Differences in practices of body stimulation during the first 3 months: Ethnotheories and behaviors of Italian mothers and West African immigrant mothers
Introduction
Recently, there has been a growing interest in investigating parenting ethnotheories and parenting behaviors in different sociocultural contexts. Parenting ethnotheories can be conceptualized as ideas about adequate parental care and its developmental consequences, that are shared within cultural groups and reflect wider cultural models (Bornstein and Lamb, 1999, Super and Harkness, 1996). These beliefs inform specific parenting behaviors, which shape developmental pathways of infants and children (Keller & Kärtner, 2013). Body stimulation is one of the parenting practices that have been found in all cultural groups (Keller, 2007), although its forms, frequency and importance significantly vary across contexts. Especially, differences have been reported between West African rural and Western urban middle-class beliefs and practices.
In particular differences have been described with respect to “motor stimulation”, defined as the practice of caregivers to perform motor, vestibular and kinesthetic movements and exercises on the infant's body, who is partially or totally shifted in the space (Bril and Sabatier, 1986, Keller et al., 2009, Keller et al., 2002, Lamm et al., 2008, Super and Harkness, 1996). Examples of motor practices are rocking or swinging the infant, lifting him/her up and down, making him/her lie on its belly, sit, or stand (Lamm et al., 2008).
Motor exercises, together with the practice of caregivers to be in close body contact with the infant, have been documented as popular parenting practices in Sub-Saharan traditional rural communities, such as the Kipsigis and Kung San (Harkness & Super, 2001), the Gusii (LeVine & LeVine, 1963), the Wolof (Falladé, 1960), the Bambora (Bril & Sabatier, 1986), and the Nso (Keller et al., 2002, Keller et al., 2005). These communities are based on subsistence economy with low levels of formal education and cultural values and beliefs emphasize hierarchical relatedness, i.e., the cooperation between members of the families based on their roles (Keller & Kärtner, 2013). In such traditional rural communities, caregivers evaluate motor stimulation as a major dimension of parenting. Motor stimulation ethnotheories focus on the infant's health, safety and the promotion of early upright mobility, which fosters the child's early participation in the subsistence of the family (Keller et al., 2002, Lohaus et al., 2011).
In Western urban middle-class families, on the other hand, practices of motor stimulation are rarely emphasized. The high levels of formal education and economic prosperity support a cultural model of psychological autonomy, stressing the development of individual uniqueness and separatedness from others (Keller & Kärtner, 2013). Caregivers living in these contexts believe that the motor development needs time and depends on the individual infant's developmental pace (Keller, 2007, Keller et al., 2002). Indeed, it has been found that prevailing ethnotheories and behaviors of German middle class mothers are predominantly related to distal forms of parenting, i.e., face-to-face contact, object stimulation and protoconversations (Kärtner et al., 2007, Keller et al., 2009, Lamm et al., 2008).
Since motor stimulation is culturally not highly estimated by Western caregivers, practices concerning body stimulation manifest in the mode of touch behaviors, as it has been documented by studies of early mother–infant interaction (Ferber et al., 2008, Gusella et al., 1988, Stack, 2001, Stack, 2011). The term “touch” includes all tactile behaviors that a mother can perform on the infant's body in a distal position, e.g., sitting in an infant seat. These behaviors range from static touch (i.e., the simple body contact with hands) to active stimulation, and include stroking, patting/tapping, grabbing, tickling, shaking (Jean, Stack, & Fogel, 2009). In all these cases the infant is in a static bodily position. Evidence has documented that touch is highly present during face-to-face interactions, between 55% and 99% of the time (Stack and Muir, 1990, Stack and Muir, 1992). It can serve different functions, i.e., various forms of touch elicit different reactions from infants (Jean and Stack, 2009, Stack, 2011). For instance, tickling and kinesthetic types of touch maximize infants’ smiling, while stroking gets infants relaxed (Stack, LePage, Hains, & Muir, 1996). Infant touching seems to follow a timeline over the first year of life. Jean et al. (2009) have shown that mothers increased static touch from 3 to 5 months, but they used more stroking at 1 month than at 3 month and 5 months, suggesting an adaptation of their tactile behavior to the improved communicative abilities shown by their infants. Overall, mothers decrease the duration of stimulating touch and moving of infant's limbs during the second half year of life (Ferber et al., 2008, Field et al., 1987).
Only few studies have explored parental touching during mother–infant interaction comparing different cultural groups. Fogel, Toda, and Kawai (1988) have documented that Japanese mothers were more likely than EuroAmerican mothers to increase touch behaviors when infants look away, although there were no differences in the amount of touch between the two groups. Hsu and Lavelli (2005) have shown that Italian middle-class mothers were more likely to respond to their infants’ social actions with affective and social stimulations, such as by caressing, than mothers from the U.S.
Studies reported above mainly document that different parenting practices related to the infant's body stimulation are widespread in different autochthonous sociocultural contexts, i.e., in cultural communities who live in their context of origin. Specifically, motor stimulation is common among West African rural communities, while tactile stimulation is prevalent among Western urban middle-class families. However, little is known about how body stimulation is exerted in contexts of immigration, especially in families migrated from cultural environments where motor body stimulation is a common practice into Western cultural environments where tactile stimulation is prevalent. Migration is a condition where people come into contact with different cultural practices, so that parenting beliefs and behaviors of body stimulation can be studied with respect to multidimensional processes of cultural change and continuity.
Processes of cultural change and continuity in immigrant families (see Arends-Tóth and van de Vijver, 2006, Berry, 1997) are recently captured in the model of “multidimensional biculturalism” (Schwartz, Unger, Zamboanga, & Szapocznik, 2010). This model assumes that the acculturation process is characterized by six distinct and independent dimensions, i.e., practices, values, and identifications regarding the heritage culture as well as the receiving culture, which may change at different times, or may not change at all. In the light of recent studies, the multidimensional model suggests that in the complex process of acculturation aspects of the traditional culture and the receiving culture may be kept separate or combined and/or synthesized into a new and unique blend (Benet-Martínez and Haritatos, 2005, Chen et al., 2008).
The few studies that have investigated body stimulation addressed to infants in migrant families from non-Western to Western countries have mainly documented the stability of this practice, whereas other dimensions are more prone to change through the migration experience. Rabain-Jamin and Wornham, 1990, Rabain-Jamin and Wornham, 1993 have investigated representations and practices of child care in first-generation West African immigrant mothers in France, documenting that maternal ethnotheories and behaviors related to the infant's body stimulation by massages and motor exercises were more resistant to change than the feeding practices (Rabain-Jamin & Wornham, 1990); furthermore, they documented that infants who received daily massages began to walk significantly earlier than infants who did not receive massages (Rabain-Jamin & Wornham, 1993). The continuity of beliefs concerning practices of motor stimulation has been also found among Nigerian immigrant mothers in Italy, as it has been reported in a qualitative study by Moscardino, Nwobu, and Axia (2006). This study has shown that massages, motor exercises and motor games are believed to be crucial for promoting early walking, i.e., a prevalent socialization goal among West African rural communities.
On the whole, these findings may be explained by the fact that parenting beliefs that are particularly salient in the original culture, such as those concerning motor stimulation, are resistant to change (LeVine, 1988). In line with this consideration, immigrant mothers have shown that motor stimulation behaviors, that are strongly linked to the culture of origin, are resistant to mutate.
Some studies with autochthonous groups have also documented that in West African Nso rural community these motor behaviors (Demuth, 2008, Demuth et al., 2012, Keller et al., 2008), such as tossing or shaking the infant, are often matched with mother's rhythmic vocalizing (Demuth et al., 2012, Keller et al., 2008), and protosongs (Demuth, 2008). Moreover, Nso mothers may also show tactile behaviors, such as flicking the infant's lips or cheeks, which are displayed in synchrony with rhythmic vocal expressions (Demuth, 2012). Evidence concerning rhythmic tactile behaviors has been also documented in Western caregivers, who, during the interaction with their infants, display rhythmic touching (Tronick, 1995), such as a playful tactile stimulation often accompanied by maternal vocalizations involving similar rhythmic characteristics (Koester, Papoušek, & Papoušek, 1989). The question arises how the rhythmic dimension of motor/tactile behaviors appears in contexts of immigration. Thus quadripartite types of body stimulation behaviors can be analyzed: motor, rhythmic motor, tactile and rhythmic tactile.
The main objective of the present study is to investigate cultural differences and elements of continuity and change in a multidimensional process of acculturation concerning both ethnotheories and behaviors of body stimulation across the first trimester of infant's life by comparing two different cultural groups: Italian urban middle-class autochthonous mothers and first-generation West African immigrant mothers in Italy.
Particularly, the present study was guided by the following specific aims:
1. Analyzing and comparing behaviors of body stimulation (tactile, motor, rhythmic tactile and rhythmic motor) shown by Italian middle-class autochthonous mothers and first-generation West African immigrant mothers during spontaneous interaction with their infants during the first three months of life.
On the basis of the literature discussed above, we expected the immigrant mothers to show behaviors of motor, rhythmic motor, and rhythmic tactile stimulation more than behaviors of tactile stimulation, and more than Italian mothers. On the contrary, we expected the Italian mothers to show tactile stimulation more than other kinds of body stimulation, and more than the West African immigrant mothers. Furthermore, considering that West African caregivers practice very frequently motor stimulation of their infants (Keller et al., 2009, Rabain-Jamin and Wornham, 1990), while Western caregivers tend to decrease tactile stimulation from the 1st to the 3rd month of the infant's life (Jean et al., 2009), we expected the West African immigrant mothers to maintain similar overall duration of infant's body stimulation during the first trimester after birth, while the Italian mothers are expected to decrease the overall duration of body stimulation with the increase of the infant's age.
2. Analyzing and comparing ethnotheories concerning the infant's body stimulation of Italian and West African immigrant mothers when infants were 12 weeks old.
On the basis of the literature discussed above, we expected the West African immigrant mothers to talk more about body stimulation than Italian mothers. We also expected the West African immigrant mothers to talk more about body stimulation in terms of motor behaviors than body stimulation in terms of tactile behaviors. Vice versa, we expected the Italian mothers to talk more about body stimulation in terms of tactile behaviors than body stimulation in terms of motor behaviors, and to talk more about tactile stimulation than West African immigrant mothers.
3. Contributing to understanding the cultural meaning of maternal ethnotheories by using thematic analysis of maternal discourses when infants were 12 weeks old.
In particular, we first explored whether salient themes concerning the practice of body stimulation emerged from both groups of mothers. Second, we examined differences and similarities between the two groups with respect to possible themes, in order to learn more concerning cultural meanings of maternal ethnotheories in a context of immigration.
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty Italian mother–infant dyads and 20 West African immigrant mothers and their infants born in Italy participated in this study. Both groups of mother–infant dyads lived in the provinces of Mantua and Verona, in North East Italy. West African mothers came from rural (30%) and urban (70%) areas of Nigeria (55%), Ghana (30%), and the English-speaking part of Cameroon (15%). Italian mothers were significantly older (M = 33.20 years, SD = 4.20) than West African immigrant mothers (M = 28.75 years, SD =
Results
Data analysis and results are grouped according to the three specific aims addressed in this study.
First, in order to check if behavioral data, as well as data obtained from interviews, were normally distributed, we applied the Shapiro–Wilk test. Not all p-values were greater than the chosen alpha level (0.05). Consequently, we normalized the data distribution by using the Rankit's formula. Analyses were performed with normalized data.
Discussion
In the present study we investigated cultural differences in parenting ethnotheories and behaviors concerning infant's body stimulation during the first three months of life in first-generation West African immigrant mothers and Italian middle-class autochthonous mothers. We were also interested in exploring elements of continuity and change related to the process of migration. To this aim, we used a mixed-method approach, with a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Overall, our
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