachment theory in adult psychiatry. Part 1: Conceptualisations, measurement and clinical research findings. Adv Psychiatr Treat. 2006;12:440-449. [ Google Scholar]

21. Baumrind D. Current patterns of parental authority. Dev Psychol. 1971;4(1 Pt 2):1-103. [ Google Scholar]

25. Fonagy P, Steele M, Steele H, Moran GS, Higgitt AC. The capacity for understanding mental states: the reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Ment Health J. 1991;12:201-218. [ Google Scholar]

Articles from Korean Journal of Pediatrics are provided here courtesy of Korean Pediatric Society

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Impact of attachment, temperament and parenting on human development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The purpose of this review is to present the basic concepts of attachment theory and temperament traits and to discuss the integration of these concepts into parenting practices. Attachment is a basic human need for a close and intimate relationship between ...

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Mary Ainsworth, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4

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Claudia Hammond looks at Mary Ainsowrth's research on the parent-child relationship.

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Attachment to Fathers - Alberta Father Involvement Initiative

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A Summary of research available on attachment to Fathers.

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Exploration in toddlers activated by fathers

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Exploration in toddlers activated by fathers

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A new study has found that fathers give toddlers more leeway and that allows them to actively explore their environments, according to a new study on parent-child attachment published inEarly Child Development and Care.

Daniel Paquette, a professor at the Université de Montréal School of Psychoeducation, says the 'activation theory' is just as important as the 'attachment theory.' The latter was the prevailing 20th-Century notion that children usually connect with their primary caregiver since they fulfill their emotional needs and guarantee their survival.

"In attachment theory, a child seeks comfort from a parent when he or she is insecure. This theory underestimates the importance of exploratory behavior in children," says Dr. Paquette, who completed his study with Marc Bigras of the Université du Québec à Montréal.

As part of the investigations, kids aged 12 to 18 months (accompanied by a parent) were placed in three different risky situations: social risk (a strange adult entered his or her environment), physical risk (toys were placed at the top of a stairway), and a forbidden activity (parents were forbidden to climb the stairs after the child succeeded the first time).

"We found fathers are more inclined than mothers to activate exploratory behavior by being less protective," says Paquette. "The less the parent is protective, the more activated is the exploratory behavior in the child. Children who were optimally stimulated, meaning they were exploratory yet respective of the rules, were 71 percent boys. Meanwhile, 70 percent of children who were risk averse were girls."

The parent's behavior was measured by the distance they kept from their child as he or she climbed the stairs. "For a child to become self-confident, the parent mustn't be too far or too close," says Paquette. "The ideal distance seems to be an arm's length. This distance was statistically significant with fathers yet not with mothers."

According to Paquette, classical attachment theory doesn't highlight these differences between boys and girls. This is why he feels his theory is better adapted to evaluate the role of the father while factoring in the temperament of the child and the level of protective parenting, both of which trigger the activation relationship.

Paquette is convinced that mothers and fathers intervene differently in the education of a child and these complementarities benefit a child. "Even if both parents change diapers and give the bottle, they don't do it the same way," says Paquette. "By stimulating exploration, controlled risk-taking and competition, fathers provide something different to the child who will benefit greatly from this singular contribution."

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child psychology; parenting; child development; infant and preschool learning; educational psychology; autism; behavior; gender difference

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Exploration in toddlers activated by fathers

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A new study has found that fathers give toddlers more leeway and that allows them to actively explore their environments, according to a new study on parent-child attachment published inEarly Child Development and Care. Daniel Paquette, a professor at the Université de Montréal School of Psychoeducation, says the 'activation theory' is just as important as the 'attachment theory.'

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Children whose fathers are more positively engaged with them at the age of three months have fewer behavioural problems at the age of twelve months, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study suggests that interventions aimed at improving parent-child interaction in the early postnatal period may be beneficial to the child's behaviour later in life.

Behavioural disorders are the most common psychological problem affecting children. They are associated with a wide range of problems in adolescence and adult life, including academic failure, delinquency, peer rejection, and poor psychiatric and physical health. Research suggests that the roots of enduring behavioural problems often extend back into the preschool years.

Epidemiological studies have identified several risk factors for the onset and continuity of behavioural problems. Among these, parenting characteristics and patterns of parent-child interaction seem to be particularly important. However, studies of parental factors usually focus on the role of the mother.

In a study published July 19 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers at the University of Oxford studied 192 families recruited from two maternity units in the UK to see whether there was a link between father-child interactions in the early postnatal period and the child's behaviour.

Dr Paul Ramchandani -- a researcher and clinical psychiatrist now based at the Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London -- led the study, which assessed father-infant interactions in the family home when the child was aged three months and compared them against the child's behaviour at the age of twelve months.

The researchers found that key aspects of the father-infant interaction, measured very early in children's lives, were associated with an increased risk of behavioural problems in children at an early age. This is the first time that this apparent influence has been demonstrated for observed father-infant interaction and such early onset behaviour problems.

"We found that children whose fathers were more engaged in the interactions had better outcomes, with fewer subsequent behavioural problems," explains Dr Ramchandani. "At the other end of the scale, children tended to have greater behavioural problems when their fathers were more remote and lost in their own thoughts or when their fathers interacted less with them. This association tended to be stronger for boys than for girls, suggesting that perhaps boys are more susceptible to the influence of their father from a very early age.

"We don't yet know whether the fathers being more remote and disengaged are actually causing the behavioural problems in the children, but it does raise the possibility that these early interactions are important."

The researchers believe there are several possible explanations for the association. The lack of paternal engagement could reflect wider problems in family relationships, with fathers who are in a more troubled relationship with their partner finding it more challenging to engage with their infant.

Alternatively, it may reflect a broader lack of supervision and potentially care, for the infant, resulting in an increase in behavioural disturbance. Another possibility is that the infant's behaviour represents its attempt to elicit a parental reaction in response to an earlier lack of parental engagement.

Dr Ramchandani adds: "Focusing on the infant's first few months is important as this is a crucial period for development and the infant is very susceptible to environmental influences, such as the quality of parental care and interaction.

"As every parent knows, raising a child is not an easy task. Our research adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that intervening early to help parents can make a positive impact on how their infant develops."

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children's health; infant's health; healthy aging; pregnancy and childbirth; parenting; child psychology; child development; infant and preschool learning

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Child's behavior linked to father-infant interactions, study shows

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Children whose fathers are more positively engaged with them at age three months have fewer behavioral problems at age twelve months, according to new research. The study suggests that interventions aimed at improving parent-child interaction in the early post-natal period may be beneficial to the child's behavior later on in life.

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This first part looks at the early influences on the work of Mary Ainsworth, including John Bowlby and Konrad Lorenz