Affective and physiological factors predicting maternal response to infant crying

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Abstract

This study evaluated physiological, affective, and perceptual factors hypothesized to predict how quickly 45 primiparous mothers of 7–9-month-old infants would respond to non-distressed infant crying. Aversiveness ratings of the non-distressed cries of one's “own” infant and physiological reactivity to one's “own” infant crying accounted for a significant amount of the variance in a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis of speed of response. These findings suggest that mothers who have strong affective and physiological responses to non-distressed infant cries may be more likely to respond indiscriminately to attention-seeking infant behaviors.

Section snippets

Participants

To examine these hypotheses, 45 women who identified themselves as primiparous mothers of 7–9-month-old infants participated with their infants in this study. Mothers were recruited from the community via newspaper advertisements seeking first-time mothers of 7–9-month-old infants to participate in research in exchange for a free parenting workshop.

Procedure

Participation in the study required the mother and infant to visit the laboratory one time for approximately 2 h. After the mother completed a

Results

The sample was predominantly Caucasian (approximately 90%) and middle class (mean annual family income = $69,000). Mothers were generally well educated, with 80% finishing college. Of these mothers, approximately 24% worked part-time and 22% worked full-time. The infants consisted of 25 boys and 20 girls, with a mean age of 33 weeks. Means and standard deviations of the study variables are presented in Table 1. One-tailed correlations among independent variables are also presented in Table 1.

Of

Discussion

Infants exhibit different cries to signal their distressed and non-distressed internal states. Mild, non-distressed infant cries were the focus of inquiry here because in non-abusing, non-neglectful samples, mothers generally respond quickly to distressed cries (Gustafson & Harris, 1990); however, the speed with which they respond to non-distressed cries is what probably relates to increases in rates of infant crying (Belsky, 1984; Hubbard & van Ijzendoorn, 1991). Over time, the frequency of

Acknowledgement

This manuscript is based on the 2nd author's doctoral dissertation.

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