Associations Between Maternal-Foetal Attachment and Infant Developmental Outcomes: A Systematic Review
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Associations Between Maternal-Foetal Attachment and Infant Developmental Outcomes: A Systematic Review Grace Branjerdporn1
•
Pamela Meredith1 • Jenny Strong1 • Jenniffer Garcia1
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Objectives Infant developmental outcomes may be influenced by a range of prenatal maternal characteristics. While there is some evidence to suggest that maternalfoetal attachment may be associated with infant developmental outcomes, there is a need to systematically review this evidence to guide future research and clinical practice. Methods Five electronic databases were systematically scanned. Key journals and reference lists were hand-searched. Papers were included if: (1) pregnant women were assessed for maternal-foetal attachment; (2) the infants were later assessed, under 2 years old, for any developmental outcome (e.g., social-emotional, cognition, motor, language, adaptive behaviour); and (3) they were published in English. Two independent reviewers used the STROBE checklist to appraise the quality of each paper. Results Of the 968 papers identified, eight were included in the review, and four of these were of low quality (\60 %) based on the STROBE. The developmental domains that were examined included: infant temperament (n = 5), adaptive behaviour (e.g., colic, sleep) (n = 2), and milestone attainment (n = 1). There is some evidence to suggest that lower maternal-foetal attachment is related to suboptimal developmental outcomes. However, these results should be interpreted with caution due to the limited and low quality studies available. Conclusions Although maternal-foetal attachment may be associated with infant
developmental outcomes, future research is required which: (1) considers a range of developmental outcomes, (2) has increased scientific rigour, (3) assesses mother-infant dyads at different prenatal and postnatal time points, and (4) examines different target populations.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10995-016-2138-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Introduction
& Grace Branjerdporn [email protected] 1
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Keywords Maternal-foetal attachment Infant Early childhood Development Review
Significance What is already known on this subject? Infant developmental outcomes may be influenced by prenatal maternal characteristics such as maternal-foetal attachment, which is currently understudied. While there is some evidence that maternal-foetal attachment may be associated with infant developmental outcomes, there is a need to systematically review this evidence to guide future research and clinical practice. What this study adds? To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically review the evidence for the association between maternal-foetal attachment and developmental outcomes for infants under 2 years old. The
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