Observational studyJournal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP2020
Beyond Early Adversity: The Role of Parenting in Infant Physical Health.
Observational study in Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- An Evaluation of Food and Nutrient Intake among Pregnant Women in The Netherlands: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2023Pooled it
- Connection after correction: Parent-child relationships following early cardiac surgery.Infant mental health journal · 2026Article
- Bidirectional relations between the maternal and infant gut microbiome and behavior.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Health and Psychological Predictors of Antibiotic Use in Infancy and Fathers' Role.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- A healthy start: examining the contribution of caregiving quality to child physical health from birth to 14 years.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Love on the developing brain: Maternal sensitivity and infants' neural responses to emotion in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Maternal recognition of positive emotion predicts sensitive parenting in infancy.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2023Article
- Antibiotic Consumption, Illness, and Maternal Sensitivity in Infants with a Disorganized Attachment.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The Association between Prematurity, Antibiotic Consumption, and Mother-Infant Attachment in the First Year of Life.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Maternal perinatal hypertensive disorders and parenting in infancy.Infant behavior & development · 2022Article
- Understanding links between maternal perinatal posttraumatic stress symptoms and infant socioemotional and physical health.Infant mental health journal · 2022Article
- Examining the Role of Socioeconomic Status and Maternal Sensitivity in Predicting Functional Brain Network Connectivity in 5-Month-Old Infants.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Parenting and Health: The Major Challenge of Complex Relations.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveAlthough ample evidence indicates that child health is compromised by early adversity (e.g., abuse and poverty), less is known about the contribution of parenting in low-stress contexts to child health, especially in infancy. This longitudinal study extends previous research on early adversity to ask the question: Does quality of parental care predict infant health in a low-risk community sample?
methodParticipants were 187 healthy mothers and their full-term infants (86 girls) from the Netherlands, followed from birth to age 1. Home observations of mothers' behavior were conducted during a naturalistic task (bathing session) when infants were 5 weeks old. Trained researchers interviewed mothers about the infants' health and prescribed antibiotic use every month for 12 months. Infant health problems were categorized into 4 domains according to the International Classification of Primary Care to capture a range of outcomes: respiratory, digestive, skin, and general illnesses and symptoms.
resultsControlling for health-related covariates (e.g., maternal smoking and breastfeeding), maternal sensitivity predicted reduced rates of infant respiratory symptoms and skin conditions and marginally lower prescribed antibiotic use over the first year. Maternal behavior was unrelated to infant digestive and general illnesses.
conclusionEven in the absence of adversity, quality of maternal care may have implications for the development of physical health, beginning as early as the first year of life. That such findings emerge in a low-risk sample helps rule out potential confounders and underscores the importance of parenting for physical and psychological health outcomes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.