Kaoru Tomiishi sobbed as the body of her six-year-old son Koki was lowered into a small plot near the family home in Fukuoka. She told mourners she wanted to find and kill the murderer.

Three days earlier, on September 18, the 35-year-old housewife from Japan’s southern island had led a frantic search for the boy after telling police he had wandered off in a local park. Searchers found his body stuffed into a small gap in the wall of the park toilet. He had been strangled, most likely with the strap of a mobile phone.

In a depressingly familiar turn of events, investigators announced soon after the funeral that Kaoru had confessed to the “impulse” killing.

“I felt there was no hope for the future,” said the mother of one, who had reportedly become overwhelmed by her parental responsibility. “I thought about killing my son and also myself.”

Experts say the case is emblematic of a broader crisis. Recent statistics record more than 100 cases of maternal filicide — mothers murdering their children — since the end of 2005, including six in September this year. Although the proportion of Japanese aged 14 and younger has been steadily shrinking in the past decade, the number of filicides has stayed roughly constant.

“Women have become responsible not only for the full-time parenting and care of their children, but also their educational performance. The pressure is immense,” Professor Ohinata says. “That’s why, in recent cases of filicide, women haven’t just been killing infants but also schoolchildren, including teenagers.”

In an interview by AERA magazine, one psychiatrist said the killings could represent a kind of transference, whereby women were assigning the suppressed fury they felt at their neglectful husbands to their innocent children.

Evidence of the growing burden on mothers, Ohinata says, can be measured in another shocking statistic: reports of child abuse have jumped from 1101 in 1990 to more than 40,000 last year.

Criminologists say the breakdown of traditional family living arrangements, in which three or four generations of one family would live together in large suburban or rural houses, has cut young mothers off from family advice and support. Instead they rely on magazines and online parenting guides, which entrench anxieties that their children may have intellectual or physical disabilities.

Megumi Iwase, 33, earlier this year used a towel to strangle her three-month-old son Shuji before drinking a bleaching substance and slashing her wrists in a failed suicide attempt. The first-time mother had already resolved that his “development was slower than other children his age”.

In a recent court appearance, her 39-year-old husband admitted he had abandoned all parental duties to his wife and suggested he deserved to be jailed in her place.

Source: The Age, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/5n2vhl

I suspected it would happen; I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. Shortly after the historic achievement of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, and just before the historic nomination of Sen. Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, a major newspaper ran a full-page story celebrating the news that single moms succeed in raising accomplished sons.

The article cited Mr. Phelps, Mr. Obama and others, including cycling great Lance Armstrong, to make the case that boys raised by single mothers are doing just fine, thank you. It also quoted a number of supportive experts, including Peggy Drexler, author of a book called “Raising Boys Without Men.”

Interestingly, Mrs. Drexler, who has been married for more than 36 years to the father of her son, asserts quite firmly that although boys do need men, they do not need fathers. Her position is essentially that one should not fret about fatherless boys because they have a way of finding the male involvement they need.

Well, yes and no.

Boys certainly will find male involvement, but since boys will be, well, boys, they often do not make the right choices. Case in point is convicted D.C. sniper Lee Malvo, who selected John Muhammad. And there are countless boys who join gangs to find the male involvement they so desperately crave.

That said, my biggest problem was less with the article than with the “straw man” - or rather, “straw father” - argument that it is “news” that single mothers can and do raise successful boys. As one who was raised by a single mother and has undergraduate and master’s degrees from two Ivy League universities, I am a bit of a poster child on this point. (Thanks, Mom.)

However, “Can single mothers do it?” is not the right question. There are more thoughtful ways of viewing the issue.

First, should single mothers have to raise their children alone? Remember, every child has an “involved” father at conception. I do a lot of speaking about the importance of involved fatherhood. No parent has ever come up to me after a speech to say they hope their daughter will become a single mother.

Second, this issue is not about what kind of a man a boy will become but, also, what kind of a father he will become. It’s difficult to be what you don’t see. Accordingly, as a nation, we have to ask this question - how does a culture that promotes and, too often, celebrates father absence, create an environment in which boys develop a desire to become present and involved fathers?

Third, in addition to the well-documented social and emotional costs of father absence for our nation’s children, it is also expensive. Recently, National Fatherhood Initiative released a report called, “The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man - The Annual Public Costs of Father Absence.” The report measured the federal expenditures on child-support enforcement and 13 means-tested benefits programs that support father-absent homes. The $100 billion cost represents nearly 4 percent of the 2006 federal budget. Indeed, in these difficult financial times, we cannot afford father absence.

Finally, I believe the way we look at smoking is the most appropriate and thoughtful way to look at father absence and the resulting single motherhood. Specifically, it is pretty clear the majority of people who smoke do not immediately get lung cancer. This is why it is so difficult to curb teen smoking. Nonetheless, we spend millions of dollars on campaigns and efforts to reduce smoking. Why? Because we know that those who smoke are at a higher risk for cancer, heart disease or worse. Knowing this, would anyone support celebrating the fact that many smokers beat the odds? I doubt it.

Social science data assert overwhelmingly that boys in father-absent homes are more at risk to be poor, fail in school, use drugs or be involved in the criminal justice system. Therefore, we should encourage responsible fatherhood and discourage a culture of single motherhood for the same reason - the increased risk to our sons. In my view, we do not have a fatherless boy to spare.

Source: Washington Times, DC
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/02/despite-successes-boys-need-fathers/

We now have new evidence, after the publication of a study in Human Reproduction, that women who are severely depressed during pregnancy are at much higher risk of giving birth prematurely.

The recent report is one of a handful of scientific studies to document the association between maternal depression and premature birth. But it’s the most important to date because of its size and the large, representative group of women sampled.

Previous research suggests that 9 to 12 percent of women become clinically depressed during pregnancy. The question, of course, is why a mother’s mental state would affect the timing of a birth.

No one knows for sure. But experts speculate that depression affects a woman’s neuroendocrine system, which in turn affects the hormones circulating in her body, which in turn affects the functioning of the placenta that nourishes the infant.

“To sustain a healthy pregnancy, normal placental function is essential,” said Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatology epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California and lead author of the report. “Potentially, depression can lead to malfunction of the placenta,” he suggested.

Indeed, there is increasing evidence that something along these lines occurs with women who experience stress during pregnancy.

Dr. Diane Ashton, deputy medical director for the March of Dimes, notes that stress can alter a woman’s immune function, leading to “increased susceptibility to intra-amniotic infection or inflammation.” Research studies indicate these infections may play an important role in pre-term births.

Also, Ashton says, maternal stress can jump-start the production of “fight or flight” hormones like cortisol, which in turn can prematurely activate placental hormones that can set off a cascade of events leading to premature birth.

Even if a baby is born full term, being bathed in cortisol in utero can affect fetal brain development, research shows.

Dr. Laura Miller, director of the women’s mental health program at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, said research shows that children of stressed-out pregnant women can be affected at least to age 10.

These children often have hyper-reactive responses, physiologically and emotionally, and have “greater difficulty dealing with stress,” she says. Also, infants of stressed mothers can be “more irritable and difficult to soothe” and demonstrate “poorer growth and increased risk of infection,” she notes.

As for maternal depression, it may operate through similar mechanisms – by altering similar hormones and producing similar physiological responses – or it may not. The research necessary to clarify what’s happening hasn’t yet been done.

We don’t know, either, if it makes a difference at what point during a pregnancy a mom becomes depressed (the Human Reproduction report studied only moms who reported depressed symptoms in the first trimester) or how long the depression lasts.

Miller suggests the take-home message for moms is “depression during pregnancy can be prevented, and if a woman suspects she might be at risk she really should strongly consider pre-conception counseling.”

Factors that can put women at risk include previous bouts of depression and a family history of maternal depression.

For women who are considering pregnancy but have concerns about mental health, there are several therapeutic options, including psychotherapy, strengthening social supports, and medication, Miller notes. For those who become depressed during pregnancy, these options remain, but the profile of potential benefits and risks differs, depending on the type of depression a woman has and other factors.

Since surveys show that most ob/gyns don’t feel comfortable treating depression, it’s important to find a medical expert who is prepared to help. Be honest about what you’re feeling and ask your ob/gyn directly if she’s the right person to offer assistance.

Among the questions that Miller suggests: “Have you had experience treating depression during a pregnancy?” “Do you have special training in working with pregnant women who are depressed?” “Do you refer people with these kinds of problems to a psychiatrist – and, if so, can I get a referral?”

Source: Chicago Tribune, United States
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2008/10/depression-and.html

It’s meant to be love at first sight, but as many as one in five mothers find they cannot bond with their new baby, leading to feelings of shame and inadequacy. Eleni Kyriacou talks to three women about their struggles

When Sarah’s son, Joe, was 18 months old she remembers thinking, ‘”I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you are and I don’t know what to do with you.” I’d pick him up if he cried, but I couldn’t play with him or interact.’

Despite a planned pregnancy and a happy relationship with her husband, Sarah, an administrator from Oxford, found herself living out the ultimate taboo. She was a new mother who couldn’t bond with her child. From the moment that blue line appears on the pregnancy testing kit, expectant mothers are bombarded with messages all telling the same tale: that as soon as they hold their newborn child they’ll experience a deep, unconditional love. So powerful is this love that it will make any monotony, isolation and exhaustion they may encounter on their journey into motherhood worthwhile.

While that love usually does take hold and a deep bond develops between most new mothers and their babies, it is certainly not a given. There are many women who have feelings of indifference, ambivalence or even dislike for their child, but they rarely admit it for fear of seeming ‘unnatural’ or inadequate. A survey for Johnson’s Baby found that more than a third of mothers have felt they have not bonded with their baby as much as they should have, and 18 per cent say they’ve had moments when they’ve felt no bond at all.

Pat Spungin, a child psychologist and the founder of the parenting website raisingkids.co.uk, says, ‘There’s an automatic assumption in our culture that mothers will bond with their babies. Mothers who don’t immediately feel this tremendous engagement think there must be something wrong with them and ask, “Am I normal?”‘

‘Joe arrived five weeks early,’ says Sarah, now 40, ’so perhaps I didn’t make the transition from having an imaginary baby to having a real one. When I got home, my midwife said, “I’m not surprised he was early; you were very stressed.” Which wasn’t true – I was just busy and had only finished work six days before. That comment sat there, and it was a condemnation of my ability to be a good mother.’

Sarah’s first few months as a mother were riddled with pain. ‘I found breast-feeding absolute agony, and I also had gallstones. I was so tense Joe picked up on it, and things went from bad to worse. Only later did I realise I’d slipped into postnatal depression (PND). I was getting through one day at a time and don’t remember any of his milestones, like when he first sat up or started to crawl.’

At 18 months, Joe’s behaviour deteriorated; he would line up all his toys around himself as he withdrew into his own world, and started kicking Sarah. ‘I would grab him and feel the need rising up to shake him,’ she says. ‘I’d have to put him down, go into another room for 10 minutes and shut the door to keep him safe. I’d hear him screaming on the other side. I’d return out of a sense of duty rather than love. My husband only saw the tip of the iceberg; he now admits he withdrew into his work as a police officer by taking longer shifts.’ Sarah put Joe’s behaviour down to her failing. (It was not until he was six that a diagnosis of autism was made.) ‘I felt I had no control over him and even called my husband home from work a couple of times because I didn’t trust myself and was worried I’d hurt him.’ When Joe was two, Sarah gave birth to Lola, who seemed to underline the problems between son and mother. ‘Lola was sheer bliss and radiated peace. I bonded with her instantly. I felt such guilt about that.’

Although she had started taking medication to alleviate her PND, it was not until her husband, Samuel, pointed out the effect her mood had on Joe that real changes took place. ‘If I was having a bad day, he would, too. So I started looking after myself – taking breaks to sleep, doing yoga, having counselling. I suspected autism from the age of three, but once the formal diagnosis came at six I felt that rush of love that people talk about. Suddenly I realised it wasn’t my fault. I could do things to help him. Today we’re very close.’

Experts agree that, as Sarah’s case shows, a mother who has bonding difficulties with a newborn can still develop a bond later. Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist and the author of How To Have a Happy Child, explains: ‘There’s a lot of mystique about bonding. The myth is that it’s love at first sight, and it’s all or nothing. In my experience it takes time. There are so many everyday issues like feeding and sleeping that can make mothers feel anxious and lose confidence. The real emotional connection between a mother and child – the bond – is built gradually over a period of months. Don’t give up. If you’re not physically connected with your baby – by changing and feeding and soothing when he or she’s crying – you’re going to struggle to be emotionally connected.

‘Bonding is the bedrock of a baby’s later emotional development, and if babies don’t form a secure emotional connection with an adult by the age of four they’re highly likely to have relationship problems later in life – and perhaps have issues bonding with their own children.’ There can be many reasons a mother and child don’t bond. Woolfson says that unresolved emotional baggage may mean some mothers find it harder to give or receive love, while some may simply find the responsibility of motherhood too demanding. ‘And if PND is involved, of course you must get medical help.’

High-profile sufferers of postnatal depression include Brooke Shields, Elle Macpherson and Sadie Frost. Recently, Gwyneth Paltrow spoke out about her PND following the birth of her second child, Moses, and shed light on the fact that even experienced mothers can have bonding difficulties.

This was the case for Jessica, 35, a former nurse from the south-west of England who already had two children when she gave birth to Daisy. ‘I remember saying to the doctors, “Can you hurry up – cut this cord and take her from me, please!” I held her for a few minutes but I was in a lot of physical discomfort and just wanted to have a shower and escape because she wouldn’t stop screaming. I looked at her and thought, “She’s really ugly.” I’d never felt that with my other babies and those feelings stayed for several weeks.

‘I’d leave her in her pram and get my mother to jiggle it to keep her asleep as long as possible. I didn’t love her like I did the others, so I overcompensated by breast-feeding on the hour, and made a rod for my own back. I became very resentful of her because I was hardly sleeping. I was jealous of the sleep my husband, Dominic, was getting. At one point I said, “If she were never to wake up again I wouldn’t be too worried because at least I’d be able to sleep.” He was appalled, of course, and said he didn’t want to hear me speak like that.’

Jessica’s mood had been worsening ever since she suddenly came off Prozac on discovering she was pregnant. ‘I was afraid to return to my GP once I’d given birth because he’d probably tell me to go back on the medication and stop breast-feeding. I became quite obsessed with breast-feeding.’

By the time Daisy was three months old, Jessica was at her wits’ end. ‘As well as Daisy, I had my three-year-old, Johnny, and my 18-month-old baby, Marie. One day I was arguing with Dominic and I just grabbed Daisy and ran to the car. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I needed to get away but knew I couldn’t leave her behind because of the breast-feeding – I didn’t want to fail her on that. I ended up staring at a wall in the village car park, thinking, “That’s what I have to do.” I drove at speed towards it, then Daisy suddenly started crying. I stopped and sat and cried. Then I fed her. I think her crying had made me snap out of it.’

After this Jessica finally saw a different GP, who prescribed an antidepressant that could be used while breast-feeding. ‘As my mood lifted, gradually the bond and love increased. The turning-point, though, was when Daisy caught pneumonia and I thought she would die. I remember thinking how vulnerable she looked, and a tidal wave of pure emotion hit me, as well as a huge feeling of guilt. By the time she was one, I felt the same for her as my other children.

‘Accepting help from others was very difficult because there’s a huge stigma attached to not bonding. I have four children now, and people are always shocked when they hear what I went through with Daisy because I’m a real earth-mother type – I even use cloth nappies! Which just goes to show, it can happen to anyone.’

Even if the bond is strong, there are no guarantees it will always be that way. ‘Bonding is about connectedness, and that can ebb and flow over the years,’ Pat Spungin says. ‘For some of that time you might not get on with one child if they’re going through a difficult period, and suddenly it can all change back again. The love itself is still there – that’s why parents hang on in during those difficult teenage years – but you may feel you don’t like your child very much.’

For 36-year-old Susan, an insurance administrator from Cardiff, this is her everyday reality. ‘I used to spend hours playing with Dan when he was little, cuddling him, singing his favourite pop songs to him. He was the first of my four children and got lots of attention. Now he’s 17 and I can’t get through to him. I do wonder if I did something wrong, but the others have turned out fine. I did make some bad choices when he and his sister were little – staying longer than I should have done with his father.’

When he was 11, Dan’s behaviour changed dramatically. ‘He went from being a sweet, loving boy to one who broke windows and was verbally abusive.’ Today it is not unusual for him to swear at Susan and then retreat into prolonged silences. ‘The relationship we have is much worse than the one he has with anyone else. Over the years I’ve tried grounding him, taking his iPod from him – nothing has worked. He goes out and doesn’t come home when he should, lies and steals money from my purse or his brothers’ money boxes.’

Susan’s friends also recount tales of not being able to ‘reach’ their teen offspring, but she feels Dan’s behaviour is more extreme than most. She suspects he resents the fact she went on to have another two children with her new husband, Ray. According to Pat Spungin, ‘Staying out later than you agreed falls within normal teen behaviour. Being destructive with property doesn’t. If the child has step-parents, that can complicate matters, but most teens come out the other side if there’s love and support.’ Although Susan feels her bond has weakened, her love hasn’t waned. ‘But it breaks my heart that I don’t like the child I love so much,’ she says. ‘In a month he’s joining the Army; I feel guilty because when he was 13 I suggested the Cadets as a route to focusing his energy. I’m frightened and hate him leaving when our relationship is this way. And yet he wanted to take time off before joining and I said no. I’m looking forward to no arguments. Yes, I feel guilty about that, too.’

Richard Woolfson says that when parents worry about the bond they have with their children, most give themselves a hard time and little credit for what they’ve done right. He believes every woman has the potential to be a loving mother but some find motherhood harder than others. ‘Accept who you are and stay involved, no matter how many barriers they put up. Few of us become the parents we want to be – I certainly didn’t. And remember, only one parent can be the best in the world. The rest of us will have to settle for second best.’

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/5gswn5

Many new mothers battling with tiredness and struggling to carry out the simplest of tasks would beg to differ.

But according to scientists, giving birth supercharges brain power to equip women for the challenge of rearing their child.

Having a baby produces a sudden surge of memory and learning ability that makes them more vigilant and alert, a study concluded.

And the changes in the size and shape of many areas of the brain last for decades, protecting against degenerative diseases later in life.

Researchers found there was often a decline in mental powers during pregnancy as the minds of mothers-to-be are remodelled.

But hormonal fluctuations during birth and breastfeeding increase the size of cells in some areas of the brain leading to dramatic improvements in mental capacity.

Studies on animals including rats and primates found mothers become much braver, are up to five times faster at finding food and have better spatial awareness than those without offspring.

Craig Kinsley, professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said he believed the same results applied to humans. ‘Pregnant women do undergo a phase of so-called baby brain, when they experience an apparent loss of function,’ he said.

‘However, this is because their brains are being remodelled for motherhood to cope with the many new demands they will experience.

‘Many benefits seem to emerge from motherhood, as the maternal brain rises to the reproductive challenge. When the going gets tough, the brain gets going.

‘The changes could last for the rest of their lives, bolstering cognitive abilities and protecting them against degenerative diseases.‘

A 2002 study by Angela Oatridge, from Hammersmith Hospital in London, reported that brain scans of pregnant women showed a 4 per cent decline in size.

Last year, two Australian researchers found that pregnant women consistently performed worse on tests for memory and verbal skills.

But Dr Kinsley believes this is because they are growing new sets of brain cells that he calls ‘maternal circuits’.

Nerve cells in areas known to be linked to parenting also expand and develop more connections with neighbouring cells during pregnancy to give mothers supercharged ‘computing’ power, he said.

He added: ‘Although most studies have so far focused on animals, it is likely women also gain long-lasting benefits from motherhood. Most mammals share similar maternal behaviours controlled by the same brain regions.’

Another study by the University of Toronto has found rats that had given birth were protected against degenerative diseases, with lower levels of a protein linked with Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

And a report by Thomas Perls, associate professor at Boston University medical school, found that women who become pregnant after the age of 40 are four times more likely to live to 100.

Dr Kinsley will report his findings to the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting next month.

Source: Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1076848/How-mother-boost-brainpower.html

It’s probably not surprising that mothers excel at recognizing and interpreting the moods and emotions of their infants. Although infants can’t speak, mothers seem to know what their babies are thinking: they smile when their baby smiles and they frown when their baby is upset. Research suggests that the mother’s ability to understand the needs of her infant is very important for establishing a secure mother-infant relationship. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are poorly understood. Such knowledge is crucial for understanding normal as well as abusive and neglectful mothering.

Maternal Rewards

In recent years, several studies have been carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand how a mother’s brain responds to her own child’s cues. The most recent, led by neuroscientist Lane Strathearn and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, investigated what happens inside the brain of a mother when she looks at the facial expressions of her own infant. In the study, 28 first-time mothers were shown pictures of their seven-month old child that they had never seen before. (The pictures were taken when the mother was not present.) The pictures spanned a wide range of human emotion and included images of the child making happy, sad or neutral faces. These pictures were then matched with images of an unknown infant. The central finding was that seeing the happy face of the mother’s own infant activated all of the key areas in the brain associated with reward processing. These regions include the ventral tegmental area, substantia nigra and the striatum. This finding suggests that for mothers the sight of their smiling baby is a potent reward and represents a uniquely pleasurable experience. Furthermore, this neural response was graded, so that happy faces led to more activation than neutral faces. Sad faces generated the least activation. In other words, the response of mothers in their reward areas seemed to directly mirror the emotions the infant displayed.

The argument put forth by Strathearn and colleagues is that maternal behavior is fundamentally rooted in these reward areas. Positive sensory cues from infants, such as a smiling facial expression, stimulate dopamine release and thus promote responsive maternal care. However, many questions remain. In their paper, Strathearn et al. do not discuss the significance of the orbitofrontal cortex, although its activity was clearly influenced in the experiment by seeing one’s own infant’s compared with an unknown infant. The importance of the orbitofrontal cortex shouldn’t be too surprising, as this brain area is believed to receive ascending dopamine projections from reward areas and is critical in representing the “value” of a reward. Other studies have also demonstrated that the orbitofrontal cortex is correlated with the positive feelings of the mother, suggesting that it plays a key role in modulating maternal behavior.

Is the Smile Enough?

This study also raises a more fundamental question: is the infant smile the most important element for motivating maternal behavior? It goes without saying that the smiling face of one’s own baby is highly rewarding and encourages maternal care. On the other hand, babies aren’t always smiling and mothers must also learn to respond to infants in distress. In fact, a human mother’s response to an infant in distress is a good indicator of how responsive she is to other infant cues. Studies also show that abusive and neglectful mothers show less empathy and more aversive feelings towards a crying infant when compared with nurturing mothers, suggesting that how a mother reacts to a baby when it’s upset and not smiling is a crucial test of maternal behavior.

According to our own recent work, the orbitofrontal cortex and striatum were more activated in the brain of a mother when she looked at her own infant compared with other infants regardless of the infant’s situation or mood. These brain areas also showed a greater activation when mothers were viewing their infant when he or she was crying (the distressed condition) as opposed to when he or she was happy (the play situation). This discovery makes sense, as a distressed baby might require more effort and thought as the mother must quickly identify the source of the distress and respond appropriately. Another reason to highlight the importance of the orbitofrontal cortex in guiding maternal behavior is that, in our experiment, the activity of this brain area showed a positive correlation not only with pleasurable feelings but also the anxious feelings experienced by the mother. Of course, these anxious feelings are important for maternal care, as anxiety and worry can be powerful motivators. Taken together, these findings suggest that maternal behavior is guided by elaborate and complex neural mechanisms. Although reward processing is clearly an important part of this mental process—it seems to mediate maternal love and feelings of joy—other mechanisms are required in order to explain the full range of the mother-infant relationship.

In conclusion, a smiling face of a mother’s own infant is certainly rewarding and it motivates maternal care, but this is not the only motivator. We hope that in the future other aspects of maternal behavior—such as the maternal desire to protect her infant, which is a biologically essential mechanism for preservation of the species—will get investigated and explored.

Source: Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=smiles-and-mother-baby-bond

If your baby could talk, she wouldn’t need to cry. But until she can start forming words, she’ll likely stick to the whimpers and tears she’s using now to let you know what she wants.

What makes baby cry?

– Different types of crying mean different things. There’s the “I’m tired” or “I’m hungry” as well as the “I’m frustrated … need a diaper change … want to be held…” cries. The best way you can determine what each cries means is to listen intently each time your infant cries. You’ll soon get to know what baby is trying to say with each pitch and wail.

– As baby grows. Experts agree that babies will often cry right before they experience a growth period. They have an amazing ability to sense a change about to occur - physically and developmentally.

– Bath time. Infants do not like the feeling that comes with being totally undressed during bath time. To avoid this situation, keep baby’s diaper on if you can, or wash quickly taking turns covering baby’s top half while washing the bottom - then reverse it.

– Bedtime. Nighttime is the time to release pent up frustration and energy baby has built up during the day. P.S.: Fussy babies usually sleep soundly and for longer periods of time.

– Crib time. Babies need some time to adjust to a sterile crib after nine months inhabiting a warm, comfy womb. Bright lights, sharp sounds, lots of action - it’s a different life than your infant was used to.

– Are you stressed? Infants are like little sponges and can pick up on the stress you may be feeling, putting a tearful spin on it on your behalf.

– Does baby not feel well? Colic, which can last for a long time, may make baby cry. The American Academy of Pediatrics says colic causes severe abdominal discomfort. If crying is intense, starts around the same time each day, causes baby to pull her legs up to her chest or get a bloated tummy, colic can be the cause.

– Other medical conditions can also cause crying: fever, diarrhea, vomiting. With each of these conditions, a call to the pediatrician is in order.

– Is this cry different? Is baby sounding more screechy? Is he louder than usual or whining as well? Again, it’s time to call the pediatrician.

Ways to soothe baby

– Hold baby to your shoulder to comfort her.

– Turn on the music. The rhythm found in music mimics the mother’s heartbeat as heard in the womb. Put your MP3 player on the speakers and turn up the music (classical is great for this purpose). Listening to classical music at a young age also helps increase math skills later on.

– Babies may also be soothed by familiar, rhythmic sounds such as the vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, air conditioner or the sound of trickling water.

– Comfort object. A blankie, favorite toy or perhaps an old T-shirt with your smell on it may help baby calm down.

– Help baby zone out by watching repetitive activity, such as fish going round a fish tank, a mobile turning gently or a lamp that projects figures on the wall as it swirls.

Parenting tip from the trenches

If baby’s crying is constant and lasts more than three months, it’s time for a pediatrician to run some tests.

Doreen Nagle is author of But I Don’t Feel Too Old To Be A Mommy (…)

Source: Hattiesburg American
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080918/MOMS03/80917016

A new study has shown that early parenting, as early as 6 months, plays a crucial role in changing the impact of genes that may put infants at risk for responding poorly to stress.

For the study, the researchers from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania State University, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and North Carolina State University looked at 142 infants 3, 6, and 12 months old and were placed in a stressful situation like being separated from their mother.

They measured infants” heart rates while they were exposed to the stressor, isolating a cardiac response called vagal tone.

Vagal tone acts like a brake on the heart when the body is in a calm state, but during a challenging situation, this brake is withdrawn, allowing heart rate to increase so the body can actively deal with the challenge.

They also collected DNA to determine which form of a dopamine receptor gene the infants carried as specific forms of this gene are related to problems in adolescence and adulthood including aggression, substance abuse, and other risky behaviours.

To assess the mothers” behaviour as high or low in sensitivity, they also videotaped the mothers and their infants playing together for 10 minutes when the babies were 6 months old.

The study showed that both genes and parenting were important to the infants” development of the way in which the brain helps regulate cardiac responses to stress.

Initially, 3 and 6 months old infants with the form of the dopamine gene associated with later risky behaviours, did not display an effective cardiac response to the stressor, while those infants with the non-risk version of the gene did.

However, by the time the infants were 12 months old those with the risk form of the gene who also had mothers who were highly sensitive now showed the expected cardiac response while they were exposed to the stressful situation.

Those infants with the risk form of the gene who had insensitive mothers continued to show the ineffective cardiac response to the stressor.

The study suggest that although genes play a role in the development of physiological responses to stress, environmental experience such as mothers” sensitive care-giving behaviour can have a strong influence, enough to change the effect that genes have on physiology very early in life.

It appears in the September/October 2008 issue of the journal Child Development. (ANI)

Source: Thaindian.com
http://tinyurl.com/6gvf76

When Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears ran amok, the public blamed their mothers. Their fathers - Lohan’s had served time in jail and had addiction problems - escaped rebuke entirely.

Now an Australian study provides some evidence that bad mothering has a worse effect on children than bad fathering.

It shows that mothers who exhibit “toxic” behaviours - from being cold and indifferent to being abusive, manipulative or over-controlling - are far more likely to warp their children’s outlook on life than fathers with similar behaviour.

Wayne Warburton, a research fellow at Macquarie University’s Children and Families Research Centre, said: “Mothers have a really powerful effect on the way their kids view the world and themselves, probably because kids spend more time with their mothers, especially in the crucial early years.”

Dr Warburton asked 441 university students to fill out detailed questionnaires on the parenting styles of their mothers and fathers, and on their own patterns of thinking.

He asked them to recall 72 parenting behaviours, including “making a child feel ashamed”, being unloving or rejecting, and frequently telling the child they were stupid or would fail. He also asked questions designed to uncover destructive thinking patterns in the students, such as being “clingy” out of a fear of being abandoned.

He found young adults were two-thirds as likely to develop unhelpful patterns of thinking if the toxic parenting they had experienced came from their father rather than their mother.

If a range of poor parenting behaviours existed, they tended to be found in the same parent, the study found.

Just over 22 per cent of the mothers and 14 per cent of the fathers were classified as toxic.

Dr Warburton said he was surprised that toxic mothers outnumbered toxic fathers. “When I first saw the figure I thought many of the people came from single-parent families but that wasn’t true. I’m at a loss to explain it.”

He said while mothers had more influence on their children, it was surprising that fathers had two-thirds the effect of mothers, given their lower levels of contact. “Fathers still have a significant effect on the development of their kids’ patterns of thinking.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://www.smh.com.au/news/parenting/the-sins-of-the-mothers/2008/09/11/1220857740080.html

So much of what babies do - and how their parents react - is a relic of our hunter-gatherer past, says Desmond Morris in his new book, writes Mary Russell

He has published some 50 books, enjoys a parallel career as a surrealist painter, does one drawing every day without fail, has a theory about the office of the future (it will be a huge televisual voice-activated screen occupying one whole wall of your living room, on which your work colleagues will appear in hologram form), and because he is entranced with the subject matter, is unashamedly enthusiastic about his latest book, called simply Baby. Yes, Desmond Morris is back again with an examination of that most intriguing of animals, the human infant.

It is 41 years since he first hit the headlines with The Naked Ape. “If I wrote that book now,” Morris tells me in his Oxford home, “I’d call it ‘The Talking Ape’, because that’s what sets us apart from other animals: we can make symbolic equations. I might say to you, ‘look at that tree’, and the sound of the word bears no relation to a tree, yet you immediately visualise a tree. I know we’re only divided from apes by two chromosomes, but they’re pretty big chromosomes.”

An instant bestseller (12 million copies sold to date) it allowed him and his wife, Ramona, to buy a house in Malta, where she had their son, Jason.

“We were married for 16 years,” he says, “and people were asking why we didn’t have a child. They thought I should be studying a human child rather than other animals, but we were living in a flat in London and an urban environment with all that concrete is no place to raise a child. Then, when he was born, people said ‘now you can study him’, but I said, ‘no, I’m going to love him’. You can get too scientific.”

Jason, now himself the father of four children, lives with his wife in Co Kildare, where he is director of racing at Horse Racing Ireland.

This latest book, Baby, is gorgeously illustrated, with the text covering every aspect of human growth from conception through to the second year, thus taking in that minefield of childhood: the terrible twos. Not that Morris sees it like that at all: “What happens is that a small baby who is secure and loved can do very little for the first year or so, but then that very security allows him to try things out and sometimes it gets out of hand.”

Thus the terrible twos go through what he benignly describes as the “eccentric phase”. Does he tell us how to deal with such matters? “No. I just give people the facts about the child’s development, and after that it’s up to them,” he says.

He has great sympathy for the young single parent - it’s usually a mother - coping on her own in an urban setting. “That’s a very lonely place to be. It’s part of our birthright to come together in groups and that doesn’t happen any more,” he says.

And then he gets to it - the hunter-gatherer bit - about how in the old days, and we’re really going back here, the male could display his manliness by hunting and killing and so forth, and thus, his masculinity recognised and established, he could return home to display tenderness towards his children without anyone calling him a girl’s blouse. The other thing was that when we lived in small tribes, the mother could take her child with her to work, swaddled on her back or placed in a hanging basket on a tree so that the two were always within sight or hearing of each other. “Now,” Morris says, “that’s gone. You can’t breastfeed in the boardroom - unless you’re Karren Brady .”

His other concern is with what he calls “yes parents” and “no parents”. A controlling one (a no parent) robs the child of the feeling that the world is full of possibilities. These children grow up to be over-cautious and conservative in their outlook, whereas a child with a yes parent is adventurous and non-conformist. I can tell from this that his own mother was a yes mother and he agrees.

“When I was about five or six, I asked if I could have a tame fox for a pet, and I got not one but two.”

And lots of other creatures as well, which was very noble of his mother, he remarks, because we all know it’s the mother who ends up looking after all these pets.

Mothers rate big with Morris and this is partly because the female is pre-programmed to relate to babies. Come, I can’t help interrupting, surely nurture is a big player in the ping-pong game of gender bias. But he is unperturbed.

“I’m not so sure,” he says, far too genial to contradict me outright. “Children will make a choice. They’ll filter things.”

And so I tell him of my son who, when small, was given a doll’s house to play with and the doll family always ended up on the roof of the house awaiting rescue by a fire engine or a helicopter because some action-packed drama was taking place below. He nods. “Yes, the child will make a choice that accords with its gender,” he says.

But I’m still not convinced by his pre-programming theory. How can he say for sure, I ask, feeling like Doubting Thomas. After all, this is a man who has spent his life studying animal behaviour.

“Well, there’s the pupil test,” he explains. “You have a device that measures pupil dilation, which, as we all know, is an indication of how much you like something. When you show a female an image of a baby, her pupils will dilate whether or not she has had a baby. But do the same with a male who is not yet a father and there is no response. No emotional bonding. However, do it with a male who has become a father and the pupils dilate just like a female’s.”

Sitting in Morris’s wonderfully comfortable library, its walls lined with books (all catalogued), masks and whatnot on the wall, rugs on the floor and a soft, low sofa that just begs to be sat upon - it’s a joy to watch the show as he acts out a woman’s pupils dilat- ing to an alarming size, popping his own eyes to emphasise his point. And because, in this dark world of bank crashes and credit crunches, he’s so smilingly positive, you’d almost want to hug him. But of course I don’t, because this is a serious interview, and so instead I ask him which creature might act as the best role model for a would-be parent.

“Birds,” he says promptly. “They have to make a nest and keep the egg warm, and both parents feed the young, and that’s what’s important: pair bonding. It demonstrates that human babies need two parents just as birds do. This is partly due to the fact that humans have serial litters. They need someone else there. In the animal world generally, a cat or a bitch will have a litter but won’t have another one till those babies have grown up and left the nest. The human mother will have a second litter before the first one is even weaned, sometimes.”

It’s not like monkeys, which cling to their mother’s fur and go wherever she goes. Incidentally, in the human baby, there’s what’s called the Moro reflex. Check it out. It occurs in very young babies when they fling their arms out and then bring them together again as if embracing something. They do the same with their legs.

“It’s a relic gesture,” says Morris’s book, “from when a baby felt itself falling from its mother’s body.”

Although Morris doesn’t tell parents how to behave, he does hint: “The relic gesture alerts the mother to the fact that her baby is suddenly feeling unsafe and physically insecure.”

So do something about it, is the gentle hint.

The baby book, says Morris, was a gift, as it allowed him to do what he’d trained as a zoologist to do: observe. “I’m not an experimenter. I just watch. You can’t ask babies questions or give them a questionnaire to fill in. You just watch them.”

There are gender differences that he outlines but doesn’t emphasise. Boy babies cry less because in the hunter-gatherer period they couldn’t make much noise or their prey would run away. Men are focused on one goal while women multi-task, though that doesn’t mean one can’t do the other.

” Ramona,” he says, “can multi-task, but so can I. It just means I have to try a little harder.”

The book is full of observations that we once knew but have forgotten. Small children’s feet are best left unshod, so only put shoes on them when they go outside. Tests have shown that toddlers rarely stray more than 60 metres from their mothers, so you don’t have to yank them back, they’ll come of their own accord. Unless they’re going through their eccentric phase, of course. At which point, you may find you’re giving yourself a hug. This, as Morris notes in his book, People Watching, is a comforting device employed by adults in moments of stress. Well, it’s better than reaching for a bottle of mother’s ruin.

• Baby: The Amazing Story of the First Two Years of Life, by Desmond Morris, is published by Hamlyn

Source: Irish Times, Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2008/0912/1221138432919.html