Prenatal Dynamics

This book examines family interactions and relationships during the transition to parenthood. It offers a unique integration of different lines of research on prenatal family dynamics contributed by leading family researchers in North America and Europe who use observational approaches to study emergent family processes. The book explores prenatal dynamics in diverse families, including adolescent couples, same-sex couples, couples experiencing infertility, and couples expecting their second child. The introduction, anchored in family systems and structural theories, provides an overview of challenges couples commonly experience during the transition to parenthood and details prenatal family processes that predict postpartum adjustment in families. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters by emphasizing unparalleled windows into prenatal family dynamics provided by direct observation. Initial chapters focus on predictors of prenatal interactions and partners’ representations of parenthood. Subsequent chapters describe original research on prebirth couple interactions and the coparenting relationship emerging during pregnancy. The volume includes several studies that rely on innovative research designs using observations of simulated couple encounters with their newborn, represented by a life-sized infant doll. The book concludes with a review of recent prenatal intervention programs designed to improve interpersonal and coparenting relationships of married and unmarried couples. The volume offers recommendations for future research on prenatal family dynamics, including suggestions for methodological advances, exploration of prenatal risk factors, expansion of conceptual models to incorporate culturally-meaningful coparents besides mothers and fathers, and further focus on prenatal intervention programs. This book is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health/early child development, family studies, pediatrics, developmental psychology, public health, social work, and early childhood education.

This book examines family interactions and relationships during the transition to parenthood. It offers a unique integration of different lines of research on prenatal family dynamics contributed by leading family researchers in North America and Europe who use observational approaches to study emergent family processes. The book explores prenatal dynamics in diverse families, including adolescent couples, same-sex couples, couples experiencing infertility, and couples expecting their second child. The introduction, anchored in family systems and structural theories, provides an overview of challenges couples commonly experience during the transition to parenthood and details prenatal family processes that predict postpartum adjustment in families. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters by emphasizing unparalleled windows into prenatal family dynamics provided by direct observation. Initial chapters focus on predictors of prenatal interactions and partners' representations of parenthood. Subsequent chapters describe original research on prebirth couple interactions and the coparenting relationship emerging during pregnancy. The volume includes several studies that rely on innovative research designs using observations of simulated couple encounters with their newborn, represented by a life-sized infant doll. The book concludes with a review of recent prenatal intervention programs designed to improve interpersonal and coparenting relationships of married and unmarried couples. The volume offers recommendations for future research on prenatal family dynamics, including suggestions for methodological advances, exploration of prenatal risk factors, expansion of conceptual models to incorporate culturally-meaningful coparents besides mothers and fathers, and further focus on prenatal intervention programs. This book is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health/early child development, family studies, pediatrics, developmental psychology, public health, social work, and early childhood education.

This examination of changes in adolescent fertility emphasizes the changing social context within which adolescent childbearing takes place.

Frank Lake was a British psychiatrist and lay theologian who substantially influenced the interplay of psychology and theology in the United Kingdom over the last several decades. Even though he died in 1983, his ideas continue to be debated through his books and the organization he founded, the Clinical Theology Association. Lake called his discovery and formulation of 'a new paradigm for psychodynamics with revolutionary implications' the 'Maternal-Fetal Distress Syndrome.' He wrote that this 'new perspective changes almost everything in counseling, ' constituting 'a radical departure from all that has gone before.' Furthermore, he noted that the 'understanding of psychodynamics can never be the same again. Nor its practice.' The description and analysis of this 'new paradigm' and its 'revolutionary implications' are the topics of this work.

This monograph is based upon papers presented at a technical review on prenatal drug exposure and consequences of maternal drug use which took place on September 24-25, 1984, at Bethesda, Maryland. The meeting was sponsored by the Division of Clinical Research and Division of Preclinical Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse. The clinical papers have been published separately as NIDA Research Monograph 59, "Current research on the consequences of maternal drug abuse."

The 29 papers contained in this volume look closely at various aspects of what is termed, "The Maternal-Fetal Interface," as it relates to the latest research in placental science. A substantial section of the book is devoted to the troublesome question of vertical transmission of infectious agents: namely, the HIV-1 virus. However, other sections of the volume examine related issues such as drug and toxin transfer across the term placenta and the diversity of placental types and how this can affect a placenta's effectiveness as a barrier. Anthony Carter is at the University of Odense, Denmark Vibeke Dantzer is at the University of Copenhagen, DenmarkThomas Jansson is at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden

This lively text offers a unique, holistic approach to human diversity for undergraduate courses in fields including anthropology, medicine, human ecology, and general education. Leading medical anthropologist Elisa Sobo rises to the challenge of truly integrating biology and culture. Her inviting writing style and fascinating examples make important new ideas from complexity theory and epigenetics accessible to undergraduates from all disciplines, regardless of academic background. Students learn to conceptualize human biology and culture concurrently—as an adaptive biocultural capacity that has helped to produce the rich range of human diversity seen today. With clearly structured topics, an extensive glossary and suggestions for further reading, this text makes a complex, interdisciplinary topic a joy to teach.