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Discussion
Despite the importance of daily soothing to infant regulatory processes and the development of the parent-infant relationship, the majority of soothing studies have been conducted with mothers after single-event stressors such as immunizations (Jahromi and Stifter, 2007, Lewis and Ramsay, 1999) and therefore do not inform an understanding of daily soothing behaviors by mothers or fathers or the ways in which the use of various techniques may manifest differently as the infant matures. The current study is the first to report the longitudinal expression of daily soothing techniques in both parents across early postpartum infant development. The sample consisted of experienced parents in the Midwestern United States who had prior parenting experience with their first child. These parents may experience increased family stress as they strive to meet the needs of their first child while caring for an infant whose crying will typically increase over the first couple of postnatal months (Barr, 1990). During this period the child-care needs in the family double, providing a contextual press for both parents to engage in the daily care of their children.
Frequency of use of Developmental Course of Individual Soothing Techniques
Research has consistently demonstrated that mothers engage in child care more frequently than do fathers, even when both parents are employed (Bianchi, 2011). Further, mothers are more likely to take postpartum leave and care for the infant full time. Infant crying, however, tends to peak during the evening (Barr, 1990), when fathers are likely to be home. Thus, the study of infant soothing offers a means of gaining insight into early parenting engagement on the part of both parents.
In the parenting of older children, fathers interact in more physically active ways compared with mothers (Paquette, 2004). We therefore predicted that fathers would prefer active soothing strategies. However, findings demonstrated that the two most frequent behaviors for both parents were cuddling/rocking (low activity) and carrying in arms (high activity; Table 2). Fathers did not engage more frequently in active strategies. Instead, the broader finding was that most soothing strategies were used less by fathers than by mothers and that fathers had fewer soothing strategies within their repertoires. As with any potentially stressful event, diversity of approaches and flexibility in use are critical to effective responding. Different soothing techniques may be more or less effective for individual infants and during different developmental periods. Thus, it is important that parents have a range of soothing techniques in their repertoire to enable them to flexibly adapt to the individual and changing needs of their infant.
Parental frustration can arise, for example, when a soothing technique that has been effective previously with an infant becomes ineffective. If parents have a wider repertoire of strategies available and if they can flexibly adapt their strategies as the infant matures, they may be less upset and frustrated in response to infant crying. The current study revealed important differences in the developmental course of several soothing techniques that informs our understanding of the ways in which mothers and fathers may approach soothing differently depending on the age of the baby. Cuddling/rocking, for example, decreased more sharply from 4 to 8 months for fathers than for mothers. Providing extra feedings or drinks and taking the infant into their own bed, in contrast, increased for fathers from 4 to 8 months and decreased for mothers. Although future research is necessary to replicate these findings, it may be that parents undergo an important shift between 4 to 8 months of infant age, when mothers may be weaning the baby, leaving fathers with increased opportunities to use feeding and co-sleeping as soothing strategies. As described below with regard to extra feedings and consistent with public health movements that discourage co-sleeping, however, this trend may not be ideal, and this developmental shift may provide an opportune time for pediatric health care providers to educate both parents about other types of soothing techniques and to highlight the importance of the father's participation in soothing for the development of the father-infant relationship.
Soothing, Parenting Self-efficacy, and Reactions to Infant Crying
Prior work conducted with mothers has demonstrated that multiparas report higher levels of parenting self-efficacy when compared with primiparas (Bryanton, Gagnon, Hatem, & Johnston, 2008). Less is known, however, about fathers. In this study, approximately one third of couples shared the responsibility of soothing their infant, and fathers in these couples reported higher levels of parenting self-efficacy at 4 and 8 months after the birth of the child. Mothers felt equally efficacious whether or not they shared infant soothing with the father. These results suggest that shared parenting confers benefits for both the mother-infant and the father-infant relationships; by 8 months of infant age, mothers in sharing couples reported feeling less upset by their infant's crying, and fathers felt more confident and competent in their abilities to soothe and care for the infant. Thus, maternal coping capacities in response to infant crying may be improved when fathers are more involved. When parents feel inefficacious in their soothing attempts, they frequently seek advice from health care professionals (Barr, 1998), offering providers a unique opportunity to play a central role in supporting early parent-infant relationships (Shah, Muzik, & Rosenblum, 2011). Clinicians who successfully encourage fathers to participate in soothing and support fathers in developing a broad repertoire of soothing strategies may, in one stroke, improve two foundational early relationships in the life of that infant.
Research investigating other health outcomes that are associated with soothing are also germane to the current work. Preliminary research has identified a link between the use of food as a means of soothing and the risk of childhood obesity (Hughes et al., 2008, Stifter et al., 2011). Thus, reducing reliance on food as a means of soothing may have the additional effect of reducing childhood obesity risk. Recent studies have suggested that parents of infants and toddlers who felt less efficacious in parenting used food as a soothing strategy more frequently, leading to increased child weight gain (Stifter et al., 2011). Similarly, parents of preschool children who were characterized as "indulgent" in their feeding styles had children with higher body mass indices (Hughes et al., 2008). In the current study, fathers (and not mothers) increased the use of providing extra feedings to soothe their upset infant over the course of early development. This increase may be due, in part, to maternal weaning from breastfeeding, which allows fathers to take a more active role in infant feeding. The transition during which breastfeeding is phased out provides an ideal time for pediatric health care providers to offer guidance about a wide range of soothing strategies to preempt a reliance on feeding as a dominant strategy. In conjunction with prior work on child obesity, the current study suggests that health care intervention to improve fathers' soothing efficacy may be an important strategy for childhood obesity prevention.
Supporting parents, in particular fathers, with soothing is also of clinical importance because persistent infant crying can be a risk factor for abusive head trauma (Barr, 2012). This risk may increase when parents feel helpless to resolve the crying and their sense of competence is eroded. Conversely, a greater sense of parenting self-efficacy on the part of fathers is associated with reduced risk for paternal perpetration of child maltreatment (Dubowitz et al., 2000). Health care providers can play an important role in prevention by supporting fathers' acquisition of a range of infant soothing techniques.
Limitations
The current study has some notable limitations. The sample is primarily well educated and European-American and, thus, the results cannot be generalized to other racial groups and less-educated populations. The soothing data reported here were parent-reported. Although more ecologically valid than a brief observation of soothing behaviors at one moment in time, these data are also subject to reporter bias. However, parents were asked about a wide range of potential soothing behaviors, the vast majority of which could be considered "positive," thereby reducing the social desirability press for the endorsement of any one behavior. We also attempted to minimize reporter bias by interviewing each parent in the presence of the other so that responses were jointly endorsed by both parents. In addition, in contrast to measures of infant crying (Barr, Paterson, MacMartin, Lehtonen, & Young, 2005), "objective" measures of soothing behavior have not been developed. The current study offers the first assessment of parental use of soothing strategies across early infant development in both mothers and fathers. Future research should extend these findings by developing prospective methods of assessment.
This study did not include measurements of infant temperament or reactivity. These factors may have influenced the duration and frequency with which each soothing technique was used. Although there were very few infants in our study who met criteria for Wessel's colic (Zeskind & Barr, 1997), there were significant inter-individual differences in crying frequency and duration that were likely influenced by temperamental characteristics. The focus of this study, however, was to investigate which techniques were used by mothers and fathers on a daily basis. Relations of soothing behaviors with individual infant crying levels was beyond the scope of this study.
The current study also could not determine whether the soothing behaviors used were successful in calming the infant. However, individual infants respond uniquely to specific soothing techniques; what works well to comfort one may not work well for others. Thus, although we are not able to rank strategies by overall level of success, the larger point is that the development of a broad repertoire of soothing techniques is likely to lead to higher levels of parental success in soothing, in general.
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