Cross-Cultural Study Examines Maternal Attitudes and Infant Development

Mothers in the samples from the United Kingdom. and Uganda have different attitudes toward parenting; however, while on a team degree, the experience and advancement of their infant sometimes aligns with parenting attitudes, surprisingly, it did not constantly reveal such variation, according to a new study released this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Eve Holden and Katie Slocombe of College of York, U.K., and associates.

Early life experiences, including those shaped by parental behaviors, are known to affect infant learning and advancement. There is considerable cultural variation in parenting practices, which may be underpinned by varying attitudes toward parenting and infant advancement.

Most studies examining how parenting impacts infant development rely on attitude questionnaires or behavior observations in a single context. It has been unclear whether these attitudes or behavior snapshots are representative of behavior in broader contexts.

The sample studied

In the current work, the scientists studied 53 mother-infant dyads in the United Kingdom and 44 mother-infant dyads in Uganda. Mothers and also their babies were followed for full eight-hour days at 5-time points when the infants were 3, 6, 9, 12, and also 15 months old. Information about parental attitudes and also habits were also gathered research sessions of up to 4 hrs in participants’ homes.

The research revealed that Ugandan mothers had, on average, more relational attitudes toward parenting. In contrast, U.K. mothers tended to focus more intensely on autonomy. This translated into specific differences in parenting behaviors: Ugandan infants received more distributed caregiving (i.e., more caregivers), more body contact with their mothers, and more proximity to mothers at night. Nevertheless, attitudes toward specific behaviors did not predict infant experience in all contexts.

Contrary to the scientists’ expectations, for example, Ugandan infants were not in closer proximity to their mothers during the day and did not have more individuals in proximity or more partners for social interaction compared to U.K. infants. In spite of the U.K. mothers’ higher focus on self-development, more of the Ugandan infants showed previously physical advancement compared to U.K. infants.

What did the researchers explain about the babies’ living environment?

The authors explain how “infants’ very early life environment varies cross-culturally in several important ways” but include that the findings highlight the importance of measuring behavior rather than extrapolating expected behavior based on attitudes alone.

The writers include, “Most of us know that among our friends and also family there could be a lot of variation in attitudes towards parenting– in our study we looked at this across 2 samples of participants from rather different backgrounds and looked at how attitudes might or may not match up to infant experience and advancement.

We found that cultural attitudes regarding parenting appear to relate to infant experience in some ways however not others– this reveals the interaction between attitudes and infant experience is quite complicated. There could be numerous things that influence infant experience beyond parents attitudes.”

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