Mayers Hillary A, Hager-Budny Michaela, Buckner Elizabeth B
Institute for Child Adolescent and Family Studies (ICAFS), New York.
Infant Ment Health J. 2008 Jul;29(4):320-342. doi: 10.1002/imhj.20182.
Adolescent motherhood poses serious challenges to mothers, to infants, and ultimately to society, particularly if the teen mother is part of a minority population living in an urban environment. This study examines the effects of a treatment intervention targeting low-income, high-risk teen mothers and their infants in the context of public high schools where daycare is available onsite. Our findings confirm the initial hypothesis that mothers who received intervention would improve their interactions with their infants in the areas of responsiveness, affective availability, and directiveness. In addition, infants in the treatment group were found to increase their interest in mother, respond more positively to physical contact, and improve their general emotional tone, which the comparison infants did not. Importantly, these findings remain even within the subset of mothers who scored above the clinical cutoff for depression on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. Radloff, 1977), confirming that it is possible to improve mother-infant interaction without altering the mother's underlying depression. The implications of these findings are significant both because it is more difficult and requires more time to alter maternal depression than maternal behavior and because maternal depression has been found to have such devastating effects on infants.
青少年母亲身份给母亲、婴儿乃至整个社会都带来了严峻挑战，尤其是当青少年母亲属于居住在城市环境中的少数群体时。本研究探讨了一种治疗干预措施的效果，该干预措施面向公立高中里有现场日托服务的低收入、高风险青少年母亲及其婴儿。我们的研究结果证实了最初的假设，即接受干预的母亲在反应性、情感可用性和指导性方面会改善与婴儿的互动。此外，研究发现治疗组中的婴儿对母亲的兴趣增加，对身体接触的反应更积极，总体情绪状态有所改善，而对照组的婴儿则没有。重要的是，即使在那些在流行病学研究中心抑郁量表（CES - D；L. 拉德洛夫，1977年）上得分高于临床抑郁临界值的母亲子集中，这些结果依然成立，这证实了在不改变母亲潜在抑郁状况的情况下改善母婴互动是有可能的。这些研究结果的意义重大，这是因为改变母亲的抑郁状况比改变其行为更加困难且需要更多时间，还因为已发现母亲的抑郁对婴儿具有如此毁灭性的影响。
