MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTIONS

• Interactions between drug-using mothers and their infants affect the infants' developmental functioning.
     °Dysfunctional interactions may interfere with an infant's ability to        recover from a biological vulnerability caused by prenatal drug        exposure
     °Infants with poor arousal may not elicit sufficient caretaking from        their mothers.
     °Mother will be less sensitive to her infant's signals for stimulation       and nutrition.
     °Poor arousal (due to direct effect of prenatal drugs) + less sensitive caretaking = cycle        of neglect --> failure to thrive.

A STUDY (Ukeje, et al. 2001):
• Examined mother-infant interactions of 12-mo-old African-American prenatally cocaine-exposed infants and their mothers.
• few differences in interactive behaviors between prenatally cocaine-exposed and nonexposed children and their mothers
• prenatally exposed to cocaine ignored their mother's departure during separation significantly more often than nonexposed
• mothers who abused cocaine engaged in significantly more verbal behavior with their children than mothers of nonexposed children.
• These findings indicate that women who used cocaine during pregnancy may not differ from nonusers in their interactions with their 12 mo old infants.

• Maternal nutrition and cocaine
     °The use of cocaine during pregnancy appears to exert a primary growth-retarding effect on the fetus, as well as effects secondary to impairment of maternal nutritional status.

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