The effect on mothers who had controlled crying as a baby

[Shanti]

I am more inclined to think the way that a mother reacts to her crying baby, depends on how well she knows her baby ie their bond with each other and perhaps the Mothers' personality also..... ?? Just a thought.

[Heaven]

The cry of a baby evokes feelings in most mothers to make them want to respond I would think.

[Winter]

I am more inclined to think the way that a mother reacts to her crying baby, depends on how well she knows her baby ie their bond with each other and perhaps the Mothers' personality also..... ?? Just a thought.

:yeahthat: I agree with Shanti. I think you can definitely pick how someone will react to their crying babies based on their personalities - well from Mothers Group experience I think so.

The only time I ever get anxious is when DD is crying & I can't pick her up ie driving in the car. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure through the roof, anxiety skyrockets. Its the only time I ever want to scream at DH & blame him that we're not already home!! If she's crying & I can hold her, then I find that the crying doesn't worry me.

[Smoke Jaguar]

Actually, a baby cries to 'communicate' when it's got no other forms of communication left - body language signals have been missed and vocalisation is the last form left to them. Relying on crying is not the ideal way to respond to a child's needs. That's a good way to teach children to scream for attention later in life!
My mum responded to me instinctually (one of the few things about parenting that Westernisation couldn't extinguish from her!) and I do the same with my kids. Turns out a lot of the things my grandmother did with my mum that she never used I am doing now - what would now be called 'continuum' parenting, but it's just stuff my abuelita did for all her 9 kids.
Anyhoo, I trust my babies' signals and when they're crying I know in myself that I missed a couple of steps and I get a bit anxious because I'm beating myself up about missing the earlier communications (for being 'too busy' or just blind to them).
Don't know where you'd find the research on that, but I'd be interested in finding out, myself!
My own hypothesis would be that mothers who were controlled parented themselves are more likely to feel anxious about baby crying because instinctually they want to respond, but their conditioning is that you ignore it - a cognitive dissonance occurs causing anxiety. Whereas a mother who was responded to on a needs basis is likely to replicate that with her own children, as modelled by her mother, unless something else occurred in the sensitive period or an abuse later in life interrupted the parenting 'blueprint'.
My mother responded to my needs but her parenting in my early childhood (beyond babyhood) was angry and punitive - reflecting her treatment at the hands of her father. Interesting that her trust in her baby-parenting remained, but how to raise a child suffered because of the abuse.
So many variables!!

[~Raven~]

there could be some merit in it.

I tried to CC my eldest and couldn't and haven't CC's my others. I was CC'd as a baby

[Curly]

Who knows? I know I was left to CIO as a baby when Mum was told "she doesn't need a feed anymore during the night" when I was about 8 weeks old. When DS was a baby and he cried I felt so anxious I actually felt physically sick.

[Shanti]

Curly - that's the WORST advice given to new Mum's isn't it?? I was also told "by 8wks your baby should not need a feed and should be sleeping 8hrs at a time" and it's just so unrealistic and WRONG to tell mothers that.....

My little girl is 10.5mths old and still not sleeping all night and wakes regularly throughout the night (and that's normal) but she always gets cuddled or fed back to sleep, never to be left to cry alone because we think it's wrong and also we can't fall back asleep listening to her cry! We co-sleep now anyway! How anyone can... is beyond me.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I dunno, Mayaness - DS just didn't "do" body language. Trust me, I'd read up on it, seen other babies do it, watched him. He went straight for talking. And I mean talking; he didn't cry, he vocalised. 1 day old and he was making vowel sounds. He has ALWAYS used his voice to ask for things.

His initial response today isn't to cry. It's to walk up to me and say "elephant biscuit now please" or "I need a nappy change Mammy". No non-verbal cues at all.

I never got upset with DS's noises (because he rarely got to the distress crying stage) - they were him telling me what he wanted. He didn't do non-verbal. Not all babies do: even some of the baby-centred parenting books acknowledge that one now!

[Nelle]

I think I remember hearing about a study where adults were exposed to the sound of a crying baby and results showed that it raised their heart rate or blood pressure or something? I think the take home message was that we're hard wired to feel like we need to 'do' something about a crying baby.