Effect On The Family
Infant crying can have a prominent effect on the stability of the family. Crying and the fatigue that typically accompanies it can inflict enormous emotional strain causing parents to feel they are providing inadequate care, triggering anxiety, stress, resentment and low self-esteem.
Persistent infant crying has been associated with severe marital discord, postpartum depression, Shaken Baby Syndrome, SIDS/suffocation, early termination of breastfeeding, frequent visits to doctors, maternal smoking and over a quadrupling of excessive laboratory tests and prescription of medication for acid reflux.
Parents are at especially high risk of experiencing a serious reaction to their infant's crying; at-risk parents include teens, drug addicts, foster parents, parents of premies and parents of multiples. Families living in dense housing projects, such as apartment blocks, may also suffer strained relationships with neighbors and landlords if their babies cry loudly for extended periods of time each day.
Read more about this topic: Baby Colic
Famous quotes containing the words effect on the, effect and/or family:
“We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life’s routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse rate, and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described—and will be, after our deaths—by each of the family members who believe they know us.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)