ECOLOGICAL INFLUENCES ON MOTHER-INFANT RELATIONSHIPS

We begin this chapter with the premise that a high-quality mother-infant relationship is central to a child’s healthy development. It is within this first intimate relationship that a child begins to develop a foundation of security, learns to regulate emotion, masters basic language and cognitive concepts, and establishes relational patterns that are carried forward into later stages of development (Erickson, Egeland, and Sroufe, 1985; Erickson, Korfmacher, and Egeland, 1992; Sroufe and Fleeson, 1986). For this reason, understanding the forces that support or hinder the formation of high-quality mother-infant relationships is key to our ability to promote healthy child development.