Dr Porpavai Kasiannan Okay, now we will  go to the topic of the presentation,   which is “Principles of Parenting Infants”  in a little bit more in-depth – sort of,   to get a bit more in-depth understanding.  So, parents can have direct effects,   and there are factors that have direct effects  on parenting, and there are factors that have   indirect effects on parenting. So, the direct  effects are mainly, you know, biological, like,   genetics or – which influences the physical  characteristics, intelligence and personality,   which are all inherited to a significant degree.  And we also know that apart from genetics,   which is the nature, other theories, other  prominent theories, such as, experience has an   equally important factor, which is the nurture  side of the, you know, influence on development. So, adoption studies have looked at this. In  studies which has looked at twins, you know,   adopted twins, you know, one twin, raised  by the biological mother and other raised   by adopted mother, shows that there are direct  roles for genetics, but also for the experience,   where they have characteristics of both the  biological parent and the adoptive parent.   And also in families with multiple siblings,  although they all have a shared environment,   they are born to the same set of parents with the  same genetic makeup, but each individual child   will be different in their temperament,  in their, you know, in their regularity,   in all those other characteristics. And this  is something that has been studied as shared   and non-shared environment, and the non-shared  environment are the subtle differences in the   – within the infant, within the child, but also  within the child and the environment interaction,   child-parent, and child-environment interactions. And parent-provided experiences are also direct  effe – have direct effects, such as, language.   You know, the amount of speaking that they do  with infants, the amount of activities they do   with their infants, appropriate – developmentally  appropriate toys, providing a physical environment   where the children can move around and play  and explore, all those things have direct   effects. The things that have indirect effects on  parenting are the support that the parents have.   One most important thing is marital support and  communication, where both parents are supporting   one another and are communicating appropriately  with one another, and are the – providing or   catering to the needs of the infant in a  supportive manner, has better outcomes.   But if there is marital conflict, this can impact  on attending to the subtle needs of the infant,   and there might be subtle neglect and, you know,  resulting in emotional dysregulation and so on. Okay, moving on to how parenting beliefs  will impact on parenting infants.   So, parenting beliefs is parents’ own  beliefs about parenting, about their   capacity for parenting, etc. So they may  generate and shape parenting behaviours,   mediate effectiveness of parenting or help to  organise parenting. So, for example, mothers   would feel confident, competent, efficacious in  their role as parents, they are more responsive,   more empathetic and less punitive and more  appropriate in their developmental expectations   of their infants. And obviously, if they don't  feel, then it can impact on the parenting. How parents view infancy in general functions  in the same way. Who – those who believe they   can or cannot affect infants’ personality  or intelligence, they modify their parenting   accordingly. If they feel that they can affect the  infant's behaviour and personality, they are more   confident in, sort of, modifying their approaches,  of being flexible in their approaches. Whereas,   if they feel that they cannot affect the infant’s  personality, then they either, sort of, give up   easily or they can get frustrated and angry, and  they can have unhelpful communication patterns or   parenting practices. Mothers who regard their  infants as being difficult are less likely   to pay attention or respond to their infant’s  overtures, and there, that such inattentiveness   and non-responsiveness can foster temperamental  difficulties and cognitive shortcomings. So,   it's a two-way thing. Again, culture  plays a major role in – so culturally   defined beliefs about infants and childrearing  practices influence how they parent infants. There are different domains of parenting infants.  So, we looked at domains of developing infants,   but then looking at domains of parenting infants,  where, you know, parents have different roles in   their role as parents. They include these four  aspects. The first one is "nurturant caregiving,"   in which the parents promote infants’  wellness and prevent illnesses from the   moment of conceptions. Like, from the time they  get pregnant, they provide sustenance, protection,   supervision and shield from risk and stressors  throughout the pregnancy and even after birth.   "Social caregiving," which includes a variety  of – providing a variety of visual, verbal,   affective and physical behaviours to  – that parents use in engaging infants   in interpersonal exchanges, so that infants  can develop these skills in – as they grow.   And also it helps them with regulating the  infant's affect or behaviour or emotions. The third is "didactic caregiving," which  consists of a variety of strategies parents use   in stimulating infants to engage and understand  the environment outside the parent-child dyad. For   example, you know, introducing the chi – infant  to the park, to pets, to – in outdoor activities,   where they are, you know, stimulating the  infants to engage in these activities, and   these activities increase over the course of  infancy. You know, as the infants grow older,   this didactic caregiving increases because  infants are capable of doing lot more than   when they are a one-month-old baby. And  then the material caregiving provision and   organisation of the physical world of the  infant, providing material comfort, toys,   books, developmentally appropriate books, and  activities that they can do with the infants. And there are the other factors, also, that  influence parenting infants. So, not only the   parents providing the environment, the activities,  the emotional connection and everything, and   the – there has to be the mutual responsiveness  from the infant for this to be successful. So,   you know, that mutual responsiveness is an  equally important factor. So, infants will   deliberately search for and use parents’ emotional  expressions to help clarify and evaluate uncertain   and novel events, a phenomena called “social  referencing.” And if anyone has watched the   “still face” experiment, it's very – it will  be very obvious where the baby's mother stops   showing any facial expression and the baby tries  its best, you know, tries to evaluate, tries   to get the mother's attention, and finally get  frustrated and so on. So, it just shows how much   infants understand these emotional expressions and  how far they can go to get the parents to respond. And parenting has, you know, has definitely not  always been the positive, pleasant trajectory for   everyone who has babies, and all over the world  infanticide was a major problem. It is still   a problem in some sections of population  in the world, and so that is one thing,   and there are multiple layers of factors  there that influence that practice, which   is beyond the scope of this presentation.  And there is increasing single parents,   number of single parents, teenage parents,  significant poverty, substance abuse during   pregnancy and parent – you know, parenthood,  physical, emotional and sexual abuse. If you   look at all these things, they're all – they all  impact many domains of the infant development.   Also impact on how the parents parent these  – parent – and also in – if you look at the   ecological model, how these factors have  negative impact on the child's development. And people also have studied the differences  between mothers’ and fathers’ way of parenting   infants. Across cultures globally, in general,  mothers play the principal part in infant   development, and – or infant/child caregiving.  Fathers are more interactive during play times   with the infant, whereas mothers spend  more time in direct contact with infants,   during feeding, you know. But it is changing a bit   in the Western world, where fathers are  taking active participation in, sort of,   you know, in bathing the child or as – you  know, changing nappies, and so on and so forth. When fathers are unhappily married, they generally  withdraw from infants, but mothers, when they are   unhappily married don’t. This is what the research  says. And mothers and fathers interact with and   care for infants in complementary ways. So, they  may not be the same, but in functional dyads,   they work in complementary ways. In general,  mothers are associated with caregiving, whereas   fathers are associated with playful interactions,  as I just mentioned. However, even if the fathers   have low quantity of interaction and have a  different style of interaction with infants,   infants still become as attached to their  fathers as they do with their mothers. Another thing that shapes parenting infants  is the actual and perceived characteristics of   the infants. We did talk about “temperament,” but  there are other characteristics that infants bring   into the world that influence the parenting. One  such thing is the physical appearance of the baby,   called – which was called “babyishness” by  Lorenz, which actually elicits nurturant   reaction to babies. The way babies, sort of, look  and the features of the babies actually elicit   nurturant reactions. And crying is something  that motivates adults to soothe babies,   so crying has a survival function in  the early infancy, and smiling from   infants encourages adults to stay near the  baby, so that also has a survival function. Then if we look at health status of the babies,  studies have shown that pre-term infants often   have difficulties, you know, being – in being  able to regulate engagement with caregivers. So,   they're not able to engage with caregivers as  well as the full-term infants. And if we look   at gender, although infants don't come with the  preference of interactions based on their gender,   the society organises these gender differences  from the time of conception to birth with,   you know, the girls, sort of, receiving everything  in pink and boys in blues, and the way their   rooms are decorated, the initial descriptions,  impressions. And what they expect from infants –   infant boys and infant girls might be very subtly  different, but that difference is still there. And the age of the infant, parents interact  very differently to younger infants,   which is very appropriate, compared to the  older infants. With the younger infants,   it's more affect-laden speech, like, you know,  more emotional speech, it's more cooing and   more the motherese kind of speech,  where they're talking in that, you know,   in that very peculiar mother language, or the  parent language, that we speak with infants,   which varies from one parent to another. And this,  sort of, changes to more information-laden speech   with older infants. With older infants parents  would be talking about facts, like, about what   they're doing. If they're cooking, they might  talk about, “Look, mummy is cooking," you know,   "pancakes for you, and this is what we are doing.”  So, they’re, kind of, preparing the infant for   interacting with the outside world. And  also the responsiveness of the infants,   how easily they can be read by the parents, in  terms of their distress levels or emotions, and   the predictably of – predictability of the infants  also influence how parents interact with them and   how they do their parenting with the infants.  And similarly, actual and perceived cognitive   ability and temperament, we looked at it a little  bit earlier on, also influences the parenting. The biological determinants, okay, are also  equally important in how parents parent   infants. In the more, sort of, advanced Western  world, parents are getting older and older,   in terms of when they have their first child, and  they prepare for the birth in advance, they spend   a lot of time in research, in making sure that  they are healthy, and they look at their habits,   and they stop smoking, drinking and, sort of,  prenatal biological events, they are attended   to. But it's not always the case, you know, a  lot of parents, particularly the vulnerable ones,   you know, they do, sort of, smoke and  drink and use substances during pregnancy,   and that can inadvertently affect the  developing foetus and – that's one thing. The second thing is that some of the infant  caregiving practices are biologically wired,   according to Papousek and Papousek.  That it’s an intuitive parenting,   we don't – we are not taught that, it  comes naturally to us. The one that I was   describing of how we speak to the babies, you  know, child-directed, infant-directed speech,   it's naturally wired into us. The fact  that we nurture infants and we provide the,   you know, the secure base for them, and  we provide that opportunities for secure   attachment and all those things, seem to be,  you know, innately or naturally wired into us. And the person – parental personality factors  are also, sort of, important in how we parent.   They include empathic awareness, predictability,  non-intrusiveness, emotional availability and   perceived self-efficacy. So, all these  things in – if we perceive ourselves to   be self-efficacious and emotionally available,  then we provide better parenting towards them.   If parents are self-centred, and that might  impact on their parenting, because caring   for an infant takes a lot out of the parent,  they – in terms of time, effort, you know,   loss of incomes or money. And those things,  you know, if there was a self-centred parent,   then they might look at having an infant as a  disadvantage rather than a joyable – an enjoyable,   sort of, event in their life, and similarly,  adaptability and emotional regulation skills. And another thing is intergenerational  transmission, either through genes or   through experiential pathways. We know  that studies, sociological studies,   have looked at intergenerational transmission. So,  we – these are the things that we inherit of – the   parents inherit from their parents, and their  parents will have inherited from their parents,   and so on. Obviously it will not be all, it will  also be modified and influenced by the society   that they're living in, the kind of demands  that life has for them, which als – it changes   from generation to generation. So, it's a mix of  those factors that also shape parenting infants. And societal factors also influence how infants  are parented. Family configuration, for example,   single parent families are much more, sort of,  stressed compared to, you know, the two parent   families. Level of parental stress, level of  dysfunction in the marital relationships, social   connections, you know, this may – if there are not  enough social connections to support the family.   Educational level, and of course, financial and  social stress, they all impact on how parents can   parent their infants. Low socioeconomic status is  definitely a risk factor for child development and   mother-infant relationship, and it also promotes  harsh or inconsistent disciplinary practices. Although all cultures, there is a common factor.  There is a common factor in all cultures, which is   to nurture and protect. This is the culture common  factor, and there are culture specific factors,   which are specific to certain cultures that also  influence parents. So, for example, you know,   cross-cultural comparisons have shown that almost  all aspects of parenting are informed by culture.   For – in one study, which looked at Japanese  – compared Japanese and American mothers,   Japanese mothers tend to expect  early mastery of emotional maturity,   self-control and social courtesy in their  offsprings, compared to American mothers who   expect early mastery of verbal competence  and self-actualisation in their children. And although mothers from different cultures show  a lot of similarities in interacting with the   infants, you know, the things that we discussed  earlier on, how we interact with infants, but they   also show vast differences in how they deal with  infants day-to-day. Feeding, for example, and,   you know, worldwide, there is some – there  is – breastfeeding is encouraged and it is,   you know - that is being promoted all around  the world. How parents breastfeed also changes,   you know, whether they feed on demand or  they feed by the clock, it all depends upon,   you know, how they perceive their  infants within their cultures. And there are sleeping differences, like  I said earlier. In European and, sort of,   American and Australian cultures, the infants are  expected to sleep separately from the parents,   whereas most South Asian communities  will co-sleep with their infants, and   – for a number of years. Which is not  seen as being – having a negative impact,   and studies have not shown any negative  impacts of such co-sleeping patterns or   increased rate of sudden infant death syndrome,  which is one of the reasons why co-sleeping is   not encouraged in the – in some cultures. So,  they’re – all these cross-cultural differences,   also cultural, sort of, specificities  can also impact how we parent infants. Another thing that is really important  role of parenting is on emotional and   self-regul – improving or fostering emotional and  self-regulation skills during early childhood.   Having good self-regulatory skills is  often considered as an early indicator   for later life stress success, because  this is a very important skill that is   necessary for coping with stress in – day-to-day  stress, and also, sort of, you know, toxic stress,   if that were to happen in future. So,  certain parental characteristics, such as,   parental self-regulation, if the parents have  good capacity to self-regulate themselves,   their own temperament and their mental health  status all influence on how they help their   infants se – regulate. Other variables, such as,  how involved they are, what their parenting styles   are, what their parenting sensitivity is, how  they co-parent, whether they co-parent effectively   as a team, or do they have differences? They also  influence the self-regulation. And attachment   security is another important factor. Apart from  these, the family structure, the home environment   and other ecological factors also influence  the progression of self-regulatory abilities. So, if we look at self-regulation during infancy,  the child’s success at regulation is definitely   dependent – primarily dependent on the caregiver  who is responsible for supporting the infant to   develop control over sleep and wakefulness.  So, if you look at sleep as one thing. So,   it's really important that the parent is heavily  involved, or the caregiver is heavily involved   and invested in meeting that – in providing that  support. From about three months to the end of   first year of life, the child learns to engage in  voluntary motor behaviour to soothe themselves. For example, you know, younger infants will  usually, sort of, suck or put their fists in their   mouth, or – as a comforting thing. And even later  on in life, you know, thumb sucking is one thing   that, you know, infants would use to self-soothe,  or they might have rubbing, sort of, actions, or   they might carry a comfort blanket or something,  a toy, to self-regulate. As early as young – three   months, infants can, sort of, turn away from  negative stimulus or negative arousal, and then   slowly they organise their object and social world  and start to become aware of their own actions.   So, they might be able to reach for a toy or play  with a particular toy when they feel dysregulated. And these responses are usually tied to immediate  interactions or characteristics of the situations,   for example, having a fun interaction with  the caregiver. But they're not conscious. The   infants are not actually thinking that, oh, I'm  feeling this way, so I should go and do this, or   they don't have a full awareness of the meaning of  the situation. Hence, this, kind of, comforting,   this phase is labelled as “modulation”  and not as “control,” so not self-control,   but modulation. So, the important role for the  parent here is to be responsive and to provide   interesting stimuli so that they can learn  to use those stimuli to regulate themselves. The period between 12 and 18 months of age is  accompanied by important and striking changes   in cognitive and locomotor abilities. So,  they are able to think better, understand   better and move better. And they can also,  sort of – compliance reflects on the child’s,   you know – the compliance to adult demands also  starts, sort of, varying, because, you know,   it depends on the child's ability to initiate,  stop or change their behaviour in response to   adult requests, and this is an early form of  self-regulation. So, increasingly, children,   you know, the older infants, become aware of the  expectations of their caregivers. For example,   you don't put, you know, sh – dirty things,  like, shoes in your mouth, or – and, you know,   you don't pick things from the floor and put  them in your mouth, and so – for example. And slowly, they start to internalise  these, sort of, societal expectations,   values and norms. By about two years of  age, most children have developed some   level of self-control. So, this includes the  ability to regulate and inhibit behaviour,   even in the absence of external monitors. So,  I mean, this is quite obvious when you observe,   sort of, younger children and infants in  childcare settings. So, they behave according   to the parents’ or the caregivers’ requests, even  when the parents are not there. However, the child   still has limited flexibility in adapting their  behaviour to meet new situational demands. So,   they still haven't developed the capacity to  generalise these kind of self-regulatory skills.   And slowly, they also start to become capable  of delaying gratification. Like, you know,   when – they can understand when they are told,  “Okay, you can have the biscuit later," or "after   we finish this activity.” So, that is also – that  capacity is also developing in older infants.