DETERMINING FACTORS IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MOTHER-CHILD BONDING AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS DURING DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD (Atena Editora)

Abstract

There are numerous factors responsible for establishing the mother-child binomial, among which some directly influence the development of the baby and child in their first years of life. Despite this, there are few accessible experimental studies that correlate attachment to the mother with the infant's motor and psychological difficulties. New discoveries would be important to take care of the mother-child bond from the hospital environment, thus preventing delays in child development. The objective of the study is to characterize the main challenges that influence the formation of the maternal bond and how these interfere in the individual's development during early childhood under a psycho-pediatric bias. To this end, an integrative literature review was carried out in order to compile the most recent studies on this topic and organize them in a didactic way for further consultation. Through, mainly, the analysis of qualitative research with mothers of babies up to 2 years old. The articles showed that the physical aspects remained intrinsic to the emotional ones, since most newborns who had a fragile bond with their mother showed delay in physical development. The surveys showed that most babies interacted differently with the maternal stimulus, and the observed mothers showed convergent behavior such as looking at, touching and holding the baby when they thought it was necessary. In addition, prolonged skin-to-skin physical contact has demonstrated positive effects for infants, including sleep organization, behavioral response, socio-emotional and speech development. Still, observing the mothers, traces of anxiety and insecurity were found in the postpartum period, and they considered having a support group in this period essential for maintaining mental health. As measures to take care of the dyad, the new maternity units were designed to favor the sharing of the room between the mother and the baby, and use scales or scores in clinical medicine such as PBQ and new techniques that are being tested such as RIT (Integration Task Recorded) that serve as instruments for health professionals to investigate the quality of mother-child interactions still within the maternity ward and advise follow-up with a child psychologist or pediatrician, preventing future impacts on the child's development. Finally, the studies gathered presented natural childbirth, breastfeeding, physical contact as positive influencing factors of the mother-child bond. As negative factors, postpartum depression, sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy represent challenges for the establishment of this affective bond.