Background: Families can experience the postpartum period as overwhelming and many report a special need for support. The Newborn Behavioral Observation (NBO) aims to promote a positive parent-infant relationship by sensitising parents to the infant's signals. This article evaluates the NBO as a universal preventive intervention within the regular well-baby clinic service on measures of maternal depressive symptoms, parental stress, the motherinfant relationship and satisfaction/benefit of the postpartum follow-up. Methods: This investigation is part of a larger longitudinal study comprising 220 women and 130 of their partners recruited between 2015 and 2017. The study had a non-randomised cluster-controlled design with 6 measurement points. This article is based on a sample of 196 women using data from T1 (gestational weeks 13-39), T4 (5-15 weeks postpartum) and T5 (3-9 months postpartum). Participants were allocated to a group receiving the NBO (n = 82) and a care as usual comparison group (n = 114). We measured maternal depressive symptoms and parental stress using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the Parenting Stress Index (PSI). The motherinfant relationship was assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale (MPAS) and the Maternal Confidence Questionnaire (MCQ). Participants also answered questions about satisfaction/benefit of the postpartum follow-up.

Newborns and infants are highly depending on successfully communicating their needs; e.g., through crying and facial expressions. Although there is a growing interest in the mechanisms of and possible influences on the recognition of facial expressions in infants, heretofore there exists no validated database of emotional infant faces. In the present article we introduce a standardized and freely available face database containing Caucasian infant face images from 18 infants 4 to 12 months old. The development and validation of the Tromsø Infant Faces (TIF) database is presented in Study 1. Over 700 adults categorized the photographs by seven emotion categories (happy, sad, disgusted, angry, afraid, surprised, neutral) and rated intensity, clarity and their valance. In order to examine the relevance of TIF, we then present its first application in Study 2, investigating differences in emotion recognition across different stages of parenthood. We found a small gender effect in terms of women giving higher intensity and clarity ratings than men. Moreover, parents of young children rated the images as clearer than all the other groups, and parents rated “neutral” expressions as more clearly and more intense. Our results suggest that caretaking experience provides an implicit advantage in the processing of emotional expressions in infant faces, especially for the more difficult, ambiguous expressions.

Background: The quality of maternal-infant bonding is related to important child outcomes. The literature has assumed that the ability to form relationships is a relatively stable trait, and research studies have suggested that a mother's attachment style in close adult relationships is related to mother-infant bonding. The transition to parenthood is also often stressful, and the adult attachment style may relate to parenting stress in the first year after birth. Such stress could possibly have a negative relationship with the mother-infant bond. In the present study, we examined the associations between maternal adult attachment styles and the quality of mother-infant bonding and whether this relationship is mediated by parenting stress. Methods: The present study sample comprised 168 women (mean age 31.0 years, SD 4.23 years). Between weeks 31 and 41 of gestation, the anxious and avoidant adult attachment dimensions were measured with the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire (ECR). Between 5 and 15 weeks after birth mother-infant bonding and parenting stress were measured with the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale (MPAS) and the Parenting Stress Index-Parent Domain (PSI-PD), respectively. Results: Both attachment-related avoidance and attachment-related anxiety correlated significantly and negatively with mother-infant bonding. However, a regression analysis showed that only attachment-related avoidance was a significant predictor of mother-infant bonding when controlling for demographic variables and maternal mental health history. The relationship between the adult attachment style and bonding was mediated by parenting stress. Higher scores on attachment avoidance and anxiety were related to increased stress, which was related to decreased quality of bonding. The overall parent domain and the subscale of competence in the parent-related stress dimension mediated between attachment avoidance and bonding, and the overall parent domain and the subscales of competence and role restriction mediated between attachment anxiety and bonding. There was no direct relationship between the adult attachment style and mother-infant bonding when parenting stress was included as a mediator.