Attachment Parenting

Journal Studies

A mother’s emotional goals predicted her sensitivity to infant distress more so than her own emotional reaction. In addition, her prenatal ability to detect an unfamiliar infant’s distress was associated with more maternal sensitivity with her own infant.

Breastfeeding changed the mother’s brain, activating brain regions associated with empathy, greater maternal sensitivity, and mother-infant bonding.

Early mother-infant skin-to-skin contact predicted later maternal sensitivity.

Child emotional eating is correlated with minimizing and non-reasoning, punitive parental responses, which are in line with authoritarian and permissive parenting styles but not authoritative styles.

Breastfeeding for longer was associated with more maternal sensitivity, more attachment security, and less attachment disorganization, but bottle-feeding did not necessarily harm the mother-infant relationship.

While more research is needed, the benefits of responsive feeding on child nutrition and growth are expected to be as great as responsive parenting is to child outcome.

Research on responsive feeding is promising, but more research is needed to define child outcomes.

Insecure attachment with low maternal sensitivity at ages 2 and 3 years was associated with teenage obesity.

Women who received more support from their partners during pregnancy experienced less distress postpartum and reported that their infants were happier, too.

Parent education delivered through in-person and web-based classes was helpful for mothers of toddlers, whether or not they reported behavior problems.

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