Nursing Care for Mother Infant Relationships

Mother-Infant/Toddler Relationships,Factors Contributing in Infant Mother Relationship,Study Outcomes,Psychological Factor in Infant Mother Relationship,How Maternal Relation Help in Child Development.

Mother-Infant/Toddler Relationships

     The
study of mother-infant/toddler relation- ships centers on knowledge related to
the health and development of the mother child  from birth to 3 years. 

    This
focus of inquiry is necessarily large because the mother child system is an
open one, responsive to genetic, biological, environmental, cognitive, and
psychological influences (Institute of Medicine, 2000).

Factors Contributing in Infant Mother Relationship

    The
mother-infant/toddler relationship is influenced by genetic factors such as the
child’s temperament. Temperament is an in born constellation of traits that
affect the individual’s behavioral reactions to environmental stimuli. 

    Temperamental qualities such as high intensity reactions, low adaptability to
change, or shyness, influence children’s abilities to regulate emotions in
stressful situations, relate to other people, and adjust to changes in daily
routines. 

    Similar temperamental qualities in the mother are likely to affect
her ability to adjust her parenting behaviors to accommodate an unpredictable
infant or a defiant 2-year-old (Gross & Conrad, 1995). 

    A poor fit between
parent and infant/ toddler temperamental styles has been associated with more
child behavior problems and increases in physiological indices of stress
(Bugental, Olster, & Martorell, 2003).

    Biological
factors can influence the child’s developmental trajectory, making parenting
more stressful and altering the quality of the mother infant/toddler
relationship. For ex- ample, low birthweight infants with neonatal medical
complications are at greater risk for later developmental, visual, physical,
and behavioral disabilities (Boyce, G. C., Smith, & Casto, 1999). 

    Even in
the absence of medical complications, mothers of low birthweight infants
experience greater stress and care giver burden than mothers of normal
birthweight infants (May & Hu, 2000). Such early biological risk can have
significant effects on the quality of the mother-infant/toddler relationship.

Study Outcomes 

    The
relationship between parenting, environment and the mother-infant/toddler
relationship has been extensively studied, although the theory underlying
cause and effect relationships remains poorly understood. 

    For example, there
are many hypotheses to account for the significant associations found. between
parenting in low-income environments and poorer outcomes in very young children
(Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Mistry, Vandewater, Huston, & McLloyd,
2002). 

    As a result, interventions for promoting healthy parent child
relationships among low income families simultaneously target many
environmental risk factors (eg, support, psychological guidance, education,
nutrition, and facilitating access to community based services). 

    The complexity
of the parenting environment and understanding how social contexts in early
life affect young children and parents is an important but underdeveloped area
of inquiry (Boyce, W. T., et al., 1998).

Psychological Factor in Infant Mother Relationship

    The
psychological health of the mother and child has received much attention. Maternal stress, low social support, marital dis- cord, and maternal depression
have been viewed as important factors placing young children at risk for poor
developmental outcomes (Gross, Sambrook, & Fogg, 1999; Petterson &
Albers, 2001). 

    Recently, researchers have shifted the focus away from
unidirectional to bidirectional effects. For example, depressed mothers who are
sad, preoccupied, and irritable may be unable to attend to their infant’s needs
or to deal calmly and effectively with their toddler’s demands for attention. 

    However, it is also possible that behaviorally demanding children cause mothers
to feel in effective, fatigued, and ultimately depressed. The clinical
implications of viewing problems in the mother infant/toddler relationship as
bidirectional is that effective nursing interventions should focus on the
mother child dyad or the family unit rather than on the mother or child alone.

How Maternal Relation Help in Child Development

    In
the past 10 years, greater attention has been placed on the role of
race/ethnicity in the development of the mother-infant/toddler relationship. 

    Demographic trends toward greater multiculturalism and expectations for researchers
to understand how parenting processes may differ across racial/ethnic groups
have led to more thoughtful examinations of parenting processes among families
of color (Garcia Coll et al., 1996; McLloyd, Cauce, Takeuchi, & Wilson,
2000). 

    Different family structures and childrearing values will affect how
parents socialize their infants and toddlers. While all children thrive under
the care of a loving and responsive parent, research has shown that there is no
single way that love and attention need to be expressed. 

    Indeed, research has
shown that some parenting strategies that negatively affect behavioral outcomes
in European-American children ap pear to have no such effect on African-Ameri-
can children (Whaley, 2000).

    Finally,
maternal cognitions affect how mothers interpret and respond to their
children’s behavior. 

    For example, a mothers belief that using corporal
punishment with her defiant 2-year-old may be based on a series of cognition related to her values about child defiance and physical punishment, cultural
expectations, perceived environmental dangers, how she was raised, and her
knowledge of alternative discipline strategies (Garvey, Gross, Delaney, &
Fogg, 2000; Goodnow & Collins, 1990).

    Although
many investigators have understandably narrowed their research to one or two
conceptual areas of inquiry, the dyad is dynamically affected by all of these
influences. That is, mothers identify parenting goals and devise child rearing
strategies that are consistent with their temperaments, biology, child rearing
environments, cognitions, and psychological capacities (Gross, 1996).

     Likewise,
children’s responses to parents are similarly tied to these same factors.
Future research should refine how these influences transact within the parent
child relationship so that research methods can be clarified and cost effective
nursing interventions disseminated to populations in need.