TECNOLOGÍA VOIP

Many investigations of the parenting process do not use Strange Situation assessments, which are costly and labour-intensive in comparison with questionnaire-based and even home-based observations of the infant-mother dyad? instead they take mothers' reports of satisfaction in the parental role as well as their behaviour in the presence of an observer as their outcome or dependent variable.

of emotional state, prior experience with children, and maternal responsiveness in 68 middle-class primiparous mothers from prenatal to 1, 3 and 16 month postpartum assessments. They highlight previous experience with children and mood during pregnancy and the postpartum period as significant correlates of both maternal attitudes and behaviour. Their emphasis on prior experience is consistent with other research on new mothers (Feldman and Nash, 1986). Measures of mood administered postnatallly using the Beck Depression Inventory, were more significantly associated to maternal responsiveness as measured by video-filmed and coded interactions of mother*s nursing or bottle-feeding their babies at 1 and 3 months than were prenatal measures. One important adjunct of postpartum mood was the level of reported support from spouse. However, by 16 months these postpartum measures no longer predicted maternal responsiveness as observed in an unstructured play situation in the home.

The role played by spousal support was also investigated in a study of 105 mothers and their full-term and pre-term four-month olds (Crnic et al., 1973). Crnic and his colleagues report that "intimate support from spouse proved to have the most general positive effects, although community and friendship support appeared valuable to maternal attitudes," (p. 215). That is, the availability and mother's satisfaction with spousal support showed up as the most significant predictor of a mother's

positive attitude toward parenting and of the affect she displayed in face-to-face interaction. It is noteworthy that Crnic et al. found that the relationship between all types of maternal social support and infant functioning became insignificant once mother's observed behaviour was statistically controlled, which provided the basis for their conclusion that social support exerts a primarily indirect effect upon the child, and that with age the possibility of direct influences probably increases.

Four studies have examined the association between attachment and some aspect of the marital relationship? three of which provide some evidence of a significant relationship. Goldberg & Easterbrooks (1984), found a relationship between secure attachment classifications and measures of high marital adjustment based on concurrent assessments of marital quality (N=75 couples)? insecure attachments were more frequent with parents who reported low marital adjustment.

Durrett et al. (1984) found that mothers of insecure- avoidant one year-olds reported receiving the least amount of support from their husbands. Interestingly, this was in contrast to both mothers of securely attached and insecure-resistantly attached infants.

Egeland & Farber (1984) found no direct association between the presence of a partner in the first year and

mother-child attachment classifications at 12 months. What they did find, however, was that infants whose security of attachment to mother changed in the direction of insecurity between 12 and 18 months were more likely to have mothers who were not living with their partners than the group whose attachment status remained stable. Levitt, Weber & Clark (1986) took two measure: they rated the quality of mother-child attachment at 13-months and they assessed mother's report of support from their partner over the child's first year in both emotional and practical terms. They found no correlation between the measures of support and attachment classification. Perhaps not surprisingly they did find associations among the self-report measures. Mothers' assessment of the support they received from their partner was related to maternal satisfaction in the marital relationship and the amount of assistance actually received. What is unclear from these cross-sectional investigations is the degree to which the baby's birth influenced the assessment of quality of marital relationship. It may be that differences in the report of marital satisfaction followed rather than preceded the emergence of secure or insecure infant-parent attachments.

Only two studies so far, report data that address this problem in the determination of influence. Belsky & Isabella (1988) assessed marital quality in a sample of 51 mothers both before and 3 and 9 months after the baby's

in marital satisfaction over the transition to parenthood and as a function of the child's security of attachment to its mother. Their data indicate that marital differences do not precede the baby's arrival or even appear during the first months. It was only the 9 month assessment of marital satisfaction, using a 14 item scale developed by Huston (1983) that distinguished between those mothers whose infants would be coded securely attached at 12 months (N=30) and those who would be coded insecurely attached (N=21). Although both groups showed some deterioration in overall marital quality at 3 months, it was mothers who appeared to emerge from this apparently predictable/normal decline who were facilitating the development of secure attachments in their infants.

In a recent prospective study of 60 women, Spieker and Booth (1988), report an association between maternal dissatisfaction with partners' participation in childcare at 6 weeks and an anxious-avoidant attachment to mother at 12 months. For two reasons this study would seem to qualify the widely reported notion of a "normative descent" in marital quality following the birth of a first child (Belsky, 1988? Cowan et al. 1985): firstly not all mothers report a decline in marital quality after the birth and secondly, the group whose infants would develop an anxious avoidant attachment were not distinguishable, in using measures of marital satisfaction, from the other groups at

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