Having a baby is an experience like no other for parents. It heralds the start of a life of exhilaration, wonder and unremitting responsibility. The combination of love, care and emotional attunement that occurs between carers and babies, in this inverse version of Blake’s have been raised about mothers and fathers, and which of these unique roles and sensitivities have served to set human babies on their lifelong emotional developmental path.
In this provocative and wide-ranging blog, we begin the process of unpacking the concept of parenting sensitivity and its involvement in infant care. How is maternal care distinct from paternal care? How do the niceties of gender stereotypes blur the contrast between involvement and indifference, or warmth and coldness, in raising children? What can the burgeoning science bringing together laboratory studies and in-home observations of parenting tell us about the specific contributions that mothers and fathers make to the palette of childhood experiences?
The Myth of Maternal Sensitivity
Maternal sensitivity is one of the primary narratives that global societies have embraced for multiple generations. The near-mythic status of mother’s ‘natural’ and ‘intuitive’ ability to respond to her infant’s emotional ‘needs’ dates back to intellectual and cultural origins that focus almost exclusively on female parenting. This should not overshadow the fact that babies, through their proximity to the birth parent, may well be able to fend for themselves for many hours each day While females often maintain an early advantage born of biology (ie, utero and birth), sensitivity in infant care is not a gendered process.
Maternal Sensitivity: The Early Advantage
Much of the maternal sensitivity we see in the infant’s first few months, for example, is undoubtedly due to the deep interdependence that will have taken place during pregnancy. Oxytocin, sometimes known as the ‘love hormone’, performs its magic at the moment of delivery and provides an evolutionary advantage that mothers step into perfectly when they respond to who is in need. The crying baby is comforted, breastfeeding commences, and a baby’s needs correctly interpreted. Touch calms the restless soul.
The Evolving Role of Fathers
A shift has taken place in the past several decades, and fathers’ chief role is no longer traditionally defined by their longstanding role as the big, tough protector but as the big, tough, tender dad. Sensitivity, once seen as solely a maternal trait, is increasingly doing the same. They spend a lot of time face to face with their babies, talking, cooing, reading, playing, and changing them. As they take on these caring tasks, they inevitably become more sensitive, responsive and emotional to their infants. In other words, when dads are fathers, not just sperm-donors, their emotional closeness to their babies flourishes as a result of their active, positive engagement.
Paternal Sensitivity: A Distinct Approach
Fathers playing a more active role with infants could foster a different (albeit complementary) sensibility in caregiving of mothers. Reporting a longitudinal study of infants’ interactions with their fathers, Belsky and colleagues characterise the nature of paternal exchanges as more playful, bodily and exploratory. Moreover, fathers’ interactional styles are suggested to promote cognitive as well as motor skills, filling out and complementing a child’s social skills. The net outcome of a combination of maternal and paternal sensitivity forms the basis for the emotional intelligence and wellbeing of children.
The Power of Emotional Co-Regulation
Babies are exquisitely sensitive to the emotional states of the caregivers around them, and much of the work of parenthood with babies centres around co-regulation of emotions. It also takes two to do this: both fathers and mothers serve important roles mentoring their little ones on the rocky path of emotional self-regulation. From these moments of parental emotional attunement and responsiveness, the infant’s ability to come to have a well-developed repertoire of emotional self-regulation skills can emerge.
The Importance of Parental Collaboration
Finally, a strength of infant care is parents’ cooperation. By emphasising parents’ cooperation, we can put their caregiving on a warm footing. When mothers and fathers make mutual disclosures, share information, and respect each other’s parenting styles, they can create a harmonious caregiving environment where mothers, fathers and infants feel a sense of unity and love. Such a caregiving climate creates the best of both worlds for an infant’s emotional care.
Conclusion
In sum, the answer to ‘the mother or the father?’ question is this: infants are not more or less responsive to mothers or fathers individually, but to the emotional availability of their parents jointly. There is no winner prize. Rather, sensitivity means shared love, care and responsiveness between men and women. While we celebrate, this Mother’s Day, mothers, fathers and all the diverse and vital parenting roles between them, let us remember to partake in the most valuable gift we have for our children: a loving and supportive environment where parents care together for their infants.
But let’s continue to try to defy stereotypes and be the type of mother and father we both want to be, rather than the type we feel we have to be, expressing our love and sensitivity in the way that’s most natural to us. In this way, we’ll provide a rich and balanced space for our children as they start out on life’s path, bringing a profound new depth to the historical balance between mama-papa love that is finally being reborn.