This book presents the Maternal Sensitivity Program (MSP), an eight-session home-delivered intervention designed to enhance overall maternal sensitivity to infant behavior between the third and the tenth month of life using video feedback and live modeling strategies. The intervention was based on successful international programs but was specifically developed to fit the realities and needs of low-income countries, whose public health services rely on scarce human and economic resources. The program aims to promote maternal acknowledgment of infant mental activity and model responses that encourage infants' communication of intentions, needs, desires, and emotions. The first part of the book provides an overview of core theories related to the concept of maternal sensitivity, illustrating how it varies across cultural contexts, and how it is shaped by economic scarcity. The second part of the book presents evidence of the effectiveness of sensitivity-based interventions, describes and provides a rationale for the Maternal Sensitivity Program (MSP), and proposes a framework for training interventionists seeking to implement the program in different contexts. The third part of the book presents the intervention manual, describing in detail the procedures in each of the eight sessions of the program. The Maternal Sensitivity Program: A Model for Promoting Infant Development in Challenging Contexts will be an invaluable resource for developmental psychologists, health care providers, and social workers who work with families in low-income countries and in contexts of social vulnerability and need to implement low-cost interventions to foster healthy child development.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

This book offers a thorough examination and discussion of the evidence on attachment, its influence on development, and attachment disorders. In Part One, the authors outline attachment theory, the influence of sensitive and insensitive caregiving and the applicability of attachment theory across cultures. Part Two presents the various instruments used to assess attachment and caregiving. Part Three outlines the influence of attachment security on the child's functioning. Part Four examines the poorly understood phenomenon of attachment disorder. Presenting the evidence of scientific research, the authors reveal how attachment disorders may be properly conceptualised. Referring to some of the wilder claims made about attachment disorder, they argue for a disciplined, scientific approach that is grounded in both attachment theory and the evidence base. The final part is an overview of evidence-based interventions designed to help individuals form secure attachments. Summarising the existing knowledge base in accessible language, this is a comprehensive reference book for professionals including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, lawyers and researchers. Foster and adoptive parents, indeed all parents, and students will also find it of interest.

Advances in the Study of Behavior presents its first thematic volume, focusing on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms underlying parental care. The book discusses parental care both within and across taxa, with coverage of invertebrates and early vertebrates, fishes, amphibia, reptiles, mammals, birds, and nonhuman primates. A running theme throughout the chapters shows that parental care is anchored to the ecology, reproductive physiology, and embryonic development of a species. Coverage also includes mechanisms of parental care, including analysis of the stimuli that parents respond to and how parental care is initiated, maintained, and terminated. Individual differences within species are also explored, examining stable differences in maternal style, how they arise, and the consequences for both mother and infant.

This volume presents cutting-edge thinking & research on linkages among SES, parenting & child development. The authors represent an array of different disciplines, & they approach the issues of SES parenting & child dev. from a variety of perspectives.

Although infant feeding may be considered the primal form of motherinfant interaction, its treatment as a worthy subject of scientific investigation has only recently ascended to a position of importance. The reasons for our current interest are varied and important. For example, over the past fifty years the methods for studying feeding have improved, whether one speaks of analysing the composition of milk or the synchrony of the dyadic give-and-take during a feeding. Secondly, with breastfeeding rates having risen dramatically recently, the correlates of this societal change are undeniably of increased empirical interest. Finally, the current child obesity epidemic has propelled infant feeding to the forefront of the variety of public health strategies that will be needed to slow this crisis. The contributors to the present volume are all well-established researchers in the area of mother-infant interactions that surround infant feeding. With a mixture of theoretical underpinnings, methodological advances, and samples of current research, this book should serve as a useful reference for scientists and practitioners interested in the behavioral and health issues that surround infant feeding.