Understanding Your Baby: protocol for a controlled parallel group study of a universal home-based educational program for first time parents.

BACKGROUND: Infant mental health represents a significant public health issue. The transition to parenthood provides optimal opportunities for supporting parenting competence. Especially parental mentalization, i.e. the caregiver's ability to notice and interpret the child's behavior in terms of mental states, is important in infancy where the caregiver-infant communication is based solely on the infant's behavioral cues. METHODS: This study evaluates the efficacy of the intervention Understanding Your Baby (UYB) compared to Care As Usual (CAU) in 10 Danish municipalities. UYB aims at promoting parental competence in new parents by supporting them in noticing their infants' behavioral cues and interpreting them in terms of mental states. Participants will be approximately 1,130 singletons and their parents. Inclusion criteria are first-time parents, minimum 18 years old, living in one of the 10 municipalities, and registered in the Danish Civil Registration Register (CPR). Around 230 health visitors deliver the UYB as part of their routine observation of infant social withdrawal in the Danish home visiting program. During an interaction between the health visitor and the infant, the health visitor articulates specific infant behaviors and helps the caregivers interpret these behaviors to mental states. The study is a controlled parallel group study with data obtained at four time points in two phases: First in the control group receiving the publicly available postnatal care (CAU), secondly in the intervention group after UYB implementation into the existing postnatal services. The primary outcome is maternal competence. Secondary measures include paternal competence, parental stress, parental mentalizing, and infant socioemotional development. Analysis will employ survey data and data from the health visitors' register. DISCUSSION: Results will provide evidence regarding the efficacy of UYB in promoting parenting competences. If proved effective, the study will represent a notable advance to initiating the UYB intervention as part of a better infant mental health strategy in Denmark. Conversely, if UYB is inferior to CAU, this is also important knowledge in regard to promoting parenting competence and infant mental health in a general population. Trial registration https://ClinicalTrials.gov with ID no. NCT03991416. Registered at 19 June 2019-Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03991416.

How are mothers negatively affected and supported by following parenting-related Instagram profiles? A mixed-methods study.

Many parents use social media to seek knowledge about child development and parenting, but parents are an understudied population in social media research. In this study, we use a mixed-methods approach to examine mothers' experience of following three different types of Instagram profiles: InstaParents, i.e. influencers sharing their personal experiences with parenthood, professional profiles disseminating knowledge about parenting and child development, and a university-based profile disseminating knowledge about child socioemotional development. The participants were 270 mothers with children aged 0-6 years, who completed an online questionnaire regarding their experience and use of Instagram. Generalized Estimating Equations were used to examine associations between mothers' social comparison orientation and their experience of following the different types of profiles. Content analysis of mothers' responses to open-ended questions was used to examine how mothers were negatively affected and supported by the different profiles. Results showed that mothers with higher levels of social comparison orientation were more negatively affected by following all three types of profiles, but also more supported by following InstaParents. The content analysis suggested that mothers were negatively affected by InstaParents by making upward comparisons and supported by making horizontal comparisons. Mothers were supported by professional profiles, including the university-based profile, by improved knowledge, but these profiles could also lead to a decreased sense of parenting competence. Results inform professionals in relation to how to support mothers through content on Instagram and how to talk to mothers about their digital use and well-being.

A longitudinal examination of daily amounts of screen time and technoference in infants aged 2-11 months and associations with maternal sociodemographic factors.

This study aimed to examine longitudinal developmental patterns in the daily amounts of screen time and technoference in infants aged 2, 4, 7, and 11 months and to examine associations with maternal sociodemographic factors across all age groups. The results showed that the amount of screen time varied between 6 and 17 min a day, while interruptions in mother-infant interactions due to maternal use of digital technology occurred between 5 and 6 times a day. There was a significant increase in infant screen time from 2 to 4 months, from 4-7 months, and from 7-11 months, and in technoference from 2 to 4 months and from 4-7 months. Maternal age and household income were not associated with infant screen time, but maternal educational level was negatively associated with infant screen time throughout the first year. No associations were found between technoference and maternal age, maternal educational level, or household income. Future research focusing on infant screen time and technoference should aim at including samples that reflect the general population, include measures of screen time and technoference that do not rely on parental report, and include measures of the effects of early infant screen time and technoference on later development.

Effects of maternal postpartum depression in a well-resourced sample: Early concurrent and long-term effects on infant cognitive, language, and motor development.

This study examined early and long-term effects of maternal postpartum depression on cognitive, language, and motor development in infants of clinically depressed mothers. Participants were 83 mothers and their full-term born children from the urban region of Copenhagen, Denmark. Of this group, 28 mothers were diagnosed with postnatal depression three to four months postpartum in a diagnostic interview. Cognitive, language, and motor development was assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development third edition, when the infants were 4 and 13 months of age. We found that maternal postpartum depression was associated with poorer cognitive development at infant age four months, the effect size being large (Cohen's d = 0.8) and with similar effects for boys and girls. At 13 months of age infants of clinical mothers did not differ from infants of non-clinical mothers. At this time most (79%) of the clinical mothers were no longer, or not again, depressed. These results may indicate that maternal depression can have an acute, concurrent effect on infant cognitive development as early as at four months postpartum. At the same time, in the absence of other risk factors, this effect may not be enduring. The main weaknesses of the study include the relatively small sample size and that depression scores were only available for 35 of the non-clinical mothers at 13 months.