Search

In this prospective study of divorce in the first 4 years of life we have shown that previous marital patterns anticipate the occurrence of divorce and influence the response to that event. Most of the divorces occurred in marriages that were consistently low in satisfaction or decreased in satisfaction from birth on. The family response to the event differed. The continuing effort at conflict resolution and the fact that differing levels of adjustment are reached at different time points are suggested by these reactions. For couples with an unsatisfactory marriage from late pregnancy through the first 2 years (consistently low), the immediate and sustained impact of divorce was to enhance the parent's responsiveness to the needs of their infant and the infant's expectation of being cared for. This was not true for couples decreasing from high to lower satisfaction in their adaptation. However, by child age 4, when all families had been divorced for 1 year, divorce versus no divorce was associated with a differential positive effect on teacher Q-sort ratings of the children for both marital patterns. Children who were from families where the parents were in conflict but did not divorce were more likely to externalize control, were more often uncontrolled, and were more anti- as opposed to prosocial. The implication of these findings are discussed. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health

Previous research has shown considerable stability in the quality of the husband-wife adaptation from prebirth to 2 years of age as well as a consistency in the mutual influence of the positive marital relationship and the positive parent-child relationship. This study examines if within this overall consistency there are different patterns of marital adaptation and interaction with the infant during the first 2 years of life. Using child expectation of being cared for, parent responsiveness to need, child sense of separate self, and parent's encouragement of effective autonomy as the indices of the positive parent-child relationship, it was found that by 24 months, three marital patterns were associated with a more positive family development: couples consistently high in their adaptation, those showing an initial decrease followed by an increase, and those showing an increase. It was also found that the optimal patterns of marital adaptation to the firstborn were anticipated by prebirth measures of the mother's capacity for positive relationships and adaptation-competence. The optimal patterns in turn anticipated the positive 48-month development of parent-child mutuality and psychological separateness.

Two general hypotheses relating to studies of early family intervention are discussed: (1) Pervasive and sustained gains in family development are correlaries of changes in the multi-risk mother's adaptation-competence and partnership quality, and (2) Efforts to change this functioning are most likely to be successful if the mother can develop a sustained and working relationship with the intervenor. The paper reviews sources which support these hypotheses: (1) Eight controlled follow-up intervention studies assessing and attempting to intervene in different family domains; and (2) Current ongoing studies focussing on the nature of the mother's relationship to the intervenor.

Generic principles governing the outcome and process of the treatment of children and their families can be generated from both research on the psychotherapy of school-aged children and early family intervention. Evidence indicates that the amenability of the child or parent to treatment and the comprehensiveness, duration, and intensity of the helping process are significant parameters. Definition of significant early family intervention roles allows linkage to various therapeutic roles with school-aged children and forces the recognition that most treatment situations involve more roles than are officially recognized. This articulation of the profile of intervention roles among poverty level, first-time parents at risk for neglecting their infant drew on several bodies of theory: psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, social cognitive, and positive reinforcement principles, and advocacy and direct assistance as used in clinical social casework.

This research describes the development of a semantic differential technique for rating nonverbal style of expressiveness in a population of expectant mothers. Nonverbal features (facial expression, gesture, voice quality) were emphasized as uniquely valid indices of emotional reactions towards parenthood and as the principal forms of interpersonal stimulation to which preverbal infants would be exposed. In the final trimester of pregnancy 46 primiparous mothers, representing a range of age, ethnic, and social-class backgrounds, were interviewed on videotape discussing childhood, marital adjustment, and expectations about parenthood. Interview selections were then presented to judges under three stimulus conditions: total videotape, videotrack, or audiotrack. Each mother's expressive style was rated on 12 bipolar adjective scales pertaining to affective tone, energy level, and involvement. Analyses demonstrated significant associations between nonverbal expressive style variables and measures of parent and child functioning over the first 2 years of life.

The general hypothesis guiding this research is that certain preschool behaviors such as sustained attention are predominantly anticipated by pre-birth parent and early infant characteristics, whereas other behaviors such as positive parent-child mutuality are shaped by both earlier and concurrent influences. It was found that variations in the child's 36-month attention, 36-month verbal expressiveness, and 48-month verbal IQ all correlated significantly with the concurrent parent stimulation of cognitive and verbal experiences, but that when the influence of certain pre-birth and early postnatal variables was allowed in a path analysis, the concurrent correlations were no longer significant. For all three of these preschool behaviors, the mother's pre-birth verbal IQ was a significant influence. By contrast, for the child's 48-month modulation of aggression, the significant correlation with the concurrent parent transaction remained even after the pre-birth and postnatal characteristics had been allowed in the path analysis.

Two main questions are addressed: What is the impact of frequency of psychotherapeutic session on the rate of improvement in reading of children referred for a learning disturbance, and do children seen more frequently as opposed to once a week, show a differential development on a number of indices of personality functioning? It was found that children seen more frequently as opposed to once a week, showed a greater rate of improvement in reading in the year after the end of treatment and were in particular characterized by being more flexible in their adaptation and having a greater capacity for relationships at both the end and a year after the end of treatment.

A psychoanalytic social work approach to family intervention is described, and data on its impact on parents and their children are presented. Program parents, especially those in an open-ended approach, were rated as more positive both as persons and as parents; their children scored higher on IQ and other developmental and adaptational measures.

In designing early intervention studies, it is important to consider how the nature of pre-birth parent personality and marital characteristics influence family and child development. Descriptions of the development of three families show the specific impact of these pre-birth characteristics on the quality of the parent-infant transaction of infant soothability-responsiveness to need. Further focus is provided by linking the parent's responsiveness to the infant's need to the emergence and resolution of ambivalent feelings about caring for the infant. The variations in the resolution of ambivalent feelings and the parental personality and marital context of that resolution are explored. Three such configurations are illustrated: a competent mother whose ambivalence appeared in the context of difficulty with intimacy; a mother who struggled with intensely loving and hostile feelings generally; and the description of the emergence of maternal ambivalence in the context of difficulty in achieving psychological separation from her child. Finally, quantitative indices are used to compare these three instances of difficulty in resolving ambivalence with two families whose resolution of the ambivalence was optimal.

A predictive method involving the assessment of prebirth functioning and the anticipated quality of parenting is described and developed in order to facilitate identifications of family at risk for future parenting. The association between these predictions and selected outcome criteria was studied in a representative sample of 46 US families, who were followed from mid-pregnancy to infant age of 2 years. Both the quantitative and qualitative results support the hypotheses that those families where mother and father were both characterized during the prebirth assessments as above average on adaptation-competence, capacity for relationships, and their positive view of their marriage, and who were expected to provide an optimal parent care environment, did in fact enhance a mother-infant relationship charcterized by positive mutuality and responsiveness. The most efficient predictor of positive mother-infant mutuality was the father's positive experience of the marriage. The mother's verbal I.Q. correlates significantly with maternal adaptation-competence, which in turn correlates with positive mother-infant mutuality. It is assumed that the prebirth assessments and predictions, even though global in nature, effectively reflect a profile of family system and individual characteristics that are likely to enhance the development of positive mother-infant mutuality. The authors stress "enhance" because the characteristics of the infant, such as his or her irritability, are also going to influence the quality of the emerging transaction.

(1965). Frequency of Psychotherapeutic Session as a Factor Affecting the Child's Developmental Status. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 42-98.