title: Associations between mothers' active engagement with infants at 6 months and children's adjustment to school life at ages 5.5 and 11 years.
abstract: In Japan, students' poor adjustment to school life such as school refusals has been recognized as a nation-wide problem. In this study, we examined the link between the absence of mothers' active engagement with their infants at 6 months and children's risks of poor adjustment toward elementary school life at the ages of 5.5 and 11.
  
  
  
  We used a Japanese national longitudinal survey (n = 43 132) with 11 years of follow-up. Because of social patterning in how mothers engage with their infants, we employed propensity score matching analyses to control for confounding by socio-economic and other factors. We matched mothers with active engagement and those without on various social and parental characteristics such as educational attainment and household income.
  
  
  
  Among matched pairs, we observed higher risks of poor adjustment to school life at both 5.5 and 11 years among Japanese children who lacked mothers' active engagement at 6 months. For example, the relative risk was 1.46 [95% confidence interval: 1.10, 1.94] for inability to get along with others in a group setting at the age of 5.5 years and 1.29 [1.10, 1.51] for inability to get along with teachers at the age of 11 years. Our findings corroborate previous findings, which emphasize the importance of providing an enriched environment for infants' social development and may indicate the need for an intervention for caregivers who lack appropriate nurturing skills.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Social Medicine, National Center for Child Health and Development, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health Promotion, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fujiwara
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kawachi
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D057216:Propensity Score; D012574:Schools; D012917:Social Adjustment
keywords: epidemiology; longitudinal study; parenting; propensity score matching analyses; school functioning; social skills and development