Mothers only need to get it right 50% of the time for their babies to become attached 

‘You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough’: Mothers only need to get it right 50% of the time for their babies to become attached

  • Researchers looked at how mothers responded to their crying infants
  • Responding quickly was not a good predictor of secure attachment, the bond that allows babies to feel safe and comforted
  • But secure base provision, the degree to which mothers responded – such as soothing the infant until he or she stopped crying – was a good predictor
  • Mothers only need to respond around 50 percent of the time for babies to form the attachment 

Parents only need to ‘get it right’ 50 percent of the time for their babies to become attached, a new study claims.

Past research has suggested that mothers need to respond to their crying infants as soon as possible to make them form what is known a ‘secure attachment’.

But researchers say it’s not how quickly the mother responds to her baby that matters, but rather the degree to which she responds, meaning that she soothes the baby chest-to-chest until he or she is calm.

Furthermore, holding the crying baby until fully soothed, even just half the time, was ‘good enough’. 

The team, led by Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, says the findings are beneficial for parents of low socioeconomic status who often struggle to balance between providing for their family and raising a child.

A new study from Lehigh University has found that it is not how quickly a mother responds to her infant but the degree to which she does that helps the baby form a ‘secure attachment’ (file image)

Secure infant attachment is the bond that allows babies to feel safe and comforted with their primary caregiver.

Because this is a baby’s first bond, it is critical to his or her future emotional and social development.  

Previous research has suggested that sensitivity – when a parent senses what the infant needs and responds promptly – was the best predictor of attachment. 

However, recent studies have shown that sensitivity was a poor predictor, especially when it came to families of low socioeconomic status.

So, for the new study, researchers decided to analyze whether secure base provision was more accurate at predicting infant attachment. 

This is behavior that focuses less on how promptly a parent responses and more on the degree to which mom or dad soothes a crying baby.   

For the study, published in the journal Child Development, the team looked at more than 80 mother-and-baby pairs.

The babies were 4.5 months old when first observed and followed up with at 12 months old, and all were of low socioeconomic status backgrounds. 

Researchers studied the mothers’ responses to their infants both when they cried and didn’t cry during videotaped sessions in the home. 

They found that secure base provision was eight times more effective at predicting secure infant attachment than sensitivity.

This means that how well the mother responded to their infant was better at making the infant feel safe than how quickly she responded.

‘What we found was that what really matters is not really so much that moment-to-moment matching between what the baby’s cue is and how the parent responds,’ said lead author Dr Susan Woodhouse, an associate professor at Lehigh University.

‘What really matters is in the end, does the parent get the job done – both when a baby needs to connect, and when a baby needs to explore?’ 

She said the findings show caregiving behavior can shift from urging mothers to respond as quickly as possible to mothers soothing their infant in a chest-to-chest position until he or she stops crying. 

‘You don’t have to do it 100 percent – you have to get it right about half of the time, and babies are very forgiving and it’s never too late,’ said Dr Woodhouse. 

‘Keep trying. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough.’  

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