Six to Nine Months

1
Six to Nine Months

• Fogel
• Chapter 7

Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
2
Overview Chapter 7

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

Experiential Exercises Co-regulating with Baby
Experiential Exercises Co-regulating with
Baby
3
Introduction

• Between 6 and 9 months,
  babies grow more adventurous
• physical they start to creep
  or
  crawl on their own
• psychological they begin to take initiative and
  call attention
  to themselves
• Infants now develop a serious interest in the
  object world, and come to understand that objects
  are whole entities with an existence separate
  from their own

Picture from http//flickr.com/photos/erikrasmuss
en/2511777779/
4
Physical and Motor Development

• Between 6 and 9 months, infants develop
• independent sitting
• supported standing
• rolling over
• creeping or crawling
• By 9 months, infants can
• take a few steps while holding on to furniture or
  an adult
• pick up small objects using just the tips of the
  thumb and index finger

Picture from http//www.imaginarybinky.com/2008/0
4/let-sun-shine-down.html
5
Physical and Motor DevelopmentHand Movements and
Hand Preference
Functions of the hemispheres of the brain

• right hemisphere spatial patterns
  nonlinguistic (e.g., emotional) information
  processing
• the left hemisphere sequential processing of the
  sort used in understanding language

• linked to handedness the preference for the use
  of one hand over another

Picture from www.morphonix.com/.../specimens/hemispheres.html
6
Physical and Motor Development Hand Movements
and Hand Preference

• Infants begin to show hand preference around 2
  months, when visually guided reaching begins
• More permanent hand preferences do not emerge
  until the 2nd year

• 30-50 of infants under age 1 show a right-hand
  preference when reaching this preference is
  relatively stable over the 1st year
• 10-30 have a left-hand preference in reaching

Picture from path31.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archi
ve.html
7
Physical and Motor Development Hand Movements
and Hand Preference

• Around 6 months, infants
• begin reaching with a single hand
• learn to sit without support extend the
  non-reaching hand backward to balance their upper
  bodies
• two-handed reaches become more sophisticated
• with larger objects (like a big ball)
• cross the mid-line of the body

8
Physical and Motor DevelopmentCrawling

• Being able to extend one arm independently of the
  other is believed to be important for the
  development of crawling (see Table 7.2)
• while babies are still reaching with two hands at
  the same time, they either creep or rock
• infants begin to crawl when they can reach with
  one hand

Picture from http//www.sover.net/sweeneyc/babyg
irlold.html
9
Physical and Motor DevelopmentCrawling

• Not all infants go through this sequence
• infants who creep before they crawl are better at
  crawling they move faster and their movements
  are larger and more efficient
• non-creepers become proficient crawlers after a
  couple of weeks

Picture from private collection
10
Physical and Motor Development How Motor Skills
Develop

• Dynamic systems theory new motor skills develop
  by adding additional components to existing
  skills
• crawling even when infants can get on hands
  knees, they cannot crawl because they cant
  alternate extension of the arms and legs
• walking 9-month-olds can pull themselves to
  standing, take steps while holding onto
  something, and alternate leg movements but they
  cant walk, because they lack the capacity to
  balance

11
Physical and Motor Development How Motor Skills
Develop

• The moving room recreates the visual experience
  of moving without taking steps at the same time
• infants under 1 year will fall in the direction
  in which the wall appears to be moving
• infants older than 1 year may sway but are less
  likely to lose their balance

12
Physical and Motor DevelopmentHow Motor Skills
Develop

• Motor development is a complex systems
  interaction of
• the different parts of the motor system (legs,
  trunk, arms)
• the perceptual system
• the environment in which the child is moving

• For example,
• infants can make walking movements if they are
  supported by an infant walker or an adult

Picture from private collection
13
Perceptual DevelopmentRecognition of Objects
Depth

• Under 6 months
• object recognition and depth perception are
  easier if the objects are moving and if real
  objects are presented
• After 6 months, infants can
• infer object properties depth from visual cues
  alone
• see three dimensions when they are shown
  objects in two dimensions (e.g., in a drawing)

14
Perceptual DevelopmentRecognition of Objects
Depth

• By 7 months, infants use visual cues to judge
  depth distance
• infants with a patch over one eye will reach
  toward the larger of two identical pictures of a
  face, apparently perceiving it as closer
• infants ability to recognize objects in two
  dimensions leads to increased interest in picture
  books and television at this age

15
Perceptual DevelopmentRecognition of Objects and
Depth

• Haptic perception perception of the properties
  of an object using touch
• newborns can distinguish different properties of
  objects by using their mouths
• between 4 and 6 months, infants explore objects
  actively, combining hand, mouth, and vision
• after 6 months, infants develop specialized hand
  movements to detect information about specific
  object properties such as size, texture, and
  shape

16
Perceptual DevelopmentOther Perceptual
Developments

• By 6 months, babies
• recognize differences between simple melodies
• can use cross-modal perception to infer
  information about object properties
• infants who are familiarized with an object only
  by touch can recognize the object by sight alone
• if babies hear a sound in the dark, they will
  reach for an object in the direction of the sound

17
Perceptual DevelopmentOther Perceptual
Developments

• In short, 6- to 9-month-olds use subtle cues to
  infer regularities in their perceptual world
• they can learn from pictures
  in books
  and on television
• they pick up relationships
  between
  different senses
  to pay attention
  to things that
  interest them most
• These perceptual abilities lead to clear
  preferences (e.g., for particular pictures,
  objects, and tastes)

Picture from flickr.com/photos/offwithyourhead/80
276937/
18
Cognitive DevelopmentMemory

• By 7 months,
• infants can remember how to make a mobile move
  for as long as 21 days, without a reminder
• memories are less context dependent
• infants can remember a salient event that has
  been learned in different (but related)
  situations
• infants can remember longer sequences of events,
  like longer melodies
• However, memory is still tied to the situation

19
Cognitive DevelopmentInformation Processing

• At 7 months, infants are able to group stimuli
  into higher-order conceptual categories
• 7-month-olds (but not 5-month-olds) recognized
  the same faces shown in different positions
• they distinguished smiling from non-smiling faces
• they recognize a prototype from distorted
  versions
• they distinguish horses from other four-legged
  mammals

20
Cognitive Development Information Processing

• Infants of this age also
• understand that moving objects should follow
  along their prior path of movement larger
  objects can support smaller objects
• respond differentially when the same object is
  placed above or below another object, showing
  that they have a category for these spatial
  relationships
• seem to have a concept of number
• they dishabituated when a puppets jumps changed,
  from two to three or from three to two

21
Cognitive DevelopmentSecondary Circular Reactions

• Sensorimotor Stage III (4 to 8 or 9 months)
  Secondary circular reactions
• infants begin to repeat actions that, by chance,
  produce some effect on the objects and people in
  the environment
• once the chance discovery is made, infants make
  deliberate, intentional attempts to repeat that
  action

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Cognitive DevelopmentSecondary Circular Reactions

• Infants also vary the actions in order to explore
  changes in the effect
• they will drop objects off the edge of their high
  chairs
• they shake objects in different ways to notice
  the effect or repeatedly dump things out of
  containers
• Repeated occurrences in the environment take on
  meaning for the baby (see Observation 7.2)
• by 7 months, Laurent knew that he would be fed
  shortly after he heard his mothers bed creak

23
Cognitive DevelopmentSecondary Circular Reactions

• Infants are becoming more goal directed can
  perceive others intentional behavior
• in one study, 9-month-old infants looked longer
  when a grasping hand contacted a toy than when
  the toy was touched with the back of a hand

Picture from flickr.com/photos/36908756_at_N00/30147
4833
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Cognitive DevelopmentOut of Sight, Out of Mind?

• Object permanence the ability to remain aware
  of an object even after it has gone out of sight
• infants will not actively search for an object
  that has been hidden until after 9 months

Picture from http//scienceblogs.com/cognitivedai
ly/2005/08/do_babies_know_if_hidden_objec.php
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Cognitive DevelopmentOut of Sight, Out of Mind?

• In one study, 7- to 8-month-olds saw an object
  disappear behind one of two screens
• a hand reached behind the screens and reappeared
  holding the object in either a possible situation
  or an impossible situation
• Infants looked longer at the hand following the
  impossible situation compared to the possible one
• In a similar study, infants not only looked
  longer at the impossible situation, they also
  looked more at their parents as if to share their
  puzzlement

26
Cognitive DevelopmentOut of Sight, Out of Mind?

• Infants of this age are becoming aware of objects
  and people as whole entities
• people, as opposed to objects, are understood by
  infants as having intentions
• the ability to perceive anothers intentions
  corresponds with infants awareness of their own
  intentions, their ability to have an effect on
  the environment

27
Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Anger arises when infants cannot succeed at being
  an effective causal agent
• accompanied by crying, but facial expression and
  underlying feeling are different from distress
• In one study
• 2- and 4-month-olds reacted to inoculations with
  physical distress, crying with tightly shut eyes
• 7-month-olds responded with more angry
  expressions, crying with open, vigilant eyes

28
Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Anger can be adaptive and useful
• In one study, infants were taught to pull a
  string to activate a slide projection music
• After this, the experimenters stopped turning on
  the slide projector and music when the infant
  pulled
• Most infants reacted with anger, but some showed
  sadness
• the infants who expressed anger immediately
  became interested again when the contingency was
  renewed
• those who showed sadness reacted with less
  enjoyment

29
Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Expressions of anger are also seen in
  7-month-olds when they are frustrated
• e.g., when a teething biscuit is removed from
  their mouths or when their arms are restrained
• Separation distress
• after 6 months, infants respond to parental
  separation with some anger, especially if the
  parent happens to be a part of the infants
  activity (e.g., play) when he or she leaves

Picture from http//meidays.blogdrive.com/
30
Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Wariness
• infants may become quiet and stare at a stranger
  or a strange situation, knit their brows, become
  momentarily sober, and look away
• wariness allows the infant to observe what is
  happening is a more adaptive reaction to
  strange situations than the withdrawal of
  infantile fussing and crying

31
Emotional DevelopmentPositive Emotions

• Positive emotions become more complex
• Different types of smiles had different meanings
  depending on whether the infant gazed at the
  mother or not
• Simple smiling gazing at mother during
  peekaboo
• enjoyment of recognition or of readiness to
  engage in play
• Simple smiles without gazing at mother after a
  tickle
• often accompanied by gasping for air and sighing
  perhaps associated with enjoyment of relief or
  of relaxation

32
Emotional DevelopmentPositive Emotions

• Duchenne smiles occur with gazing at mother when
  she uncovers her face during peekaboo
• may reflect an enjoyment of agency, sensing
  oneself as an active rather than passive
  participant in the game
• Duchenne smiles without gazing at mother occur
  most during a tickle, often as infants turn their
  bodies away as if trying to hide or protect
  themselves
• may reflect an enjoyment of hiding or perhaps an
  enjoyment of escape

Picture from http//www.associatedcontent.com/ima
ge/123286/index.html?cat25
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Emotional DevelopmentPositive Emotions

• There is a growing ability to communicate with
  others about emotions
• around 8 months, infants who smile when looking
  at an object will turn to smile at a nearby adult
  
• By 6 months, babies will laugh
• at jokes
• at very abrupt and highly arousing stimuli
• at things that once made them cry, such as a loud
  noise or a loss of balance
• in one study, they cried when a stranger wore a
  mask, but laughed when their mothers did

34
Emotional DevelopmentEmotion Regulation

• Infants are beginning to use cognition to decide
  what to feel, a process known as appraisal
• there is a growing relationship between infant
  emotion attention to emotion-related events and
  processes

Picture from www.spicetart.com/growing_ivy/page/2
/
35
Emotional DevelopmentEmotion Regulation

• Gender differences
• In one study, 6-month-old boys and girls were
  observed during face-to-face play, followed by
  maternal still-face
• Boys were more likely than girls to
• smile vocalize as well as show anger or
  distress during the still-face
• have a more positive interaction with the mother
  during the normal face-to-face period
• Girls gazed more at objects showed more
  interest

36
Emotional DevelopmentRecognition of Emotional
Expressions

• Between 6 and 9 months
• babies seem more capable of recognizing smiles
  than other expressions
• their ability to distinguish between other
  expressions, such as fear and anger, is
  relatively poor
• Individual differences
• 7-month-old infants whose mothers show a lot of
  positive emotions are more likely to respond to
  negative facial expressions, perhaps because of
  their relative novelty

37
Emotional DevelopmentRecognition of Emotional
Expressions

• 7-month-olds ability to distinguish between
  emotions improves when
• facial expressions are combined with voices
  expressing the same emotions
• faces are presented dynamically
• They also recognize whether a facial expression
  is paired with a matching vs. a mismatched
  intonation
• e.g., when an angry expression is matched with an
  angry vs. happy tone of voice

38
Emotional DevelopmentRecognition of Emotional
Expressions

• Infants of this age prefer to look at faces
  judged by adults to be attractive
• apparently, attractiveness, like recognition of
  particular people, can be inferred from more
  global features of the face that do not involve
  specific expressions
• Infants can also distinguish between the faces of
  children and adults

39
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Temperament
• a persistent pattern of emotion and emotion
  regulation in the infants relationship to people
  and things in the environment
• Some aspects of temperament are partly inherited
• negativity and inhibition appear early in life
  and are persistent in 5-10 of \ infants up until
  5 to 7 years
• similar proportions of persistently inhibited
  children are found in different countries and
  even in infant monkeys

40
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Infants who were the most inhibited
• were more likely to be subdued in unfamiliar
  situations, have a dour mood, report anxiety, and
  have an overactive sympathetic nervous system
  response as teenagers
• showed a higher activation in the amygdala (part
  of the limbic system responsive to fear) when
  viewing pictures of unfamiliar faces as adults

41
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Infants and children who have difficulties with
  attention and emotion regulation (rated as highly
  reactive, emotional, inattentive, or inhibited)
  have different patterns of activity in the
  prefrontal cortex compared to well-regulated
  infants
• For example, inhibition is related to brain wave
  and heart rate patterns as well as to stress
  responses to frustration
• Stress responses to frustration such as heart
  rate acceleration, cortisol secretion, and
  sympathetic nervous system activation are
  present at an early age for some inhibited
  infants and may persist for periods of up to 1
  year

42
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Role of parents
• infants who are more inhibited are more likely to
  have parents who are introverted anxious
• infant inhibition negativity are related to
  lower scores on maternal adaptation to pregnancy,
  sensitivity to the infant after birth, and
  self-esteem
• mothers who rate infant cries as more aversive
  are more likely to rate their infants as
  difficult
• These findings do not rule out a genetic
  explanations

43
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• A finding that may call the genetic explanation
  into question is that children do not necessarily
  exhibit continuity of temperament
• inhibited children may, with sensitive child
  rearing, eventually lose their extreme
  sensitivity
• normal children may become more inhibited in
  extremely stressful environments

44
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Continuity discontinuity
• extreme fussiness at birth predicts later
  emotionality in full-term infants, but not in
  premature infants
• temperament most likely does not contribute to
  long-term cognitive deficit or enhancement
• parental behavior may attenuate the long-term
  effects of early temperamental characteristic
• inhibited children who showed more positive
  emotion were less likely to be inhibited at age 3
  than inhibited children who tended to be more
  negative

45
Emotional DevelopmentInfant Temperament

• Parental and child factors can interact to
  influence the stability of temperament over time
• Temperament assessed at the end of the infancy
  period, between 2 and 4 years of age, tends to
  show long-term stability
• 2-year-olds who were rated as more difficult had
  more attention problems and aggressive behavior
  at 12 years
• 3-year-olds who were rated low on self-control
  had more adjustment problems and interpersonal
  conflicts as adults

46
Emotional DevelopmentThe Measurement of
Temperament

• Temperament is difficult to measure in a reliable
  and valid manner
• some researches have conducted observations
• usually, parents are asked to rate their childs
  temperaments
• However, when mothers and fathers are asked to
  rate the same child, their reports agree only
  about half the time
• there is more agreement about the difficulty of
  an infant than about any other dimension of
  temperament

47
Emotional DevelopmentThe Measurement of
Temperament

• The correlation between parental reports and
  behavior observed in a laboratory improves if
  infants behaviors are extreme
• Explanations of differences between parent
  reports and observed behavior include
• infants behave differently in different
  situations
• questions on rating scales dont reflect childs
  individuality
• parental reports reflect parents personalities
  or psychological state
• for instance, multiparous extroverted mothers
  were more likely to rate their infants as easy

48
Emotional DevelopmentThe Measurement of
Temperament

• The best research strategy
• a combination of parental reports, direct
  observations, and physiological measures (such as
  cortisol and sympathetic nervous system activity)
  made at repeated intervals in the childs life

Picture from http//ethiopia.adoptionblogs.com/we
blogs/african-american-dolls
49
Social and Language DevelopmentSocial-Object
Frames

• As infants become increasingly interested in
  objects, between 4 and 6 months of age, earlier
  face-to-face frames give way to social-object
  play frames
• the infants developmental task is to integrate
  interest in objects with the desire to remain
  socially and emotionally connected to the parents
• At first, infants are primarily focused on the
  objects
• it is up to the parents to provide frames for
  mutual communication about the objects

50
Social and Language DevelopmentSocial-Object
Frames

• Coordination of attention to people objects is
  enhanced if parents regularly create
  object-directed frames
• the more attentive animated parents are, the
  more likely that the infant will learn to
  co-regulate attention with others
• infants who are more attentive to what adults do
  and say are more likely to learn language and to
  learn, by age 3 or 4 years, to share the mental
  perspectives of other people

Picture from private collection
51
Social and Language DevelopmentSocial-Object
Frames

• At 6 months, infants appear to be in a receptive
  mode, ready to participate in the frames created
  by the parents

• By 8 months, they are beginning to take
  initiatives in social frames
• they start making jokes
• they ask to be picked up by making sad facial
  expressions or raising their hands above their
  heads
• they smile and laugh more toward familiar and
  trusted adults than toward unfamiliar ones

Picture from private collection
52
Social and Language DevelopmentBabbling

• Babbling begins after 6 months
• sounds as though babies are talking to themselves
  as they roll off a string of related vowel and
  consonant sounds to accompany their eating or
  playing
• has the intonation contours (the rising and
  falling pitches) of sentences
• the intonation contours of babbling match the
  intonation contours of the speech spoken in the
  infants home (e.g., French, Chinese, or Arabic)

53
Social and Language DevelopmentBabbling

• In one study, some mothers were asked to respond
  contingently to infant babbling, while another
  group was asked not to respond to the babbling
• infants whose mothers were contingent produced
  more mature babbles that had more recognizable
  syllables, strong contrasts between consonants
  and vowels, and a more fully voiced sound
• this suggests that babbling may be speech-like
  because it occurs during parent-infant contingent
  vocal interaction.

54
Social and Language DevelopmentBabbling

• Right-handed reaching and rhythmical banging
  increase at the same age infants begin to babble
• the right hand is controlled by the left brain,
  known to be the primary location of speech
  processing
• vocalizations come increasingly under the control
  of the left brain, setting the stage for linking
  vocalization and cognition, necessary for the
  development of speech
• Babbling is more likely to be accompanied by
  (right-) hand arm movements than leg movements

55
Social and Language DevelopmentSpeech Perception

• Before 6 months, infants can distinguish sound
  contrasts from many different languages
• they start to lose this ability between 6-9
  months
• In one developmental study
• younger infants (4-6 months) could distinguish
  the syllable contrasts from all three languages
  tested (English, Salish, and Hindi)
• older infants (10-12 months) could only
  distinguish between the contrasts of the language
  heard in the home

56
Social and Language DevelopmentSpeech Perception

• The loss of perceptual sensitivity may be related
  to the selective processes of brain development
• at first, synapses are overproduced
• later some are selected and strengthened
  synapses for sounds that are not frequently heard
  disappear
• By 9 months, American infants prefer to listen to
  words having a strong-weak stress pattern
• 6-month-olds showed no such preference

57
Social and Language DevelopmentSpeech Perception

• By the second half of the first year, infants
  begin to recognize produce some of the
  characteristics of language as a system of sounds
  
• However, babbling infants are not trying to talk
• they are exploring how to make familiar sounds,
  rather than as trying to communicate with sounds
• it seems as if they first learn the music and
  then the words
• this music is learned in the context of
  parent-infant frames, including social games

58
Social and Language DevelopmentParent-Infant
Games

• By 8 months, new social frames emerge in the
  parent-infant relationship
• infants take more initiative
• As infants get older, they learn to play new
  social games, such as point and name and give
  and take at 12 months
• games like gonna get you and horsie, in which
  the 6-month-old played a relatively passive role,
  occur only rarely at 12 months

59
Social and Language DevelopmentCultural
Differences

• Climate is one factor that accounts for cultural
  differences in child-rearing patterns

• in warm countries, infants tend to be carried,
  remain in close physical contact, and to be
  breast-fed longer than infants reared in cold
  climates
• infants in cold climates are more likely to be
  separated from their mothers at an earlier age

Picture from saindonienne.wordpress.com/
60
Social and Language DevelopmentCultural
Differences

• Cultural differences in parental beliefs about
  emotion regulation and communication about
  emotions
• in North America Korea, parents were concerned
  about stimulation to foster development
• Italian mothers had similar feelings about love
  and emotional closeness as North American mothers
  but were less focused on cognitive stimulation
• Similar patterns are found in Latin-American
  cultures

61
Social and Language DevelopmentCultural
Differences

• In a study of physical contact during play
  between Hispanic- and Anglo-American mothers and
  their 9-month-old infants
• the overall amount of physical contact did not
  differ
• Hispanic mothers touched, kissed, hugged, and
  held their infants physically closer than Anglo
  mothers
• on questionnaires, the Hispanic mothers reported
  placing a higher value on touch and affection
  than Anglo mothers

Picture from www.momease.com
62
Social and Language DevelopmentCultural
Differences

• In technical and industrial societies, including
  Japan, Korea, Europe, North America, and urban
  families everywhere
• parents will begin to interpret the infants
  intentions
• the next step is to help the infant carry out the
  intended act
• parents often create new intentions that were not
  there in the first place
• In nontechnical agricultural and hunter-gatherer
  communities, adults are more directive and
  ritualistic
• Chomorro mothers (from the Pacific island of
  Guam), were highly directive repetitive when
  interacting with infants

63
Social and Language DevelopmentCultural
Differences

• Each style has evolved to fit the needs of the
  particular culture problems may arise, however,
  when cultures are forced to interact
• Hispanic Americans, as a minority culture in the
  United States, often feel self-conscious in the
  company of their Anglo-American neighbors and
  think of themselves as too affectionate with
  their infants
• According to ecological systems theory, this is a
  conflict between the microsystem of the family
  and the macrosystem of the culture

64
Social and Language DevelopmentSelf-Awareness

• Between 6 and 9 months, babies call attention to
  themselves in ways that did not exist previously
• These features make up a sense of a
  differentiated ecological self
• asking for help
• taking initiative
• clowning and showing off
• demanding
• hiding and escaping

Picture from private collection
65
Social and Language Development Self-Awareness

• At this age
• emotions become more complex
• infants begin to take initiative
• infants begin to seem to have their own
  personalities
• But they do not have a sense of subjectivity
• they have feelingsgetting angry or happybut
  cannot yet stand apart from those feelings
• they do not have a sense of an I that feels,
  and, consequently, they do not have a sense that
  other people are separate subjects with their own
  feelings

66
Family and SocietyMaternal Employment

• In 2001,
• 64 of U.S. mothers with children under the age
  of 6 were in the work force
• mothers also do a substantial amount of unpaid
  work (e.g., child care, household work),
  estimated to be worth about 27,000 per woman per
  year

67
Family and SocietyMaternal Employment

• In general, infant-mother attachment is not
  seriously altered by maternal employment
• If attachment is going to be affected, it is most
  likely to decline between employed mothers and
  their infant sons rather than their daughters
• boys are perceived as more independent and as
  requiring less parental nurture and attention
  than girls, who are seen as more vulnerable
• there is a correlation between a sons insecure
  attachment and a mothers perceived level of
  stress

68
Family and SocietyMaternal Employment

• A number of studies find that the important
  variable is the mothers desire to work
• problems with coping, dissatisfaction with life,
  depression, and loneliness are significantly
  higher in young mothers who do not work outside
  the home than in those who do
• there are higher levels of functioning in
  families in which the mothers are employed

69
Family and SocietyMaternal Employment

• Whether mothers work by choice or necessity, they
  typically end the day fatigued because role
  overload
• the demands of a role are more than an individual
  can easily cope with or when the same person is
  required to perform too many roles
• Role overload increases if the child has a
  difficult (age 1) or hostile aggressive (age 3)
  temperament
• in this case, mothers a more likely to perceive
  themselves as less competent in both the
  parenting and work roles, and are more likely to
  feel depressed

70
Family and SocietyMaternal Employment

• When women work, fathers can also experience a
  form of role overload
• such fathers show more negative behavior with
  their infants during the first year
• after the first year, they are just as sensitive
  to their infants as other husbands
• When women remain at home, fathers can choose
  when and how to become involved with their
  infants
• these fathers show more positive emotion toward
  their infants and are more attuned to the
  infants needs, especially if the infants are
  boys

71
Family and SocietyParental Leave Policies

• Even when mothers are paid, they earn only 71
  cents for every dollar earned by a man in the
  same position
• Some alternatives exist, but they are not
  widespread
• more flexible work schedules (flextime) began to
  be instituted in Europe in the early 1960s
• Swedish workers are entitled to maternity and
  paternity leaves
• Swedish women earn about 90 the wages men do for
  similar jobs 86 of women with young children
  are in the workforce

72
Family and SocietyParental Leave Policies

• In 1993, the U.S. Congress enacted the Family and
  Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA, Public Law
  103-3), which established a family leave policy
• provides unpaid leave from employment for up to
  12 weeks without loss of rank or position in the
  workplace in businesses with more than 50
  employees
• applies to both mothers and fathers as well as to
  non-pregnancy-related illnesses
• unfortunately, 95 of businesses are exempt from
  the FMLA because they have fewer than 50
  employees

73
Family and SocietyParental Leave Policies

• Mothers are more likely to take a parental leave
• on average, about 3 months
• mothers who take shorter leaves are more likely
  to feel stress symptoms of depression, show
  negative emotions toward their infants and
  spouses, and to have less interest in their
  infants
• The average length of leave for fathers was 6.5
  days, with 71 of fathers taking 5 or fewer days
• fathers who took shorter leaves worked for
  employers who were did not have a positive
  reaction to the employees fatherhood, were less
  involved with their infants, and had less
  communication with their spouse about the infant

74
Family and SocietyParental Leave Policies

• Compared to other industrialized countries, the
  United States is not a nation that fully supports
  children and families
• With little opportunity to take time off from
  work
• mothers cannot breast feed for as long as
  recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics
  (for 12 months)
• mothers may choose drug-assisted childbirth or
  C-sections, even if they would have preferred a
  natural birth, to get back to work sooner

75
Family and SocietyNurturance Toward Infants

• Interest and ability to care for babies
• is present in young boys and girls
• will continue in both if fostered by the
  environment
• In one study,
• girls approached a baby more than did boys
• once the children were near the baby, both boys
  and girls spoke to, reached out for, and touched
  the baby equally
• In another study,
• boys and girls approached babies equally
• at 2 and 3 years, boys were more likely to
  approach male babies, girls were more likely to
  approach female babies

76
Family and Society Nurturance Toward Infants

• Preschoolers speech to babies
• both boy and girl preschoolers modify their
  speech to babies to make it sound more like
  motherese
• most preschoolers rarely asked questions of the
  baby (question asking is a major form of adult
  speech to infants)
• 25 of preschoolers used endearing terms toward
  the baby and asked soliciting questions (Are you
  hungry? Are you getting frustrated?)

77
Family and Society Nurturance Toward Infants

• Girls aged 8 to 14 interact more with babies and
  ignore them less than boys do
• boys and girls are equally physiologically
  aroused or unaroused by the sight of an infant
• differences in male vs. female interest in babies
  continue through high school but seem to vanish
  for college students young adults
• Parents vs. nonparents
• the most responsive group is usually new mothers
• mens child-rearing status does not affect their
  responsiveness to babies

78
Family and Society Parenthood Mothers versus
Fathers

• Mothers tend to be more accurate in identifying
  the type of cry (pain, distress, etc.) than
  fathers
• Both mothers and fathers can distinguish their
  own infants cry from cries of unfamiliar infants
  

Picture from http//www.julienna.com/pictures/Dad
20and20Baby20on20Slide.jpg
79
Family and SocietyParenthood Mothers versus
Fathers

• Father-infant interaction
• used to be less contingently responsive than
  mothers but no differences were found in recent
  studies
• play and interaction are more directive show
  abrupt changes of activity
• cultural differences in the amount of father
  involvement
• Mother-infant interaction
• games are quieter and depend more on the pace set
  by the infant
• engage in more caregiving

80
Family and SocietyGrandparents

• One study found that grandparents of infants were
  more responsive to babies than were parents of
  adolescents or of grown children who had left
  home
• grandmothers were more responsive than
  grandfathers
• grandfathers were more responsive than men at
  other ages
• Grandmother-infant attachment at 1 year
• when grandmothers spend much time with the baby,
  mothers grandmothers are nearly interchangeable
  as attachment figures
• the more time a grandmother spends with the baby,
  the more secure the attachment relationship

81
Family and SocietyGrandparents

• In the 1990s, mothers and grandmothers were
  generally in agreement over beliefs
• mothers were more accepting of messiness and
  nudity indoors, more relaxed about when to begin
  toilet training, and less rigid in
  differentiating sex roles in child play
• Some studies have shown that African-American
  grandmothers are more involved with their infant
  grandchildren than Caucasian-Americans
• extended family is important in the reduction of
  family stress, esp. for low-income, teenage, and
  single mothers

82
Experiential ExercisesRolling Over

• This exercise is about the connection between the
  core and its influence on an infants movements
• Lying on your back, place an object on the floor
  directly above your head.
• Turn your head to the right and try to look at
  your object, so that your back begins to arch.
  Relax for 30 seconds, then repeat.
• You may notice that your back is arching so much
  so that you end up on your side. Once this
  happens, try and balance yourself like a see-saw.
• Once you are balanced, relax your core see if
  you fall to one side or the other
• After the roll, you may notice that one arm is
  trapped underneath you. Flex your core so as to
  create a space between your chest and the floor
  to allow you to free your arm.
• Now look at your object. Can you reach it?

83
Experiential ExercisesBeginning to Crawl

• Crouched on your hands and knees on the floor,
  slowly, raise one knee, hold it for a few
  seconds, and bring it back down.
• Notice how your weight shifts when you do this
  motion.
• Again, very slowly, raise your other knee and
  repeat the movement. Do this also with both of
  your hands.
• Bring your knees together so that your feet are
  close enough to touch. Repeat the slow-motion
  raising and lowering movements with both of your
  legs. Notice how this feels
• Now, spread your knees on the ground far apart.
  Repeat the same slow-motion movements. Notice how
  this feels.
• Experiment with different spacing between your
  knees. Where is the best balance between
  instability and stability?

84
Experiential ExercisesBeginning to Crawl

• Slowly lift your right hand and your right knee
  at the same time. How is your weight shifted and
  distributed? Do the same with your left hand and
  knee.
• Next try lifting opposite hands and knees. Is
  this easier?
• Rock back and forth on your hands, shifting your
  weight to and from your heels. Does this feel
  like getting ready to move?
• Crawl a few steps forward. Notice the order of
  limbs that you move. If you lift your hands and
  knees diagonallym this is called contralateral
  crawling. If you lift your hands and knees on the
  same side, this is called homolateral crawling.
• Try crawling a few steps backward. Is this easier
  than going forward? Babies often crawl backwards
  before they crawl forwards.