If You Were Writing a Book on ‘Good Parenting’ for First-Time Parents, What Would You Identify as the Most Important Pieces of Advice and Why Would You Choose These?

If you were writing a book on ‘good parenting’ for first-time parents, what would you identify as the most important pieces of advice and why would you choose these?

Becoming a parent for the first time may be somewhat scary and overwhelming, with the additional stress of trying to bear all the amount of advice available and piled upon new parents from all the directions. I would like to take a look on some of the main aspects of the general advice that psychologists developed in the last couple of decades to provide new parents and babies with the most advantageous prospects of overcoming the hurdles that all new parents and infants need to get through. I would like to discuss the relevance of influences in first relationships, particularly these concerning attachment, parenting, links to internal working model and emotional communication in regards to ‘good parenting’.
As much as the relationship between the child and the mother is undoubtedly at the core of relationships with the infant and starts far earlier than with the birth, it is at the moment of delivery when the mother and child start their everyday ‘real’ interaction which is the beginning to a lifetime relationship.

One of the most important aspects of ‘good parenting’ and a generally a prosperous relationship for both mother and infant is a close attachment bond between the two. Attachment is very important from the very beginning of the relationship and has a great impact on the future development of the infant. The importance of attachment was researched on macaque infant monkeys by Harlow (1958) in the 1950s and his research revealed that apart from the nutritional provision these monkeys naturally sought the of an attachment comfort object mostly reminding them of and adult monkey. Conclusion of this study was that comfort contact itself was not enough for good development as the monkeys later displayed disturbed social behaviour and problems with mating. This suggests that attachment is... [continues]

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