1. CHAPTER 2: Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families
Infant and Toddler Development and Responsive Program Planning: A Relationship-Based Approach
Third Edition
Donna S. Wittmer
Sandy Petersen
© 2014, 2010, 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2. Our biology affects parenting
Long gestation
Difficult birth process
Dependency of the infant
Predictable responses of parents to newborns

3. Our culture affects parenting
Individualist
Individuals
Independence
Competition
Production
Personal responsibility
Collectivist
Group
Cooperation
Interdependent interests
Process (rather than production)

4. Cultural questions in programs
Differences between parents and teachers may be grounded in each person’s own invisible cultural beliefs about babies.
Some cultural differences may not be negotiated – spanking is never allowed in child care.

5. Variations in parenting
Early experiences
Daughters of single mothers more likely to become mothers outside of marriage
Sons of unstable households w/ many transitions are likely to become young fathers not living with the mother
Early attachment relationships

6. Variations in parenting
Single parents’ other adult relationships
Emotional support for mother through friends and family

7. Variations in parenting
Economics
Higher income fathers are more involved unless work pressures interfere
Flexible work schedules

8. Implications for care teachers?
Becoming a mother
“Natural progression and monumental transition”
Universal and personal
Struggles:
Fatigue
Loss of identity
Marital dissatisfaction
Overly high standards for doing everything right
Depression
Implications for care teachers?

9. Implications for care teachers?
Becoming a father
1 in 3 American children live without their father
Father engagement: quantity and quality of time, attachment, sensitivity
Mother’s positive attitude toward father
Parents’ positive relationship
Implications for care teachers?

10. The imagined baby and the real baby
Imagining ideal baby during pregnancy
Learning to know and accept the real baby
Implications for care teachers?

11. Implications for care teachers?
Parenting styles
Indulgent or permissive
Authoritarian
Authoritative
Uninvolved
(Baumrind, 1991)
Implications for care teachers?

12. Family structure
“Children’s optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and family interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes”.
(Perrin, 2002, p. 341)

13. Implications for care teachers?
Divorce
Unique issues for infants and toddlers
Sensitivity to tension, sadness, anger
Adjustment to day and night cycles
Need for predictability and regularity
Breastfeeding
Implications for care teachers?

14. Same sex parents
“More than two decades of research has failed to reveal important differences in the adjustment or development of children or adolescents reared by same-sex couples compared to those reared by other-sex couples. Results of the research suggest that qualities of family relationships are more tightly linked with child outcomes than is parental sexual orientation” Patterson (2006) p.241 Implications for care teachers?

15. Implications for care teachers?
Grandparents
May offer stable home
Parents may be present
Often no legal authority
Implications for care teachers?

16. Implications for care teachers?
Adoptive parents
Age at adoption
Circumstances leading up to adoption
Difficulty of repeatedly establishing new relationships for infants and toddlers
Implications for care teachers?

17. Implications for care teachers?
Foster parents
Infants are 20% of children in foster care
May have experienced abuse, neglect, in utero exposure to drugs or alcohol, violence, sexual abuse
Premature, low birth weight
Serious health and developmental problems
Implications for care teachers?

18. Care and education programs that support families
Parent education
Family support
Home-visiting
Parent Training and Information Centers
Parent to Parent