Ethnographic methods are used to investigate infant--toddlers relationships in an early childhood setting. The metaphorical and emotionally based concepts of holding [Winnicott, D. W. (1960). "The theory of the parent-infant relationship." "International Journal of Psychoanalysis," 41, 585-595.] and container: contained [Bion,…

Recent re-conceptualisation of paternal involvement (Pleck, J. H. (2010). Paternal involvement: Revised conceptualization and theoretical linkages with child outcomes. In M. Lamb (Ed.), "The role of the father in child development" (5th ed., pp. 67-107). London: Wiley), while proving fruitful, has yet to be applied to investigations into…

Examined toddlers' avoidance of their parents on reunion in day care settings and in laboratory situations. Also investigated the relation of avoidance to social-emotional adjustment and to the length of time in day care. (JMB)

This paper reviews the literature on attachment, presents a study of child-teacher attachment, and discusses child-teacher attachment as a secondary relationship influenced by the prototype bonding between mother and child. The literature review traces the development of psychoanalytic thought regarding the mother-child relationship and examines…

In order to examine whether the visual picture of the mother would, by itself, encourage toddlers to play in an unfamiliar situation, the effects of films of mothers were compared to the actual presence of the mothers, and to films of unfamiliar women. (CM)

This research examined the degree of correspondence between children's perceptions of their parents' caregiving behavior, those parents' self-perceptions, and the parents' inferences about how their behavior would be perceived by their child. Eighty child (seven-year-olds) parent pairs completed modified Bronfenbrenner Parent Behavior…

An investigation was conducted with 20 cohabiting dyads (total N=40) to assess the implications of exchange orientation (EO) on dyadic functioning. EO was defined as the degree to which individual members of the dyad seek reciprocity from their partner. Most individuals tend to be quite sensitive to their own work input within the dyad, but are…

Compared play, social, and attachment behaviors of 71 preschool children who had entered infant day care at varying ages and received varying amounts of day care. Concluded that continuous infant day care in quality centers appears to facilitate preschool social behavior and does not negatively affect attachment behavior. (NH)

This paper examines current approaches to conceptualizing and studying fathers' interactions with infants from three perspectives: (1) Spence and Helmreich's current trait theory of masculinity and femininity; (2) differentiated levels of inquiry into fatherhood; and (3) Bronfenbrenner's social ecology of the infant. Detailed discussions of each…

The present series of studies was undertaken to explore intersensory processing in the very young. In the first experiment 1-, 4- and 7-month-old infants experienced simultaneously their mothers' faces and voices. The various conditions consisted of displacing the voice from the face. The results indicated that infants as young as one month of age…

This study examined both maternal and child interaction styles, focusing on the association between differences in maternal level and quality of involvement and the synchrony and affective quality of child interaction behaviors. The subjects were 55 mother-child dyads in which the children (ages 2-5) had been referred to a mental health center…

This intensive longitudinal study of mother-infant interaction during the first year of life focuses on the development of attachment. Data on 26 middle-class families were collected by five methods: (1) naturalistic observation of each mother-infant pair during 4-hour home visits, which occurred at 3-week intervals from the infants' 3rd to 54th…

This study of the bidirectional effects of parent-child relations, focuses on the exchange of attachment behaviors, investigating the interactions of twelve 3-member nuclear families in a strange-situation condition. Dyadic and triadic conditions involving parents with their 12-, 18-, or 24-month-old children were observed and videotaped in a…