Early Resilience in the Context of Parent–Infant Relationships: A Social Developmental Perspective

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The growth of infants' regulatory capacities is foundational to the capacity for resilience. Variations in the quality of early social--emotional experience can promote or undermine infants' regulatory capacities. Such capacities are also dynamically sculpted by the relationships among infant, parent, and contextual--cultural factors. Brief periods of disorganization in parent–infant relationships are inevitable, common, and reflect everyday demands on parents and infants. The uneven nature of parent–infant interactions fosters the emergence of new infant capacities. Parental depression and anxiety as well as infant medical, behavioral, and temperamental issues can result in prolonged periods of dyadic disorganization and maladaptive infant outcomes. Child health clinicians can help parents anticipate the normal periods of disorganization and assist parents as they strive to develop optimal parent–infant relationships.

Section snippets

Individual Differences in Mutual Regulation

The presence of infant, parental, and familial risk factors (eg, infants' difficult temperament or premature birth, maternal depression, paternal alcohol abuse, poor social support, family violence, or inadequate finances) as well as parents' culturally specific beliefs and values regarding care-giving may differentially influence the level of parents' sensitive responsiveness to their infant's cues.7 These multilevel variations, in turn, affect the children's ability to regulate states and

Implications for Health Care Professionals

This literature has clinical significance for pediatricians and other health care professionals serving families with infants and young children. First, practitioners should be aware that infants' self-regulatory capacities provide the basis for the development of resilience, and that these capacities organize within the context of parent–infant relationships. Second, periods of mis-coordination in the parent–infant relationship occur frequently, are normative, and likely reflect the role of

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