Good News! It’s Okay if You Only Get Parenting Right Half the Time, Experts Say

Turns out, you only have to get it right 50 percent of the time when responding to baby’s needs, says Susan Woodhouse, an associate professor of counseling psychology.

In a new study, Woodhouse, analyzed mother-baby pairs based on a mother’s response to the infant while the baby was crying and not crying to assess the qualities of “secure base provision.”

Infant attachment is the bond infants form with Mom or Dad. A secure attachment allows babies to feel safe, which allows them to feel comforted in times of distress and encourages them to explore their surroundings, knowing they can return to their secure base when needed.

Numerous studies have shown the importance of secure infant attachment to developmental outcomes, but the actual building blocks leading to attachment have been unresolved. Caregivers’ ability to accurately interpret their baby’s needs and respond appropriately was shown to be a key predictor of attachment, but previous studies showed sensitivity accounts for a surprisingly low percentage of variation in attachment, and has an even lower impact among families with low socioeconomic status.

Researchers analyzed 83 low socioeconomic-status mothers and infants when they were 4.5 months, 7 months, 9 months and 12 months old. They found that this framework significantly predicted infant attachment, and babies learned their mothers were providing a secure base when mothers responded properly at least 50 percent of the time. This drastically changes the way we think about secure attachment for infants. While it’s assumed securely attached infants are more likely to have better outcomes in childhood and adulthood, based on the findings, there’s more than one way to get there and you don’t always have to be at the top of your game, particularly for low socioeconomic-status families.

“The findings provide evidence for the validity of a new way of conceptualizing the maternal caregiving quality that actually works for low-income families,” says Woodhouse.

The study seeks to address this critical gap in understanding what leads to secure attachment, through examining whether a new conceptualization of caregiving behavior, “secure base provision,” predicts attachment security in infants. The new ideology focuses on the aspects of caregiving that are the most important to building a bond with baby.

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