Intervening Early: Socioemotional Interventions Targeting the Parent–Infant Relationship

Abstract

Responsive, nurturing parenting helps infants and young children develop secure, organized attachments as well as adequate self-regulatory capabilities. However, when parents experience challenges, they often have difficulty providing responsive, nurturing care. In this article, we provide an overview of interventions that have been developed to enhance parental responsiveness, and we discuss in detail three interventions that have particularly strong evidence of effectiveness. For each intervention, we describe the intervention's purported mechanism and the evidence supporting its engagement as well as proximal and distal intervention outcomes. The three interventions described vary in duration from 6 to 32 sessions on average and are variously implemented in the home or office. Nonetheless, all three interventions have strong evidence of effectiveness in engaging the intervention mechanism of parental responsiveness and show impressive effects on children's attachment and self-regulatory capabilities. We also discuss challenges in disseminating interventions in the community. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 5 is December 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.