Modeling and Reworking Childhood Experiences: Involved Fathers' Representations of Being Parented and of Parenting a Preschool Child

“Ghosts in the Nursery:” Infant sleep and sleep‐related cognitions of parents raised under communal sleeping arrangements

“…Having the opportunity to use this natural laboratory or experiment of nature (i.e., having been raised under CSA) allowed us to test empirically broader questions regarding the inßuence of ecological changes and the importance of parental early experiences in shaping their current parenting beliefs and practices. Therefore, we believe that the importance of our study lies mainly in: (a) demonstrating how a change in the ecology of family that came about by social and political processes has implications for parental cognition and behavior toward the child and for the sleep of their children (Bronfenbrenner, 2005); (b) providing an empirical support to the theory that parents' early childhood experiences play an important role in guiding their future parenting attitudes, beliefs, concerns, and behaviors (Fraiberg et al, 1975); (c) supporting the compensation model (Bretherton et al, 2006;Sharabany et al, 2006), suggesting that parents who are highly involved with caregiving may be compensating for the little involvement they received from their caregivers; (d) demonstrating how the links between the parents' past and their present parenting may manifest in infant sleep; and (e) supporting the growing, but still limited, literature about the role of parental cognitions in the development of infant sleep (Morell, 1999;Morell & Steele, 2003;Sadeh et al, 2007;Tikotzky & Sadeh, 2009).…”

“…This is an important question to explore from different theoretical and scientiÞc perspectives: (a) from the ecological perspective, which deals with the ways external environmental events inßuence the functioning of families (Bronfenbrenner, 1986); (b) from the psychodynamic perspective, asking in what way is the experience of parents as children repeated toward their own offsprings, and in what way is it modiÞed and reworked (Bretherton, Lambert, & Golby, 2006;Fraiberg et al, 1975); and (c) from the children's sleep research perspective, which is interested in the possible inßuences of parental behaviors and perceptions on the development of infant sleep (Sadeh & Anders, 1993 …”

“…This is likely to be true for the CSA parents because facing these nighttime situations may echo their own early childhood experiences associated with waking at night, away from their parents, and receiving very little attention. In other words, endorsing the distress interpretations, which emphasize the need to offer comfort to the infant at night, may serve as a compensatory mechanism (Bretherton et al, 2006;Rutter, 1989;Sharabany, Scher, & Gal-Krauz, 2006) for the experience related to the little involvement they received from their caregivers at night. An example of the painful feelings that some of these parents carry was given by a mother who responded to an open question about memories regarding communal sleeping: I was about 8 years old.…”

“…In other words, these parents who experienced "regulating" parenthood (with emphasis on limit-setting) with regard to sleep moved into the direction of being more facilitators (tuned and led by their child's perceived needs) (Raphael-Leff, 1983. Relying on the importance of "Angel" moments to implement change (Lieberman et al, 2005), the tendency of CSA parents to compensate or repair, as opposed to reenact or duplicate the past (Bretherton et al, 2006;Sharabany et al, 2006), may have become possible because CSA parents experienced deprivation of parental availability "only" during the nights, but not during the days. As children, these parents were not exposed to overwhelming trauma.…”

Maternal Role Confusion: Relations to Maternal Attachment and Mother–Child Interaction from Infancy to Adolescence

“…Finally, we did not explore role confusion among fathers. Nevertheless, fathers' role maintenance should be an important area for further study (Bretherton, Lambert, & Golby, 2006).…”