Mother's early perception of her infant's difficult temperament, parenting stress and early mother–infant interaction

Abstract

The current study investigated factors contributing to mother's early perception of her infant's difficult temperament. One hundred and twenty-four mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Mother's perception of the infant's temperament was assessed with the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ). The influence of mother-infant interaction, mother's mental health and parenting stress were investigated. Mother-infant interaction was videotaped during a face-to-face interaction and analysed using the Global Rating Scale. Mother's mental health was assessed through a structured interview (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, SCID) and parenting stress was examined by a questionnaire (Parenting Stress Index). First, the difficulty scale of the ICQ was used as a continuous variable and factors contributing to mother's perception of her infant's temperament as more or less difficult were examined. Secondly, infants were categorized into difficult and non-difficult, and factors increasing the infant's risk of being perceived as difficult were examined. The model including mother's mental health and parental distress accounted for 24% of the variance in perceived infant difficulty, with parental distress in particular being an influential contributor. When infants categorized as difficult were examined, mother's intrusiveness and infant's poor interactive behaviour in early mother-infant interaction as well as parental distress significantly increased the infant's risk of being perceived as difficult.

A prospective study of the parent–baby bond in men and women 15 months after birth

“…The finding that a difficult infant temperament is associated with a less optimal parent-baby relationship has been acknowledged in previous research (Mantymaa, Puura, Luoma, Salmelin, & Tamminen, 2006;Murray et al, 1996). The greater contribution of the baby's concurrent temperament on the mother-baby bond compared to the father-baby bond at 15 months postpartum may be explained tentatively by the fact that usually mothers spend more time with the baby during the first year.…”

“…An explanation of the crucial importance of the pregnancy relationship may be that this measure is representative of the parents fundamental underlying internal mental representations of attachment relationships in general (e.g. Iles et al, 2011;Mantymaa et al, 2006), and as such may have a greater influence on the parent's ability to bond with their baby both short term and long term, compared to later measures.…”

Predicting Internalizing and Externalizing Problems at Five Years by Child and Parental Factors in Infancy and Toddlerhood

“…For example, early forms of disruptive child behavior have been reported to predict maternal depressive symptom trajectories, which in turn predicted later antisocial problem behaviors in the child [34]. Also, difficult infant temperament may be related to higher parenting stress [19] and parents with more parenting stress may perceive their infant as more difficult [35]. Early externalizing symptoms in the child may contribute to the stability or continuity of parenting stress [36].…”

The Relationships between Media Use, Temperament and Parenting Stress in Preschool Children

“…아 동의 미디어 매체의 사용이 가족과 친구간의 상호작용과 놀이를 대신하여 사용되는 경우가 늘어나고 있고 (Kang SY et al, 2007;Noh WS, 2009) 자녀 양육 시 부모의 편의와 여 가시간 확보를 위해 자녀들에게 미디어 사용을 허락하는 경우가 많다 (Mun HJ, 2004;Lee EM, 2002)는 연구결과로 비추어 볼 때 미디어 사용과 부모와 자녀의 상호작용을 이 해할 필요가 있음을 알 수 있다. 아동의 기질이 까다로울 수록 (Hart et al, 2013) 어머니의 양육 스트레스가 높을수록 (Mäntymaa et al, 2006;Spinelli et al, 2013 …”