The Tenderness Process in Mother-Infant Couples: The Relationship of Maternal Perception and Anxiety to Infant Satiety and Anxiety

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to identify what impact, if any, maternal perception and anxiety had on an infant at the time of feeding. The framework for testing the relationship was Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal theory of psychiatry, as it related specifically to mother-infant tenderness. For the study, tenderness was restricted to a reciprocal process in which the infant had a physiochemical need for milk and the mother a complimentary need to satisfy the infant. Of importance to Sullivan was the fact that an infant had to depend on the intervention of others for survival and therefore manifested a need for milk recurrently. Thus, to ensure satisfaction of the physiochemical need, the infant and mother had to cooperate with one another. Maternal anxiety, however, according to Sullivan's premise, could disrupt the mother-infant cooperation by inhibiting maternal perception of infant needs, as well as by inducing anxiety in the infant. The results with such a premise was an infant who could not direct bodily energy necessary for meeting life-sustaining needs. Sixty-five postpartum mother-infant couples participated in the study. In the first phase, mothers responded to a questionnaire on maternal perception of infant behavior. In the second phase, a feeding session acted as the stimulus to which the mothers responded to three questionnaires relating to state and trait anxiety; heel pricks for serum glucose and serum cortisol were obtained from the infants prior to and after feeding. Results indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between maternal perception scores and both maternal anxiety scores and infant anxiety levels. However, no significant relationships were found either between maternal anxiety scores and infant satiety levels or between maternal perception scores and infant anxiety levels. Finally, maternal perception and anxiety scores were significant predictors of infant satiety and anxiety levels.