Mother Surrogates Research Articles

Parental Socialization and Children’s Susceptibility to Alcohol Use Initiation

This study examined relations between children's susceptibility to alcohol use initiation and parents' alcohol-specific beliefs, attitudes, and practices and whether these relations vary by parental alcohol use. The sample comprised 1,050 pairs of mothers or mother surrogates and their third-grade children (51.8% female) recruited for a 4-year intervention trial. Families were recruited from school districts located primarily in North Carolina; the school districts provided permission for study recruitment materials to be distributed to families but were not otherwise involved in the research. Data are from the baseline cross-sectional telephone interviews conducted with the mothers and children. Children's susceptibility to alcohol use initiation is based on child reports, and parental alcohol-specific beliefs, attitudes, and practices are based on maternal reports. All parental alcohol socialization attributes were statistically significantly associated as hypothesized with child susceptibility to alcohol use initiation. In the final full model, the mother's disapproving attitude about child sipping and the interaction between mother-child communication and parental alcohol use frequency were uniquely significantly associated with child susceptibility. Talking with the child about harmful consequences of alcohol use was associated with reduced child susceptibility in families where parents drank alcohol more frequently but had no relationship with child susceptibility in families where parents drank infrequently. The normative interactions that parents have with their elementary school children may inhibit or facilitate children's susceptibility to alcohol use. To the extent that child susceptibility leads to early onset of use, prevention programs directed at parents to reduce child susceptibility are indicated.

Letting Children Sip

To investigate prosipping beliefs about alcohol among parents and the relations among these beliefs, parents' alcohol-specific attitudes and practices, and children's reports of initiation of alcohol use. Telephone interview study of parent-child dyads. Data for the present study are from the baseline interviews of a 4-year intervention trial. Southeastern United States. One thousand fifty pairs of mothers or mother surrogates and their third-grade children who were recruited for the 4-year intervention trial. Key measures from parents included prosipping beliefs (ie, beliefs that sipping alcohol has protective consequences for children), attitudes about children's sipping, and parenting practices that affect children's opportunity to try alcohol. The key measure from children was experience sipping beer, wine, or other types of alcohol. The belief among mothers that allowing children to sip alcohol can have protective consequences for children, including making children less likely to drink as adolescents and making them better at resisting peer influence to drink, ranged from approximately 15% to almost 40%. Alcohol use was reported by 32.8% of children. A strong, significant association was found between parental prosipping beliefs and children's reported alcohol use. The notion that early exposure to alcohol can be beneficial has a strong foothold among some parents of elementary school-aged children. More research is needed to understand how parents acquire prosipping beliefs and to test messages that effectively modify such beliefs and associated prosipping attitudes and practices among parents.

When Daughter Becomes Mother: Inferences from Multiple Dyadic Parent–Child Groups

In this paper, I describe how new mothers can be preoccupied with their mothers and can replay their relationship with them transferentially with professionals and nannies, who become surrogates for their mothers. New mothers need affirmation from their mothers and from mother surrogates because, in their new role, they experience a sense of helplessness and anxiety and have difficulty tolerating aggression, ambivalence, and conflict. Stern's “motherhood constellation” and “good grandmother transference” are useful constructs for understanding how to best approach and help new mothers and their babies. From observations in multiple dyadic parent–child groups at the Pacella Parent Child Center, I have distilled two factors that help new mothers address their anxieties—the bonds these mothers make with one another and their transferential bond with the group leader and other professionals at the center. I critically discuss and compare theoretical inferences derived from individual psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic work (as exemplified by Balsam's work) with the inferences derived from Stern's dyadic model and with inferences derived from psychoanalytically informed group situations. I consider the implications of the ubiquity of ambivalence conflicts, especially around aggression.

Vulnerability of children of incarcerated addict mothers: Implications for preventive intervention

This is a preliminary report on the characteristics, experiences, and behavior of 88 adolescent, primarily African-American, children of incarcerated urban addict mothers that examines the association of age, gender, and risk factor profiles with the children's adjustment status defined in terms of self-reported questionnaire information and selected personality/behavioral assessment inventories. In spite of the existence of adverse circumstances in their lives, including the incarceration of their substance-abusing mothers, results revealed that the majority of these children were neither especially deviant nor maladjusted, all but a small percentage having successfully avoided substance abuse and the adoption of a deviant lifestyle at this point in their development. In most cases, mother surrogates (usually a grandmother or other family member) had for many years functioned as primary caregivers of the children prior to the incarceration of their birth mothers, which may have attenuated the negative impact ordinarily associated with a mother's absence from the home. However, there was a general indication of problematic school behavior and vulnerability to deviant peer influences that should be addressed in efforts aimed at preventing the escalation of deviant activity in such children. Also, in almost all cases, there was a readily observable need for the provision of caseworker support services to the current caregivers of the children.

Effects of Illumination Changes on Infant Monkey Contacts with Surrogates

With temperature and humidity controlled, responses of an infant crab-eating macaque to mother surrogates changed significantly with changes in illumination. In addition, during 77 days of observations, contact with a soft, nonfeeding surrogate was significantly greater than was contact with a stiff, feeding surrogate. The preference for the soft surrogate is consistent with results reported by Harlow for rhesus infants.

Repeated separations of 2-year-old squirrel monkeys from familiar mother surrogates.

Six squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) during their first year of life were isolated and repeatedly separated from cloth mother surrogates. Subsequently, they were returned to the colony for 1 year and received visual access to normally reared squirrel monkeys. At 2 years of age, the surrogates were reintroduced to the monkeys under conditions identical to those of their first year through cycles of separation and reunion of the surrogate. These monkeys displayed increased high-energy activity, indicative of the classic protest response upon separation, but did not display a depressive phase. Also, during the 2-year test, the monkeys manifested enhanced levels of several self-directed behaviors compared to a group of socially reared control monkeys.

Rumination in infancy: Recent behavioral approaches

The published literature on behavioral treatments of rumination is reviewed, and new case material on two recently reported procedures is presented. Rumination, a medical condition of infancy involving repeated regurgitation of previously ingested food, has historically been treated from a psychodynamic approach involving extended in-patient treatment by mother surrogates. This procedure is both time-consuming and very costly. The initial behavioral approach involved electric shock. Single-case studies reflect the utility of this procedure, but widespread resistance to this form of punishment makes this a difficult procedure to utilize. More recent behavioral procedures reported in single-case studies have included delivering aversive taste stimuli as consequences for ruminating. This procedure has met with mixed success, and has the added drawback of being difficult to implement technically and because of staff resistance. A combination of punishment by scolding, time-out, and reinforcement of retaining the food constitutes a useful alternative. This procedure has the added advantage of being more acceptable to staff and implementable at home. The possibility of individual differences among ruminators that might predict success is also raised.

Responses to snakes by surrogate- and mother-reared squirrel monkeys

Eight behaviors were observed in 1-year-old squirrel monkeys exposed to either a live boa constrictor or one of four inanimate objects with varying similarities to the live snake. The playpen group was exposed to these stimuli both in the presence of their feral mothers and after they had been permanently separated from their mothers. The surrogate group was similarly tested before and after separation from cloth mother surrogates. The principal finding was that the playpen group touched the box containing the stimulus objects for significantly shorter durations than did the surrogate group. The difference occurred both in the presence and in the absence of the mothers or the mother surrogates. This result indicated that the playpen infants had learned to avoid the stimulus box as a consequence of observing their mothers’ marked affective responses to the snake.

Redirection of Filial Attachments in Rhesus Monkeys: Dogs as Mother Surrogates

Rhesus infants raised from birth with their mothers, age-mates, or cloth surrogates for periods varying fronm 1 to 10 months were separated from these objects and placed with dogs. Contrary to previous suggestions that were consistent with the notions of a critical period for attachment formation and irreversibility of filial bonds, the monkeys formed strong and specific attachments to their canine surrogates.

Monkeys ( Macaca mulatta) raised only with peers. A pilot study

Four infant rhesus raised in a group (4-TT) and six raised in pairs (2-TT) were compared with eight infants raised on mother surrogates (SP) and twenty raised with real mothers (MP). When tested with peers early in life 4-TT and 2-TT subjects showed less play, hostility and sex, and the 2-TT subjects exhibited a preponderance of social cling. When tested as adults the 2-TT and 4-TT monkeys were below controls on measures of play, above controls on social proximity, hostility, and withdrawal, and the 2-TT subjects showed inadequate sexual adjustment. Data are interpreted as suggesting that behaviours normally associated with affectional ties can become so extreme as to inhibit normal social development.

Project Perk-Up

When nursing staff members became mother surrogates to well babies being cared for in an inner-city hospital, not only these babies but all the babies on the unit began to get better care.

Obesity in children: Identification of a group at risk in a New York ghetto

This study identifies mother-child separation as a factor favoring the development of childhood obesity. Of 72 consecutive patients referred to a Harlem obesity clinic, 23 (31.9 per cent) were, or had been, living with mother surrogates; only 6 (8.3 per cent) of 72 nonobese control subjects had histories of separation from their mothers. Absence of working mothers from their homes for part of the day had no apparent effect on the incidence of obesity. Some implications of these findings are discussed. This study identifies mother-child separation as a factor favoring the development of childhood obesity. Of 72 consecutive patients referred to a Harlem obesity clinic, 23 (31.9 per cent) were, or had been, living with mother surrogates; only 6 (8.3 per cent) of 72 nonobese control subjects had histories of separation from their mothers. Absence of working mothers from their homes for part of the day had no apparent effect on the incidence of obesity. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

Orientation of infant macaques to facially distinct surrogate mothers.

In studies of the development of affective behavior in subhuman primates (e.g., Harlow & Zimmermann, 1959), the cloth and wire surrogate mothers used to rear infant monkeys had markedly dissimilar faces. The conclusion of these studies that contact comfort is a variable of critical importance in the development of affectional responsiveness to the surrogate mother [Harlow & Zimmermann, 1959, p. 423] leaves this difference in faces an uncontrolled variable of possible significance. Studies with human infants (e.g., Kagan, 1970) suggest that the face of a surrogate mother may, in fact, be an important variable in such experiments, since human infants (during certain developmental periods) spend significantly more time looking at a stylized face than at either a face with scrambled features or a control pattern. The possibility was thus raised that infant monkeys may also show orientation preferences toward one type of face over another. In the present study, two infant rhesus monkeys, 48 and 59 days old, were removed from their mothers and each placed in a cage containing two terrycloth covered mother surrogates like those used by Harlow. The surrogates were identical except for the faces. One of each surrogate pair had a square face similar to those on Harlow's wire mothers; the other had a round face similar to those on Harlow's cloth mothers. Milk