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Abstract
Unsatisfying mother–infant interaction has long-term consequences for the child, affecting both child health and development. It would therefore seem reasonable to try to detect possible problems in the parent–infant interaction in early infancy, in order to intervene to try to ensure a better outcome for the child. In this study, a group of primary health care nurses were trained to support mothers with newborn babies and to intervene early should problems be detected in the parenting. These mothers formed the Intervention group, and were contrasted with a Comparison group of mothers; the latter were seen by primary health care nurses who had had no additional training and worked with the mothers as they would ordinarily. At the initial assessment the Intervention and Comparison groups for all countries were relatively well matched in their interaction, showing very few differences. At two years the whole intervention had significant positive effects, as predicted, on mother–child interaction. The clearest effects were seen in the Greek sample, where the Intervention mothers provided more variety for the child, used less punishment, had a better relationship with the child and were more involved and more facilitative than the Comparison mothers. In the UK Intervention mothers were more responsive towards their children, provided more appropriate play material, had a better relationship with the children, were more involved and used less control than the Comparison mothers. Although there was no evidence of beneficial outcomes in interactive variables in the other countries, Finland showed positive change on the HOME Inventory as a result of the intervention. This contributes to the overall findings which, taken together, suggest that the intervention had a positive effect on the mothers' ability to maintain positive interaction with their children.