Cradling Success

Maternal stress and depression and the lateralisation of infant cradling.

BACKGROUND Studies show that 65-85% of mothers cradle their infants to the left side of their body, but that this bias changes with maternal mood and stress. The present study examines the hypothesis that maternal stress and depression status will influence the cradling bias differentially. METHOD As part of a larger study on mother-infant interaction, mothers (N = 79) were asked to pick up a...

The effect of cradling practices upon the onset of walking in Hopi children. 1940.

Maternal cradling and infant nipple preferences in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

This study investigated lateral biases in nipple preferences, maternal cradling, carrying, and retrieval in 41 rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) mother-infant dyads living in two captive social groups. Observations were made during the first 6 weeks of infant life using a combination of scan sampling and ad-libitum sampling techniques. Infants exhibited a significant left-nipple preference in the...

Cradling side preference is associated with lateralized processing of baby facial expressions in females.

Women's cradling side preference has been related to contralateral hemispheric specialization of processing emotional signals; but not of processing baby's facial expression. Therefore, 46 nulliparous female volunteers were characterized as left or non-left holders (HG) during a doll holding task. During a signal detection task they were then asked to detect the emotional baby faces in a series...

Cold pressor stress reduces left cradling preference in nulliparous human females.

The left cradling preference refers to the finding that women hold their infants more frequently on the left side of their own bodies. Several observational studies showed reduced left cradling during stressful circumstances, such as mother-infant separation, or domestic violence. However, until now no experimental study was conducted to investigate the immediate impact of stress on cradling be...