Ensuring Safety and Providing Challenge: Mothers' and Fathers' Expectations and Choices About Infant Locomotion

SYNOPSIS

Objective. We examined how parents’ expectations about their infants’ crawling ability and crawling attempts in a locomotor task affect parenting choices about ensuring infants’ safety and providing appropriate challenges. Design. Mothers and fathers of 34 11-month-old infants adjusted a ramp to the steepest slopes they thought their infants could safely crawl down, would attempt to crawl down, and they would allow their infants to crawl down independently. Results. Most parents expected their infants to attempt slopes that were steeper than their ability and generally emphasized safety only by permitting infants to crawl down slopes that were within infants’ expected ability. More fathers than mothers displayed parenting choices emphasizing challenge by allowing their infants to attempt slopes beyond their ability. Conclusions. Both mothers and fathers expected infants to attempt impossibly steep slopes, but mothers were more likely to adopt safety-oriented parenting choices. Wide disagreements within dyads and inconsistencies in individual parents’ estimates might increase the chances of infants incurring injuries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant HD42697 to Karen E. Adolph and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and by NYU CAS Student Council Research Grant to Shaziela Ishak. Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, MN, April, 2001 and the International Society for Infant Studies, Chicago, Illinois, April, 2004. We thank the members of the NYU Infant Action Lab and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft, and all of the parents that participated.