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Introduction
TO REVISED EDITION
 
In the past twelve years, I have been teaching at the Harvard Medical School and conducting research at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. Our research unit has focused on the remarkable behavioral programs that are observable in the newborn infant. Not only is each baby unique, but he or she* is beautifully prepared for the role of learning about him or herself and the world all around. Human infants have the longest period of infancy of all the mammals. In this period of dependency, they must learn about their culture, about themselves, and how to live with the complex expectations of their parents. No small job! But we are identifying the many ways they are ready for all of this even at birth.
 
A second part of our research has been to study, via detailed analysis of videotaped interactions among mothers, fathers, and babies, how they learn about each other. We have come to respect and understand the reciprocity that develops between them and to see how each member of the triad interlocks with the other. Each one learns about him or herself as they learn how to relate to and live with the other. Parenting can be seen as a major opportunity for developmental progress for each parent as well as for the infant. In nurturing a small baby, adults learn as much about themselves as they do about the infant. This first year is an exciting time to write about. The intricate programming of human newborns’ reactions to stimuli and their active use of quiet, alert states of consciousness in order to pay attention to interesting aspects of their environment demonstrate that they are “ready” to start learning from the very first day of birth. Indeed, they probably have been “learning” in the uterus. The learning that they demonstrate as they perform a successful act, such as bringing a thumb up and into the mouth so that they can help themselves quiet in order to pay attention to the world around them, is evidence of this.
 
Many of these programmed acts of a new baby’s behavior elicit immediate responses from his or her parents. For example, when a newborn searches for and looks at the speaking face, a parent is bound to feel rewarded. When an older infant smiles back at a parent’s smiling face, he or she feels automatically that this baby “knows me!” The programming that is built into the baby’s repertoire serves two purposes, that of rewarding the baby for his or her active attempt to perform the behavior and that of attaching the parent to the baby. The precision of the response makes it become even more rewarding to the parent who searches for confirmation of his or her own competence in parenting. In other words, the responses with which the newborn baby is so richly endowed not only create a feeling of “Wow! I’ve done it” in the baby, but also capture and reinforce adults’ responses to him or her. The baby’s behavior becomes a powerful confirmation of well-being and of competence in the development of the parents-infant relationship.
 
The strength of the baby’s contribution should provide new, young parents with a feeling of reassurance. Babies are competent to withstand “mistakes” that their inexperienced parents might make and even to let the parents know when they are on the wrong track. By understanding their babies’ responses better, parents can feel more and more sure of themselves. As they gain assurance, parenting can become more fun. One of the greatest gifts parents can hand on to their child is a sense of humor and a sense of the excitement of growing up!
 
With this strength of the baby in mind, young parents need not feel quite so guilty when they find themselves in conflict with their new and precious, but not-so-helpless infant. Conflict is at the base of caring. And learning about limits from these conflicts may be the most critical source of strength for the baby’s own sense of him or herself.
 
The more each parent cares and wishes to be a care-giver for a baby, the stronger is the competition for that baby. At a time when fathers are becoming more and more important to both mothers and their babies, when the extended family as a source of support and excitement for the nuclear family is disappearing, my earnest desire is to reinforce fathers for more participation. In order to do this, I would like to unravel the reasons why fathers have tended to be remote from their infants and children in the past. Our culture has not reinforced men for nurturant behavior, and we have tended to think that taking care of a baby is “feminine” or a “woman’s role.” We have overlooked the strong desire of men to get to know their infants and the critical aspect of their role in infancy—not only enriching the infant’s experience by providing at least two caring persons, but also enriching the father’s own development.
 
When I studied the Mayan Indians in Southern Mexico for their early childrearing patterns, I longed for the revival in our society of at least two customs that we as a culture have given up. I longed for mothers to allow themselves more continual physical closeness with their infants and for the cushioning of the extended family for all young parents. A strong culture emphasizes the value of the extended family as a backup and a conveyor of customs and values to inexperienced parents. Rather than leaving them to learn about childrearing and about how to handle crises by floundering, other cultures emphasize the extended family as a source of strength and direction. We have lost the closeness of one generation to the other—both because of physical distance and because of the emphasis in our culture on the independence brought about by a generation gap. Although this independence may serve a purpose in other stages of emotional development, it seems to be counterproductive around a new baby. Young parents could profit by an easier method for learning their roles. Learning the roles of parenting by trial and error is a costly, frightening process. It leaves new, inexperienced parents anxious and even angry—angry that “no one” is there to back them up. Grandparents could give them a sounding board, even if their advice is refused in the end. I recommend their being included whenever possible in planning for and coping with a new baby. I don’t include them in this book as much as they deserve, for I’ve figured that parents will want to use the book as a way of sorting out their own thinking—independent of, and even in reaction to their own parents’ thinking. But I am sure that they will find their way to decisions more easily if they include their parents’ opinions and experience among the options.
 
The percentage of families headed by a single parent has increased steadily over the past twenty years. Nineteen percent of the households in the United States where there are children under eighteen years of age are one-parent families. Seventeen percent are headed by females, two percent by the father alone. This is an enormous increase in the number of children who are being reared outside of the typical two-parent nuclear family model with which this book is mostly concerned. Raising a child alone is likely to be a lonely, demanding job. The extent of physical and emotional energy necessary to meet the demands of an infant is almost unforeseeable. To single parents, these demands can seem endless and insurmountable. They must seek supports and personal outlets wherever they can. Single parents need individualized, flexible sources of backup and help in day-to-day decision-making. The kind of cushioning that is inherent in a two-parent situation can be provided only with difficulty. I find that my role as a pediatrician with a single parent becomes critical. The most difficult jobs for a lone parent are 1) allowing for the child’s autonomy or independence at each new stage of development and 2) providing necessary discipline and personal distance, which is critical to the child’s learning his or her own limits. Being the sole disciplinarian, often about apparently unimportant issues, can be fraught with anxiety and frustration.
 
Divorce is on a rapid rise in our culture. New babies may cement stressed couples, but they may add more stress and may become the unwitting targets for the mixed emotions of their parents. Stress between parents is likely to affect infants in one way or another. The worst result for the child is to be used as a “football” between the parents. The baby becomes a way for each parent to act out his or her feelings, often unconsciously, about the other. The child’s own development can be impaired as the parents struggle with each other, or as they recover from the anguish of a divorce. In such an instance, each parent needs to muster enough energy or to seek enough outside help to maintain the emotional freedom necessary to think of the child’s needs. A healthy infancy is critical to every child’s development. The separating parents can design ways of meeting their baby’s needs that will cushion him or her for the future. I would always want each caring parent available—as long as each is capable of considering the baby’s requirements for healthy emotional and physical development as foremost. This is a difficult assignment under the emotional stress of divorce.
 
Almost half the mothers of children under eighteen in the United States are employed outside the home. According to a report from the Department of Labor, 30 percent of these have at least one preschool child. The trend in the present generation has been toward an earlier return to work in the middle classes and toward more women working outside the home in lower-income families. Fortunately, coincident with this increase in numbers has been escalating attention to the plight of their children. As a nation we cannot afford to continue the tendency toward “latchkey children” who let themselves into an empty house at the end of their schoolday, or desperate working mothers who dump their small children on an inadequate neighbor. I feel that fathers must reconsider their roles in a family where the mother must work. The increasing tendency for men to take a role in childrearing is one of the most obvious and best trends of this generation. We as a nation must free fathers from their jobs at critical times, such as at the birth of a baby or during a child’s sickness, so that they can and will consider the child their responsibility. If a father can free time to be the care-giver when a mother needs to be at work, both he and the child will certainly profit. Even when a father can fill in for just a few hours, the baby will have more sense of belonging and an opportunity to know him, and the mother will be less stretched. The father will gain immeasurably in his sense of himself as a nurturant person.