FRIDAY, Oct. 8, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- As any parent who's ever tended to a colicky infant can tell you, listening to a baby crying hour after hour can be very frustrating. While that crying elicits sympathy from most parents, it can trigger anger and abuse in others.
Nearly 6 percent of parents of 6-month-old babies admitted that they had smothered, slapped or shaken their infant at least once because of the baby's crying, according to a study appearing in the Oct. 9 issue of The Lancet.
The study also found that the duration of the crying wasn't directly related to the abuse, but the parent's perception of the crying was.
"Excessive crying seems to be less relevant than the parents' perception of the crying and their inability to handle it properly," said study co-author Pauline Verloove-Vanhorick, chief scientific officer in prevention and health at the Netherlands Organization of Applied Scientific Research in Leiden. "Treatment should therefore focus not only on the infant's crying, but also on the parents' abilities of self-control."
"Parents need to know that infants do cry a lot, and that is normal behavior for that age. If they feel anxious about it, or feel that they cannot handle the situation, they should ask for help," said Verloove-Vanhorick.
In an editorial accompanying the article, Clare Sheridan and Nancy Wolfe, from the division of Forensic Pediatrics at Loma Linda University Children's Hospital in California, said it's important not to misinterpret this study as blaming the baby's crying for the resulting abuse.
"It is the parents' or caretakers' abnormal response to an infant crying that leads to abuse. We need to study, hold accountable and offer psychological treatment to the caretakers, not blame the infants as agents of their own maltreatment," they wrote. They added that it is normal for infants to cry at least two to three hours per day, and that as many as one in three infants may cry longer than that.
Parents of more than 3,000 infants between the ages of 1 and 6 months filled out anonymous questionnaires regarding the actions they had taken to stop their babies from crying. All of the parents lived in The Netherlands.
The researchers found that 5.6 percent of parents had smothered, slapped or shaken their 6-month-old babies in response to the baby's crying. Almost 4 percent of parents of 3-month-old babies admitted doing the same, while 2.2 percent of parents of 1-month-old infants did.
Of these parents, smothering was the most common response to a 1-month-old's cries, with 1.1 percent of parents admitting to that behavior. For 3-month-old babies, abusive parents were evenly split between smothering, slapping or shaking the baby. Abusive parents of 6-month-olds turned to shaking almost twice as often as smothering or slapping.
According to the study, parents who perceived their infant's crying to be excessive, those who were unemployed or worked only part time, and those who came from non-industrialized areas were most likely to have abused their infant.
The study authors said the extent of this problem may be underestimated in this study because it was based on self-report from the parents themselves.
Dr. Adam Aponte, chairman of pediatrics and ambulatory care at North General Hospital in New York City, said he wasn't surprised by the study's findings, and agreed with the authors' suggestions that clinicians need to find out how parents are coping with the stress of having a newborn, and that they need to be told what type of behavior they can expect from their infant.
"Pediatricians need to take time at newborn visits to say to the mom, 'How are you doing?'" said Aponte. "Part of what we need to do is to try to understand the home dynamics and try to help parents develop coping skills. If we feel there's a mom overwhelmed with her newborn, we try to get her help, sometimes through home nursing visits."
"Physicians could offer parents understanding and counseling on daily care, including enough rest for the baby and themselves, regularity in caregiving, and the information that two to three hours [of] crying is normal in small infants," said Verloove-Vanhorick. "If parents are showing an abnormal response to such 'normal' infant crying behavior, and especially if they are in a social position that could put pressure on the family situation, some form of psychological treatment should be offered."
More information
For suggestions on helping to prevent child abuse, visit Prevent Child Abuse America.
