Assessing parent-infant interaction during the perinatal period. Some cautions.
Pediatricians have recently been urged by professional groups to pay increased attention to parental behavior when serving and discharging newborns. These exhortations are well intended, but they may reflect a misunderstanding of developmental processes and foster a mistaken belief in the ease with which parenting problems can be identified and remedied. This article describes how early experiences affect children's development and then contrasts this view with a popular perspective based on misapplication of the medical model to the conceptualization of behavioral development.
Lamb
M E
ME
Section on Social and Emotional Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D007231:Infant, Newborn / Q000523:psychology*; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D010287:Parent-Child Relations