Touch is a primary form of communication for mother-infant dyads in the infant's first year of life. Mothers use touch to soothe their infants, communicate safety, and teach self-regulatory skills. Infants, in turn, increasingly use touch to communicate their internal states and get their needs for care and regulation met. Stressors such as intimate partner violence (IPV) and maternal depression experienced during pregnancy and the first year postpartum may interfere with mother-infant touch by disrupting the communicative function of touch and affecting maternal representations, which guide mothering behavior postpartum. It was hypothesized that exposure to IPV or depression during pregnancy or postpartum would be associated with fewer positive and more negative maternal and infant touch behaviors, and that the relationship between these risk factors and maternal touch would be mediated by maternal representations. Mother-infant touch behaviors were coded in 173 mother-infant dyads while they engaged in a free play. One half of the mothers had been exposed to IPV during pregnancy and one third experienced clinically significant levels of pregnancy depression. The findings indicated that pregnancy IPV predicted increased use of positive touch behaviors by mothers with infant sons, whereas pregnancy and postpartum IPV predicted more negative touch behavior by infants, primarily in males. Pregnancy and postpartum depression were associated with more intrusive touch by mothers with male and female infants, and more negative touch behavior in male infants. Maternal representations did not mediate the relationship between IPV/depression and maternal touch. The results suggest that mothers may attempt to compensate for one type of risk-IPV-specifically with their male infants. In addition, male infant touch may be more susceptible to alterations in the context of risk than female infant touch.
Read
