ABSTRACT
Infancy is an easily definable stage of life, based on biological and mental data as well as on social convention. Infants do not speak, whereas youngsters and adults do; infants creep and crawl, whereas youngsters and adults walk and run. From the perspective of formal studies of parenting, infancy attracts attention in part because a provocative debate rages around the significance of events occurring in infancy for later development. Proponents from one viewpoint contend that the infancy period is not particularly influential because the experiences and the habits of infants have little (if any) long-term significance on the balance of the life course. Mothers normally play the principal part in infant childrearing, even if historically fathers’ social and legal claims and responsibilities on children were pre-eminent. Cross-cultural surveys attest to the primacy of biological mothers’ caregiving and theorists, researchers, and clinicians all have largely focused on mothering in recognition of this fact.
