Date of Award
Fall 1996
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Fox, Robert
Second Advisor
Pridham, Karen
Third Advisor
Taft, Thomas B.
Abstract
As a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, I have worked with new mothers and their infants for twenty years. My doctoral work in Counseling Psychology has stimulated new ways of thinking about the socioemotional development of the infant and the importance of the maternal-infant relationship for the personality and mental health of the individual. Understanding the characteristics of the mothers which lead to optimal outcomes for their infants is the topic of recent research. My nursing practice in a Newborn Intensive Care Unit caused me to wonder about the effects of the NICU environment on the attachment behavioral system. Tools with adequate reliability and validity have been developed to study the maternal-infant relationship in the first few years of life. However, these tools have not been used in the NICU. This study was designed to capture the maternal-infant relationship as it developed in the NICU. A global rating scale of maternal behavior and affect was used. For the sake of comparison of measurement methods, a nurses rating scale and a behavioral coding method were also used.