Babies: The first three years of life

177 Pages·1979·13.671 MB·English

by  Robert B. McCall (auth.)

Babies
B a b i e s
The first three years of life
Robert B.
McCall
M
© The McCall Children's Trust 1979
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published in the United States of America 1979 by
Harvard University Press
Published in Great Britain 1980 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi Dublin
Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos Melbourne
New York Singapore and Tokyo
ISBN 978-0-333-30650-5 ISBN 978-1-349-05784-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05784-9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McCall, Robert B
Babies.
I. Infant psychology
2. Infants - Growth
I. Title
155.4'22 BF723.16
This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the
Net Book Agreement.
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
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purchaser.
To
Blanche and Emma
my older teachers
Darin and Stacey
my younger teachers
Rozanne
my fellow student
Preface
T
HE BIRTH OF a child is a momentous event.
Not only is it the beginning of a new per
son, but it brings new joys, frustrations,
and responsibilities to adults now transformed into
parents.
These new responsibilities start almost immediately.
Shall the infant be breast- or bottle-fed? That decision
may depend on the mother's feelings about herself, her
need to work, her husband's desire to take an active
role in childcare, their concerns about nutrition and
natural immunizations, and so forth. life quickly be
comes complicated.
Decisions about method of feeding, scheduling,
who takes the 2 a.m. session, and what kind of diapers
to use are only the beginning. Beyond their immediate
physical needs babies have personalities, and parents
want to get to know them. But infants are not like
adults. For one thing, they don't talk. How do you get
acquainted with a newborn? What do they see and hear?
Are those occasional smiles gas pains or hellos? How
actually do you love a baby? loving another person,
even a baby, is more than cuddling and kissing: these
are expressions of love, not love itself.
And babies cry-some of them interminably. An
infant's cry is one of the most irritating sounds imagina
ble. Perhaps nature has made it so. But what do you do
vii
viii PREFACE
when the crying persists even after the baby has been
fed, changed, and checked for open pins? Some new
parents become totally frustrated because they want to
calm their newborn infants but nothing seems to work.
Picking them up all the time might spoil them (it
doesn't), but you can't leave them in the crib screeching
either. Crying is normal, and a baby who never cries
may have a greater problem than one who cries several
hours a day.
Beyond the bread-and-butter problems of how to
feed and bathe and comfort an infant, there is the ques
tion of how to stimulate a baby during those important
first years of life. All parents want their child to be men
tally competent and to be able to function well in soci
ety. Much has been written about the importance of the
early years of life in shaping a child's intelligence and
personality. Many parents are concerned that they are
not doing enough. They feel guilty, but they don't know
what to do.
The birth of a new baby, however personally joyful,
is a financial burden. Husbands think about moonlight
ing, and wives are torn between their responsibility as a
mother and their need to contribute to the family
finances or their desire for a career. For many women
there is no choice-the wife's income is not supplemen
tary, it's absolutely necessary. But what will happen to
the infant's development if both parents work and the
baby is cared for by other adults in another home or
daycare center? Will parent and child be less attached;
will the child suffer socially, emotionally, or mentally;
and will the parent miss out on an experience that is as
old as the species itself?
Parenthood is real work and there are many deci
sions to make. Yet while advice is plentiful, solid infor
mation to help parents make their own decisions is
dear. Parents used to go to their own parents with ques
tions about childrearing. But grandparents often live
farther away now. And there are new questions parents
PREFACE ix
face today-working mothers, daycare centers, and
changing expectancies of what boys and girls should be
like, to name a few. Today's family is not the same as
yesterday's.
Surveys show that parents feel a greater need for
help in raising their children today than a few years ago.
As a result, there is a virtual explosion of books,
magazine and newspaper articles, and television shows
on how to raise kids, how to toilet train them, how to
cope with single parenthood, how to teach your child to
cook. But is that what new parents really want-ten easy
rules for raising children or simple recipes for dealing
with the problems that most children pose for their par
ents? Publishers think so, but parents might not.
Dr. Alison Clarke-Stewart of the University of
Chicago asked people who were reading books about
childcare what they hoped to gain from those materials.
Most said they were not looking for advice on how to
solve specific problems or help in making particular de
cisions. Rather, most wanted books to tell them about
the normal process of infant and child development.
By and large, that is not exactly what most books
dispense. Many are written by physicians, psychiatrists,
and clinical psychologists who are widely experienced in
dealing with medical and behavioral problems, espe
cially those that prompt parents to seek professional
help. They are specialists in the unusual child. Other
books and articles are written by educators, journalists,
and parents themselves who pass along tips they've ac
quired in their own personal experience with their par
ticular children. That advice mayor may not apply to the
next parent and child. Other authors are advocates, ad
monishing parents to experience natural childbirth, to
breast-feed their infants, not to take pap from the
school system, and so forth. To be sure, these books
and articles have a certain utility, and many of them are
quite good. But Clarke-Stewart's survey reveals that
most parents are not primarily interested in solving
x PREFACE
problems in other people's idiosyncratic experience, or
in propaganda. They want to know how their infants and
children grow and change, and how they can be an in
tegral part of their baby's development.
This book attempts to provide such information
about the first three years of life. It is not a "how-to"
book, and for good reasons. There are no ten easy rules
for trouble-free parenthood, at least not ten that are
sufficiently specific to tell every parent what to do
beyond love, respect, caring, and other commonsense
platitudes. A prescription that will work for one parent
child pair may be totally wrong for another. What the
parent needs is not more advice but the best informa
tion available about the normal course of infant de
velopment. Given a knowledge of what to expect and
why, parents should be able to make better decisions
on their own.
This book does not tell parents what to do or think
as much as it tells them what to think about. It offers
some information that will help readers make their own
choices. I don't discuss caretaking chores-how to wash
bottles, mix formula, treat colds, or what immunizations
to give the child. Such information can be found in
many sources. My emphasis instead is on the develop
ment of the person that is the infant-his or her person
ality, the emergence of love and attachment between
parent and infant, the growth of intelligence, language,
and social behavior.
During the last decade, research psychologists have
intensively studied babies, and their research covers a
host of questions that will interest anyone concerned
with infants. What can a baby see or hear at birth? When
infants look at a parent, what do they see-patterns of
lights and colors or a face? Do babies dream? What con
siderations are important in deciding whether to breast
or bottle-feed? How often do babies eat, how long do
they sleep, and when will they sleep through the night?
What are the ways parents can communicate with their
babies and how do their babies communicate with
PREFACE xi
them? When do parents start to feel love for their in
fants, and what are the facts about the new hospital
practice of parent-infant bonding? How early can an in
fant start to learn things? What effect does all this early
stimulation have on a baby? Can one predict later IQ
from infant tests? Do temperamental differences be
tween babies forecast later personality? Why do infants
show fear of strangers? What kind of toys and play do
infants enjoy? How does a child acquire language? What
makes two-year-olds negative with their parents and ag
gressive with their peers? In a real sense, this book is a
report on the fascinating research that addresses these
questions.
Rearing an infant can be an intellectually exciting
and emotionally fulfilling responsibility. This book is
dedicated to helping parents and infants realize these
joys together.
I am grateful for the assistance and support of
many. Father Flanagan's Boys Home and the Center for
the Study of Youth Development, where I am em
ployed, have encouraged this activity as part of their ef
fort to disseminate research results that will contribute
to the welfare of children, youth, and families every
where. S. Holly Stocking provided valuable guidance in
writing; Sandra Wendel proofed manuscript and gal
leys; and Bess Melvin and Pat Mordeson handled the
clerical chores. I thank Dorothy Eichorn, Alexander
Roche, Philip Salapatek, Alan Sroufe, and Ina Uzgiris for
their helpful comments on portions of the manuscript,
and William Kessen for his insightful overview. Finally, I
appreciate the efforts of hundreds of scientists,
graduate students, and assistants who have generated
the research results reported in this volume, and I
apologize if I have misrepresented those efforts in any
way.
R.B.M.
Boys Town, Nebraska