Infant Sleep and Waking: Mothers’ Ideas and Practices in Two Italian Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Our research aimed to build on this idea of a comparative focus, by exploring maternal ideas and behavior about infant sleep, about falling asleep and awakening, in two different Italian towns of northern and southern Italy. In doing so, we wished to evaluate if there were differences in two cultural contexts of the same country. Two different towns, Ferrara in the north of Italy and Cosenza in the south, separated by a distance of some 1000 miles, were identified as quite contrasting Italian cultural settings. These towns express different cultural backgrounds related to their different economic, historical, and social traditions. We hypothesized that the two towns might express different cultural patterns of infant care. The timing of the questionnaires was chosen with different aims. Interview One, which was administered to pregnant women a few days before delivery of their child, was intended to check maternal ideas at a time when ideas about the infants and their sleep are more socially rooted, not yet negotiated through the experience of interacting with, and knowing their own infants, and their sleep. Interview Two, given to mothers of one-month-old infants, was addressed to mothers whose ideas and concerns might have been influenced by their relationship with the infant. Our first hypothesis was that the two groups of mothers would have different ideas about infants falling asleep and about their awakenings. Our second hypothesis was that the two groups of mothers would use different practices for inducing sleep; that the Ferrara mothers (in the north of Italy) would be more "distal" oriented, whereas the mothers of Cosenza (in the south of Italy) would be more "proximal" oriented. Our third hypothesis was that even over the short period of one month, we would see some changes occurring between the ideas and practices expressed in the first questionnaire and those expressed in the second. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)