Critical Thinking Paper

Critical Thinking Paper

Infancy is a very important period in the development of a human being. In the context of a child's absolute dependency and vulnerability, adverse parenting practices may have very negative effects. Because early psychological structures are often developmentally incorporated into later structures, early disturbance in functioning may cause larger disturbances in later life (Cicchetti, 1989). In the literature on child maltreatment a number of researchers have underscored the interactive nature of the process involved and have characterized child maltreatment, in a family context, as parenting practices that threaten or damage the child's optimum development.

The high-risk mothers showed affectionate but intrusive behavior associated with the three infant behaviors: positive, play and difficult behavior; whereas the low- risk mothers showed no association of intrusive behavior with infant difficult behavior. Furthermore, as expected, and in contrast to the low group, there were no significant differences among the three temporal relations in the high group. That is, high-risk mothers ' affectionate-intrusive behavior was related to their infant's behavior regardless of the character of the behavior. These findings were consistent at both 3 and 12 months. Taken together the picture of the profile of timings is more noticeable and showed the expected opposite pattern between high - and low- risk groups. At both 3 and 12 months, the high-risk mothers reacted to their infant's difficult behavior with affectionate but intrusive behavior, as they do with different infant behaviors, positive or play, and they did not display an affectionate-sensitive behavior associated with their infant's difficult behavior.

In contrast, the low- risk mothers, when their infants showed discomfort or a complaint (that is difficult behavior) showed the opposite pattern from the high-risk mothers: their affectionate behavior was sensitive, with significant association, but they were not intrusive. In fact, there was a tendency, although not statistically significant, for low- risk mothers to inhibit their intrusive behavior after their infant's difficult behavior. The cross-over finding at the age of 3 months in this study replicated that obtained in a previous study (Cerezo et al., 2006), carried out only with 3-month-old infants.

Thus, in the present study the infants of the high-risk mothers group not only get affectionate but intrusive maternal reaction significantly linked to their three different behaviors, but also the profile of temporal association between their difficult behavior and the four maternal reactions has shown no differences between 3 and 12 months, which was not the case for the infants of the low- risk mothers group.

Congruent with our predictions, the infants at 15 months were found to be more than twice as likely to develop secure (or insecure) attachment depending on the group factor. Seventy percent of the infants in the high-risk mothers group showed insecure attachment and 30% showed secure attachment, while the opposite distribution was found in the low- risk mothers group. It could be argued that, in this study, no definitive connection has been proven between interactive profiles and secure/insecure attachment. However, the fundamental base for the quality of attachment is to ...