4.4 Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development

We now consider again the theories discussed in Chapter 1 in greater depth. As you will see, theories lead to insight and applications, preparing us for the final topic of this chapter, non-parental care of infants, with a special focus on infant daycare.

Psychoanalytic Theory

All Together, Now Toddlers in an employees’ daycare program at a flower farm in Colombia learn to use the potty on a schedule.

REUTERS/JOSE MIGUEL GOMEZ/LANDOV

Psychoanalytic theory connects biosocial and psychosocial development. Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson each described two distinct stages of early development. Freud (1935, 1940/1964) wrote about the oral stage and the anal stage. Erikson (1963) called his first stages trust versus mistrust and autonomy versus shame and doubt.

Freud: Oral and Anal StagesAccording to Freud (1935), the first year of life is the oral stage, so named because the mouth is the young infant’s primary source of gratification. In the second year, with the anal stage, the infant’s main pleasure comes from the anus—particularly from the sensual pleasure of bowel movements and, eventually, the psychological pleasure of controlling them.

Freud believed that the oral and anal stages are fraught with potential conflicts that have long-term consequences. If a mother frustrates her infant’s urge to suck—weaning the infant too early, for example, or preventing the child from sucking a thumb or a pacifier—the child may become distressed and anxious, eventually becoming an adult with an oral fixation. Such a person is stuck (fixated) at the oral stage and therefore eats, drinks, chews, bites, or talks excessively, in quest of the mouth-related pleasure denied in infancy.

Similarly, if toilet training is overly strict or if it begins before the infant is mature enough, parent and infant may become locked in a conflict over the toddler’s refusal, or inability, to comply. The child develops an anal personality and becomes an adult who seeks self-control, with an unusually strong need for regularity in all aspects of life.

Erikson: Trust and AutonomyAccording to Erikson, the first psychosocial crisis of life is trust versus mistrust, when infants learn whether the world can be trusted to satisfy basic needs. Babies feel secure when food and comfort are provided with “consistency, continuity, and sameness of experience” (Erikson, 1963). If social interaction inspires trust, the child (later the adult) confidently explores the social world.

A Mother’s Dilemma Infants are wonderfully curious, as this little boy demonstrates. Parents, however, must guide as well as encourage the drive toward autonomy. This mother makes sure her son does not crush or eat the flower.

JOSE LUIS PELEAZ, INC./CORBIS

The second crisis is autonomy versus shame and doubt, beginning at about 18 months, when self-awareness emerges. Toddlers want autonomy (self-rule) over their own actions and bodies. Without it, they feel ashamed and doubtful. Like Freud, Erikson believed that problems in early infancy could influence one’s personality later in life, creating adults who are suspicious and pessimistic (mistrusting) or easily shamed (lacking autonomy).

Erikson was aware of cultural variations. He knew that mistrust and shame could be destructive or not, depending on norms and expectations of each ethnic group and family. Some cultures encourage independence and autonomy; in others, “shame is a normative emotion that develops as parents use explicit shaming techniques” to encourage children’s loyalty and harmony within their families (Mascolo et al., 2003).

Learning Theory

According to learning theory, even very young children pick up behavioural cues from those around them. Behaviourism focuses on the way parents use positive and negative reinforcements as the means of shaping a child’s behaviour. In contrast, social learning theory stresses the way that children learn to behave by observing and imitating their parents and other adults.

BehaviourismFrom the perspective of behaviourism, emotions and personality are shaped as parents reinforce or punish a child. Behaviourists believe that parents who respond joyously to every glimmer of a grin will have children with a sunny disposition. The opposite is also true:

Hammering Bobo These images are stills from the film of Bandura’s original study in which frustrated 4-year-olds imitated the behaviour they had observed an adult perform. The children used the same weapon as the adult, with the same intent—hitting the doll with a hammer, shooting it with a toy gun, or throwing a large ball at it.

COPYRIGHT ALBERT BANDURA

Social Learning TheoryLater behaviourists recognized that infants’ behaviour also has an element of social learning, through which infants learn from the people around them. Albert Bandura conducted a classic experiment (Bandura, 1977) in which young children were frustrated by being told they could not play with some attractive toys; they were then left alone with a mallet and a rubber toy clown (Bobo) after seeing an adult hit the toy. Both boys and girls pounded and kicked Bobo as the adult had done, indicating that they had learned from observation.

Since that experiment, developmentalists have demonstrated that social learning occurs throughout life (Morris et al., 2007; Nielsen, 2006). In many families, toddlers express emotions in various ways—from giggling to cursing—just as their parents or older siblings do. A boy might develop a hot temper if his father’s outbursts seem to win his mother’s respect; a girl might be coy or passive-aggressive if that is what she has seen. These examples are deliberately sexist: Social learning theories believe that gender roles, in particular, are learned.

Social learning theorists acknowledge inborn temperament but stress that children follow the role models they see. Shyness may be inborn, for instance, but parents who model social interaction, greeting their many friends warmly, will help a withdrawn child become more outgoing (Rubin et al., 2009). Often parents unwittingly encourage certain traits in their children by how they respond to their infants. This is evident in the effects of proximal versus distal parenting, as you will now learn.

Cognitive Theory

Cognitive theory holds that thoughts and values determine a person’s perspective. Early experiences are important because beliefs, perceptions, and memories make them so, not because they are buried in the unconscious (psychoanalytic theory), or are the result of repeated reinforcement (behaviourism).

According to many cognitive theorists, early experiences help infants develop a set of assumptions that become a frame of reference for later in life. This set of assumptions is known as a working model (Johnson et al., 2010). It is a “model” because early relationships form a prototype, or blueprint, for later interactions; it is “working” because, although it is used, it is not necessarily fixed or final, but is modified as new information becomes available.

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES

Proximal and Distal Parenting

Should a parent carry an infant most of the time, or will that spoil the baby? Should babies have a large number of toys, or will that make them too materialistic?

These questions refer to the distinction between proximal parenting (being physically close to a baby, often holding and touching) and distal parenting (keeping some distance—providing toys, feeding by putting finger food within reach, talking face-to-face instead of communicating by touch). Caregivers tend to behave in proximal or distal ways very early, when infants are only 2 months old (Kärtner et al., 2010).

The research finds notable cultural differences, not only with newborns but also with older children (Keller et al., 2010). For example, a longitudinal study comparing child-rearing methods of the Nso people of Cameroon with those of Greeks in Athens found marked differences in proximal and distal parenting (Keller et al., 2004). In that study, 78 mothers were videotaped as they played with their 3-month-olds. Coders (who did not know the study’s hypothesis) counted frequency of proximal play (e.g., carrying, swinging, caressing, exercising the child’s body) and distal play (e.g., face-to-face talking) (see TABLE 4.3). The Nso mothers were proximal, holding their babies all the time and almost never using toys or bottles. The Greek mothers were relatively distal, using objects almost half the time.

Table : TABLE 4.3 Infants in Rural Cameroon and Urban Greece

	Cameroon	Athens, Greece
I. Infant–mother play at 3 months
Percent of time held by mother	100%	31%
Percent of time playing with objects	3%	40%
II. Toddler behaviour at 18 months
Self-recognition	3%	68%
Immediate compliance with request	72%	2%
Source: Adapted from Keller et al., 2004.

Not Just a Snapshot Proximal and distal patterns are pervasive, affecting every moment of infant care. For example, in North America, babies often travel in strollers, while in other cultures they are strapped to their mothers’ bodies.

TOM PRETTYMAN/PHOTO EDIT
DAWN DELANEY/LONELY PLANET/GETTY IMAGES

The researchers hypothesized that proximal parenting would result in toddlers who were less self-aware but more compliant—traits needed in an interdependent and cooperative society such as that of rural Cameroon. By contrast, distal parenting might produce children who were self-aware but less obedient, as needed when a culture values independence and self-reliance.

The predictions were accurate. At 18 months, these same infants were tested on self-awareness (via the mirror/rouge test) and obedience to their parents. The African toddlers (proximal) didn’t recognize themselves in the mirror but were compliant; the opposite was true of the Greek toddlers (distal).

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Replicating their own work, the researchers studied a dozen mother—infant pairs in Costa Rica. In that country, caregiver—infant distance was midway between the Nso and the Greeks, as was later toddler behaviour (Keller et al., 2004).

The researchers then reanalyzed all their data, child by child. They found that, even apart from culture, proximal or distal play at 3 months was highly predictive: Greek mothers who, unlike most of their peers, were proximal parents had more obedient toddlers. Further research in several other nations confirmed the consequences of these two forms of parenting (Borke et al., 2007; Kärtner et al., 2011).

For every aspect of infant care, cultural attitudes have some impact, but for the proximal/distal response, culture is especially pivotal. Is independence valued over dependence, Is autonomy more important than compliance? Cultures differ in their answers. If a mother asks her toddler to put away some toys that he or she did not use (a test sometimes used to measure compliance), and the toddler puts them away without protest, is that wonderful or disturbing?

Answers may depend on whether rebellious independence or law-abiding morality is the quality most needed in a particular society. If you have an answer that you believe is best, you can figure out whether to pick up your baby (proximal) or give her a pacifier (distal) when she cries, whether to breastfeed her (proximal) until she is 2 years old or switch her to bottle-feeding as soon as possible (distal). Of course, many other factors influence whether or not a woman will breastfeed in Canada, but worldwide, those cultures that are proximal also tend to be those where breastfeeding continues for months and even years.

Ideally, infants develop a working model of the self as valued, loved, and competent and a working model of parents as emotionally available, loving, sensitive and supportive (Harter, 2006). However, reality does not always conform to this ideal. A 1-year-old girl might develop a model, based on her parents’ inconsistent responses to her, that people are unpredictable. She will continue to apply that model to everyone: Her childhood friendships will be insecure and her adult relationships will be guarded.

To use Piaget’s terminology, such a girl develops a cognitive schema to organize her perceptions. According to cognitive theory, an infant’s early experiences are not themselves necessarily crucial, but the interpretation of those experiences is (Olson & Dweck, 2009). In this way, working models formed in childhood echo for a lifetime. A hopeful message from cognitive theory is that people can rethink and reorganize their thoughts, developing new models. Our mistrustful girl might marry a faithful and loving partner and gradually develop a better working model.

Systems Theory

As you read in Chapter 1, family systems theory focuses on the family as a unit in which each member has a certain role and a number of responsibilities. Because Bowlby’s primary agenda with attachment theory was to challenge his psychoanalytic colleagues’ assumptions that children only love their mothers because they provide oral gratification, Bowlby overlooked fathers.

Michael Lamb (1976), a leading researcher in the field of fathering, conducted a series of experiments evaluating infants’ attachment with mothers and fathers. Lamb found that infants’ level of approach to and contact-seeking with mothers and fathers were similar, and infants tended to show more affiliative behaviours, such as smiling, vocalizing, and proffering toys, to fathers than to mothers. Thus, fathers make a unique contribution to their children’s development.

Recently, researchers have focused especially on fathers and on the way their roles and responsibilities have changed over time. For example, fathers now share caregiving responsibilities with mothers instead of primarily being as the economic breadwinner in the family. One reason for this is that the mother’s role has changed too, since many mothers are now contributing to the household income through their own careers (Chuang, 2009).

Stranger Danger Brad Graham and his 21-month-old son, Cameron, are spending time together at a farmer’s market in Chatham, Ontario, on Halloween. Cameron is seeking comfort from his father after being scared by Frankenstein. No matter what parents say, children react according to their inborn temperament.

SARAH FRALEIGH/CHATHAM DAILY NEWS/QMI AGENCY

According to Statistics Canada (2010c), although fathers are assuming more caregiving duties than in the past, mothers still spend more time on average in this role than fathers. For example, in 2010, women with children 4 years and younger spent 6 hours 33 minutes per day as caregivers compared with fathers spending 3 hours 7 minutes.

Humanism

Remember that Maslow described a hierarchy of needs (physiological, safety/security, love/belonging, success/esteem, and self-actualization), with the lower levels being prerequisites for higher ones. Infants begin at the first level: Their emotions serve to ensure that physiological needs are met. That’s why babies cry when they are hungry or hurt. Basic survival needs must be satisfied to enable the person to reach higher levels (Silton et al., 2011).

Humanism reminds us that caregivers also have needs, and their needs influence how they respond to infants. Self-actualized people are no longer needy for themselves, so they can nurture an infant well. But most young parents are at level 3 or 4, seeking love or respect. They may be troubled by “ghosts in the nursery” (first mentioned in Chapter 3 in the discussion of infant sleep). Their own babyhood experiences often include unmet needs, and that interferes with their ability to nurture.

For example, although all experts endorse breastfeeding as the best way to meet infants’ physiological needs, many mothers stop breastfeeding after trying for a few days, and many fathers feel excluded if the mother spends most of her time and attention on nursing. This may puzzle the experts but not the humanist theorists, who realize that a parent’s needs may clash with the infant’s needs (Mulder & Johnson, 2010). For instance, one mother of a 1-year-old said:

This woman’s need for self-respect was overwhelming, causing her to stop breastfeeding in order to feel some confidence about her shape. Her husband’s love of her body, or her son’s need for breastfeeding, did not help, because she was not at level 3 (love and belonging) and her “strange” body attacked her self-esteem (level 4).

Her personal needs may have been unmet since puberty (she says, “I’ve never loved my breasts”). She blames her husband for not understanding her feelings and her son who “couldn’t latch.” Since all babies learn to latch with time and help, her deciding that he couldn’t do so suggests something amiss in synchrony and attachment—unmet baby needs because of unmet mother needs.

By contrast, some parents understand their baby’s need for safety and security (level 2) even if they themselves are far beyond that stage. Kevin is an example.

Evolutionary Theory

Remember that evolutionary theory stresses two needs: survival and reproduction. Humans are extraordinarily good at those tasks. We have much bigger brains, proportionally, than any other creature, which allows us to use our genetic diversity to aid our own survival and that of our children, in every climate and continent.

It takes about 20 years of maturation before the human brain is fully functioning. A child must be nourished, protected, and taught by adults for much longer than offspring of any other species. Infant and parent emotional development help ensure such lengthy protection.

Emotions For SurvivalInfant emotions are part of the evolutionary mandate. All the emotions described in the first part of this chapter—from the hunger cry to the temper tantrum—can be seen from this perspective (Konner, 2010).

For example, newborns are extraordinarily dependent, unable to walk or talk, or even sit up and feed themselves, for months after birth. They must attract adult devotion—and they do. That first smile, the sound of infant laughter, and their role in synchrony are all powerfully attractive to adults—especially to parents. Adults call their hairless, chinless, round-faced, small-limbed creatures “cute,” “handsome,” “beautiful,” and “adorable,” and willingly spend hours carrying, feeding, changing, and cleaning them.

If humans were only motivated by objective reward, caregiving would make no sense—but many adults think that parenting is worth every sacrifice. Children are costly, from birth on. Food (breast milk requires the mother to eat more), diapers, clothes, furniture (such as cribs and strollers), medication, toys, and child care (either hiring someone or unpaid labour from someone not employed) are just a start. Before a child becomes financially independent, many parents have paid for a bigger house, education, vacations, and much more. These are just the financial costs; the emotional costs are greater.

None of this would occur without the parents making a major investment in each child—and that is exactly what human biology and culture foster. Hormones, specifically oxytocin, do much more than trigger birth and promote breastfeeding; they increase the impulse to bond with others, especially one’s children. Both men and women have oxytocin in their blood and saliva, and this hormone continues to be produced as caregiving needs require (Feldman et al, 2011).

Evolutionary theory holds that, over human history, proximity-seeking and maintaining contact fostered species survival by keeping toddlers near their caregivers and keeping caregivers vigilant. Infants fuss at the still face, fear separation, and laugh when adults play with them, all to sustain parent–child interdependence. We inherited these emotional reactions from our great-great-…grandparents, who would have died without them. Bonding, and then synchrony, and then attachment, are greater and more durable for humans than for other animals. Toddlers attend to nuances of adult expressions (social referencing) to establish the relationships between self and others.

Same Situation, Far Apart: Caregiving Historically, grandmothers have often played an important role in caring for their grandchildren. Even today, grandmothers still provide extensive care, as shown by these two—in North America and China.

FABRICE TROMBERT PHOTOGRAPHIY INC./GETTY IMAGES
CHAU DOAN/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

The dependence is mutual. It is almost impossible not to dote on a baby who grins at the sight of your face and pays attention when you frown. Thus it is part of human nature for babies to evoke caregiving, and for caregivers to attend to babies.

AllocareEvolutionary social scientists note that if mothers were the exclusive caregivers of each child until children were adults, a given woman could bear only one or two offspring—not enough for the species to survive. The reason humans have more children, which is essential for species survival, is allocare, the care of children by people other than the biological parents (Hrdy, 2009).

Compared to many other species, human mothers are willing to let other people help with child care, and other people are eager to do so (Kachel et al., 2011). Throughout the centuries, the particular person to provide allocare has varied by culture and ecological conditions. Often fathers helped, but not always. Some men were far away, fighting, or hunting, or seeking work; some had several wives and children. In those situations, other women (daughters, grandmothers, sisters, friends) and sometimes other men provided allocare. In several cultures, infants were breastfed by several lactating women, especially in the beginning before the mother’s milk became plentiful. All this can be explained by evolutionary theory. Of course, as you just read, other theories are plausible as well. Cultural variations in allocare are vast, and each theory can be used to justify certain variations.

Non-parental Care

It is estimated that about 134 million babies will be born each year from 2010 to 2021 (United Nations, 2011). Most newborns will be cared for primarily or exclusively by their mothers, with allocare increasing from ages 1 to 20. Some infants, even in the first months of life, are cared for by relatives, typically fathers in North America and grandmothers in most other nations (Leach, 2009). Worldwide, only about 15 percent of infants (birth to age 2 years) receive daily care from a non-relative who is paid and trained to provide it.

Many people believe that their own family’s or culture’s practices are best and that other patterns harm either the infant or the mother. This is another example of the difference-equals-deficit error.

Statistics on the precise incidence and consequences of various forms of infant care in each nation are difficult to find or interpret because it is difficult to keep statistics on the many different types of child care arrangements (Leach, 2009). Further, patterns of infant care are part of a complex web of child-rearing: it is difficult to connect any one particular pattern with one particular outcome.

International ComparisonsCentre-based care is common in countries such as France, Israel, China, and Sweden, where it is heavily subsidized by governments. It is scarce in other regions, such as South Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where there is little government support for centre-based care. North America is in between these extremes, but variation from place to place is apparent.

Involvement of relatives in infant care also varies. Worldwide, fathers are increasingly involved in baby care. Some nations provide paid leave at birth for fathers as well as mothers. Several nations provide paid family leave that can be taken by either parent or shared between them. Some nations mandate that a job be held for a woman who takes an unpaid maternity leave. Most developing nations provide limited paid leave for mothers (India does not allow women to be employed in the first six weeks after birth) but not fathers (see TABLE 4.4).

Note that these are policies, not always practices. In many nations, parents have intense, unregulated employment and take off only a day or two for birth. Also note that underlying such policies are theories about what is best for infants. When nations mandate paid leave, the belief is that infants need parental care and that employers should encourage that to occur.

In Canada, 70 percent of infants are cared for exclusively by their mothers (no other relatives or babysitters) throughout their first year (Côté et al., 2008). This is in contrast to the United States, which is similar in ethnic diversity but has higher rates of maternal employment: 20 percent of American infants are cared for only by their mothers. These differences are affected by culture more than by universal psychosocial needs of babies and parents. In the United States, federal policy mandates that a job be held for a parent who takes unpaid leave of up to 12 weeks unless the company has fewer than 50 employees, and almost no company pays for paternal leave. As a result, most mothers return to work soon after giving birth.

Same Situation, Far Apart: Daycare Options Winnipeg, Manitoba (top), is on the opposite side of the world from Dhaka, Bangladesh (bottom), but daycare is needed in both places, as shown here.

CP IMAGES/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS-KEN GIGLIOTTI
DOLI AKTER/AGE FOTOSTOCK

One might hope that centuries of maternal, paternal, and allocare would provide clear conclusions about effective practices. Unfortunately, the evidence is mixed.

Types of Non-Maternal CareIn the twenty-first century, most mothers prefer that their baby’s father become the chief alternate caregiver. In Canada, many parents coordinate their work schedules so one or the other parent is always present, an arrangement that may help the infant and the budget but not the marriage, as parents have much less time together (Meteyer & Perry-Jenkins, 2010). Grandmothers are also often caregivers in the first year, less so as children become more mobile and social (Leach, 2009).

When parents turn to paid non-relatives, wealthier families may hire someone to come to the home. Many parents use family daycare, in which one caregiver looks after a small group of young children in her (almost never his) home. The quality of family daycare varies; infants and toddlers often get less attention than 3- and 4-year-olds (Kryzer et al., 2007).

Providing physical care and ensuring safety are only the beginning of quality caretaking, although those factors tend to be the focus when parents seek allocare. Evolutionary theory notes that survival of infants was far from guaranteed in earlier centuries. Ideally, each baby also experiences many hours each day of personalized social interaction.

Another option is centre daycare, in which licensed and specially educated adults care for several infants in a place especially designed for them. Most centres separate infants from older children, a good strategy from the humanist perspective, since it allows everyone’s developmental needs to be met. In Canada in 2003, about 28 percent of children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years attended a daycare centre funded by the province or territory. In Quebec, thanks to generous provincial subsidies that started in 1997, the rate was much higher at 52 percent (Bushnik, 2006).

Ideally, an infant daycare centre has ample safe space, appropriate equipment, trained providers, and two adults for a group of five or fewer infants (de Schipper et al., 2006; NAEYC, 2012) (see TABLE 4.5). Such a setting advances both cognitive and social skills: Babies are intrigued by other babies, and they learn from them.

No matter what form of care is chosen, responsive, individualized care with stable caregivers seems best (Morrissey, 2009). Caregiver change is especially problematic for infants because it doesn’t allow synchrony to develop. Each simple gesture or sound that a baby makes not only merits an encouraging response, but also requires interpretation by someone who knows that particular baby well. “Baba” could refer to a bottle, baby, blanket, banana, or some other item that does not even begin with the /b/sound. This example emphasizes the importance of synchrony.

The Effects of Infant DaycareThe evidence is overwhelming that good preschool education (discussed in Chapter 5) benefits children, especially in cognition. However, as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) states, when it comes to infants, disagreements about the merits of different forms of child care remain (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). A major problem is that quality varies a great deal. Some caregivers with no training look after many infants, and the result is inadequate care.

Some babies seem far more affected than others by the quality of their care (Phillips et al., 2011; Pluess & Belsky, 2009). The main concern is that some infants with extensive non-maternal care will become more aggressive later on (Jacob, 2009). As one review explained: “This evidence now indicates that early non-parental care environments sometimes pose risks to young children and sometimes confer benefits” (Phillips et al., 2011). Differential sensitivity is evident: For genetic and familial reasons, the choice about how best to provide care for an infant varies from case to case.

Consider three examples. First, in England, one study found that infants who were not exclusively in their mothers’ care were less advanced emotionally at age 5 years (Fergusson et al., 2008). Most of those infants were cared for by grandmothers, especially when the mothers were young and poor. As you know from your understanding of correlation, however, low SES itself is associated with several variables, in addition to non-maternal care, that might account for the delayed emotional development reported in this study. In this case, the relevant variables may include the grandmothers’ low SES, the mothers’ immaturity, and the households’ financial stress. Any of those could be the reason for the 5-year-olds’ emotional immaturity. Or their behaviour could be the direct result of non-maternal infant care; the data tells us correlation, not cause.

Second, a large study in Canada found that infant girls seem to develop equally well in various care arrangements. However, boys are more complex. Boys from high-income families with infant allocare fared less well than similar boys in exclusive maternal care: By age 4, they were slightly more assertive or aggressive and had more emotional problems (e.g., a teacher might note that such a boy “seems unhappy”).

The opposite was true for boys from low-income families: On average, they benefitted from non-maternal care in infancy, again according to teacher reports. The researchers insist that no policy implications can be derived from this study, partly because care varied so much in quality, location, and provider (Côté et al., 2008). Research in the United States on low-income families also finds that centre care is beneficial for low-SES families (Peng & Robins, 2010).

The third study may be the most solid research, in that it is longitudinal and began with a large and diverse sample. The Early Child Care Research Network of the NICHD has followed the development of more than 1300 children from birth to age 11 years. Researchers found many cognitive benefits of early daycare, especially in language development. Attachment to mothers seemed as secure for babies in daycare as for babies with exclusive maternal care. Some babies in infant care were also securely attached to their caregivers, which is a good sign.

Like other, smaller studies, the NICHD research confirms that the mother–child relationship is pivotal. The NICHD study and the consensus of many researchers in North America is that parents are the most important influence on child development, and that infant daycare, even for 40 hours a week before age 1, has much less influence on child development than does the warmth of the mother–infant relationship (Phillips et al., 2011).

However, the NICHD study also found that infant daycare is detrimental when the mother is insensitive and the infant spends more than 20 hours a week in a poor-quality program (McCartney et al., 2010). In particular, boys with extensive non-maternal care became more quarrelsome as they matured, having more conflicts with their teachers than did the girls or other boys with a different mix of maternal traits and daycare experiences.

What can be concluded from these three studies? Nothing definitive. Each study is complex: International variations, uncertainty about quality and extent of care (both at home and elsewhere), and the fact that choices are not random (for instance, maternal employment and hence allocare are more likely in families with educated parents, but less likely if the couple are married and financially secure) make general conclusions elusive.

Family income, culture, religion, and education affect choice of care, and those same variables affect child development. The fact that boys are more affected than girls may indicate something about biological sex, or that difficult boys are more often placed in daycare, or that cultures encourage traits in boys that are discouraged in girls. Indeed, not every study finds that boys are more affected—again, there are many possible reasons to explain a lack of gender differences, just as there are many reasons to explain the presence of gender differences.

Maternal Employment in InfancyClosely tied to the issue of infant daycare is the issue of maternal employment. Once it was assumed that mothers should stay home with their children, as recommended by psychoanalytic and behaviourist theory. That assumption has been challenged, partly by the idea that mothers have needs that merit attention (humanism), and by historical evidence that exclusive maternal care was far from typical over the centuries (evolutional theory).

A summary of the longitudinal outcomes of non-maternal infant care finds “externalizing behaviour is predicted from a constellation of variables in multiple contexts…and no study has found that children of employed mothers develop serious emotional or other problems solely because their mothers are working outside the home” (McCartney et al., 2010). Indeed, findings from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development research revealed that children generally benefit if their mothers are employed (Goldberg et al., 2008). The most likely reasons are that maternal income reduces parental depression and increases family wealth, making parent more likely to use formal child care, which all correlate with happier and more successful children (Geoffroy et al., 2012).

A time-use study found that mothers who worked full time outside the home spent almost as much time playing with their babies (14½ hours a week) as did mothers with no outside jobs (16 hours a week) (Huston & Aronson, 2005). To make more time for their babies, they spent half as much time on housework, less time with their husbands, and almost no time on leisure. The study concludes:

This is a comforting conclusion for employed mothers, but again other interpretations are possible. It may be that the women who were able to find worthwhile work were more capable of providing a quality home environment than the women who were unemployed. Further, the fact that employed mothers had less time with their husbands or less personal time for leisure may not bode well for the child’s future.

Marriage relationships benefit from shared activities, so couples who rarely enjoy each other’s company are likely to be less dedicated to each other. This may be particularly a problem for the men, because men who are devoted to their wives are more likely to be active and involved fathers. Father involvement correlates with child happiness and success. The opposite is also true.

As you see, every study reflects many variables, just as every theory has a different perspective on infant care. Given that, and given divergent cultural assumptions, it is not surprising that researchers find mixed evidence on infant care and caregivers. Many factors are relevant: infant sex and temperament, family income and education, and especially the quality of care at home and elsewhere.

Thus, as with many topics in child development, questions remain. What is definite is that each infant needs personal responsiveness from at least one person—ideally from both mother and father, but another relative or a non-relative can suffice. Someone should be a partner in the synchrony duet, a base for secure attachment, and a social reference who encourages exploration. If the baby has that, infant emotions and experiences—cries and laughter, fears and joys—will ensure that development goes well.