This document discusses the roles of mothers and fathers in promoting healthy development during infancy. It outlines how parent-infant relationships form the basis for social-emotional development and influence emotional well-being. Sensitive and responsive parenting helps infants develop trust and secure attachment. Demand feeding and practices like carrying and co-sleeping also strengthen attachment. Parents support physical development through care, play, and ensuring safety. Their role is critical to an infant's growth.

1. ROLE OF
MOTHER AND
FATHER
DURING
INFANCY
Neil Chheda, SYBA A-57

2. Introduction


As parents and children begin their lives
together as a family, parents embark on a
significant new challenge—that of promoting
their babies' healthy growth and development.
Caring for one's baby might seem like the
most natural thing on earth, but parenting an
infant is a 24-hour-a-day job.

3. Promoting the Social-Emotional
Development of Infants



The relationships that parents establish with
their infants and toddlers provide the basis for
their children's social and emotional
development.
These early parent-child relationships also set
the stage for their children's emotional wellbeing and social relationships in later stages of
life
Parents who are consistently sensitive and
responsive to their infants contribute to the
development of infant trust and attachment

4. Infant Trust and Attachment


One of the most
important goal of
parenting infants is to
endow them with a
sense of trust. Erik
Erikson theorized that
the quality of parentinfant interactions
influences whether
infants develop a sense
of trust or a sense of
mistrust
Infants' development of
a sense of trust,
parallels their
development of secure
attachment.

5. 

Parents of securely attached infants have
been described as more sensitive, more
contingently responsive, more consistent,
more likely to hold their infants, less intrusive,
less tense, and less irritable.
The process by which babies develop secure
attachment depends on whether or not they
experience contingent responsiveness from
their parents and other caregivers

6. 

The process by which babies develop secure
attachment depends on whether or not they
experience contingent
responsiveness from their parents
Parents provide contingent responsiveness
to their infants when they allow them to be
engaged in the roles of elicitor as well as
receiver of parental attention.

7. 


Thus, infants play an active role in providing
signals, such as crying and smiling, that guide
their parents in understanding when and how
to care for them.
When parents reliably respond to these
signals, their infants learn to trust that their
needs will be met and also develop secure
attachment.
Recent research also links secure attachment
to parents' responsiveness to infants' distress
signals, such as crying

8. Effects of Parental Sensitivity and Infant
Attachment


Securely attached infants are more responsive
than insecure infants in face-to-face play. They
also have more varied means of
communication, cry less, and quiet more easily
when picked up
Also, securely attached infants usually
become toddlers who demonstrate more
exploratory behavior than infants who do not
demonstrate secure attachment and they tend
to become children who are competent in a
wide array of social and cognitive skills

9. 


For example, Bakel and Riksen-Walveren (2002)
found that securely attached children are notably
more compliant.
Conversely, infants with avoidant and disorganized
attachment demonstrate significantly more negative
behaviors than do securely attached children.
Hobson, Patrick, and Crandell (2004) demonstrated
that infants whose mothers respond to them in a
sensitive manner have a propensity to share
experiences with their mother and also are more likely
to engage with others in their environment.

10. Demand Feeding

To feed the baby on
demand is an
important decision
for the mother.
Throughout the
world and all
through history,
babies have been
fed when they cried
to be fed.

11. 

In a study conducted by Ainsworth and Bell it
showed, infants who were fed on demand
were more likely to have secure attachment to
their mothers than infants who received
scheduled feeding.
Infant crying triggers corresponding care
taking behavior in the parents. Because the
cry of the infant is an inborn behavior, the
natural response of the parent to feed the
hungry baby is an appropriate one.

12. Effects of infant carrying and cosleeping


In many cultures across the world, parents
maintain physical closeness to their babies by
continuously carrying them, and by practicing
co-sleeping
As a case in point, it was found by Ainsworth
(1967) that infant carrying is correlated with
secure attachment

13. 

An advantage of co-sleeping is that it is
beneficial for helping to regulate the infant's
physiological functioning and for promoting
closeness to the parents
From an infant's perspective, what matters
most is that their signals are responded to
appropriately by their parents and other
caregivers.

14. Physical Wellbeing


The role of parents in the physical care of their
infants includes establishing feeding patterns,
providing a safe environment and monitoring
their infants' health needs.
The baby will communicate his needs through
crying as a newborn and later through
reaching and vocalization. Parents need to
figure out when they are hungry, if they are too
hot or too cold, if they are colicky, tired or if
something causes discomfort, such as a
diaper rash etc.

15. Physical Development


Parents support their
baby's physical
development by
providing them with the
opportunity to work his
muscles and practice
new physical skills.
Eg: Putting the baby
down on his tummy,
practice lifting his head,
rolling over, creeping
and crawling.

16. Play


Infants make sense of
their environment by
exploring it through
their five senses. Let
the baby play with
simple objects around
your house and ageappropriate toys
Going for walks with
the baby to expose
her to new sights and
sounds would also
help.

17. Getting Help


Recruiting family and friends during the crucial
first days after the birth of your infant.
During this time, the mother and the father are
adjusting to a new family member and
recovering from the birth, so getting assistance
during initially could be very helpful.

18. Bibliography
"The Role of Parents in Infant Development." Education.com. 26 Aug. 2012.
<http://www.education.com/reference/article/role-parents-infant-toddlerdevelopment/>.
"The Effect of Parental Care on Infant Development." LIVESTRONG.COM. 26
Aug. 2012 <http://www.livestrong.com/article/548961-the-effect-of-parentalcare-on-infant-development/?LS-2659>.
“Role of Parents in Infant Care." LIVESTRONG.COM. 26 Aug. 2012
<http://www.livestrong.com/article/222226-role-of-parents-in-infant-care/>.
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http://kristencook.com.au/blog/category/baby_photography_melbourne/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/calvina/5060082727/