The relationship between parental behavior and infant regulation: A systematic review

Abstract

The formation of early regulatory behavior during the first years is an important developmental task and predictive for self-regulatory abilities in later life. Although parental behavior is thought to be highly influential in this developmental trajectory, associations between infant regulatory behavior and parental behavior have been diverse. The current paper systematically reviews the empirical research on the relationship between behavioral indicators of infant regulation–temperamental characteristics, sleeping, crying, feeding–and parental behavior during the first two years of life. After screening 4254 articles obtained from Web of Science and PsycINFO, 107 studies were included in the systematic review. The studies fell short of integrating negative parental behavior, paternal variables and further demographic information into the research and did not reveal consistent findings. However, the studies indicated a positive relationship between parental behavior and infant regulation with differences according to age and measurement method. It appears that the use of semi-structured methods to measure infant regulation is most appropriate during the first year of life, whereas the use of structured measures is more advisable during the second year of life. In contrast, parental reports measuring infant regulation failed to show significant findings with parenting behavior at any given time. The association was more powerful when infant regulation was predicted by parental behavior than vice versa. However, the number of studies regarding the latter direction was limited. This review, thus, underlines the importance of using different measurement methods according to age, and discusses the ways to improve future research.