Parental Support for Their Baby

The arrival of a baby is generally greeted with joy and happiness by a married couple.

A positive and pleasant welcome and acceptance significantly impacts the baby's development. If welcomed well, the baby's development will proceed smoothly and healthily. This is crucial for parental support for the child's mental growth and development.

A harmonious and happy family atmosphere will have a positive and healthy impact on the baby's adaptation process to the environment, allowing the child to live a happy and peaceful life. Consequently, intellectual and emotional development will be healthy and positive.

Many parents don't realize that their baby's ability to adjust to their new environment after birth is influenced by their attitude. Broadly speaking, this parental attitude can be categorized as favorable or unfavorable.

A favorable parental attitude certainly benefits the baby because it helps their adjustment to postnatal life quickly and successfully.

If the parents' attitude is unfavorable, for whatever reason, it will be reflected in their treatment of the baby. The parent-baby relationship will be fraught with emotional stress. Ultimately, this attitude hinders the baby's successful adaptation. For example, the baby may cry frequently or have difficulty eating or sleeping well.

The Father Also Plays a Role

A pleasant attitude is characterized by a lack of emotional tension and anxiety on the part of the parent when interacting with the baby. A calm mother, for example, usually produces more breast milk than a tense and anxious mother. This helps the baby adjust to the new way of obtaining food.

Although the mother's attitude is more decisive, the father's attitude cannot be ignored. Indirectly, the father's attitude is important because it influences the mother's attitude. Directly, the father's attitude is also important because he must face and be responsible for helping care for the baby brought home from the hospital.

This pleasant attitude can actually be developed by witnessing the birth event up close. Fathers who are present in the delivery room to accompany the mother usually have a more pleasant attitude toward their babies than those who are not.

Influencing Conditions

The attitudes of parents of newborns are, of course, influenced by the attitudes they develop during pregnancy, birth, and post-hospital care. Certain conditions significantly influence a mother's attitude, while others significantly influence a father's.

This is important to understand so parents can anticipate each situation and minimize any negative attitudes it may cause.

Here are some conditions that influence parents' attitudes toward their babies.

1. Understanding Parenting

Parents who have experience caring for their own children or those of others have a more confident attitude when caring for a newborn. Therefore, it's a good idea for prospective parents to take courses offered by the hospital or maternity center before the birth.

2. Childbirth Experience

A mother's attitude toward her baby will be more favorable if her birth experience was easy, short, not difficult, and free of physical complications. A father's attitude will also be influenced by his wife's birth experience.

3. Mother's Physical Condition after Childbirth

The quicker a mother's health recovers after childbirth, the more favorable her attitude toward her baby will be and the more confident she will be in her ability to fulfill her role as a mother satisfactorily.

4. Anxiety about costs

If complications occur during delivery, such as a cesarean section, premature birth requiring special care and a longer hospital stay, or a congenital defect is apparent at birth, parents' attitudes will be clouded by anxiety about unexpected costs. This anxiety has the potential to cause tension that leads to an unfavorable attitude toward their baby.

5. Infant Defects

If a fetus is suspected and proven to be born with a birth defect, parents' attitudes will be colored by disappointment and anxiety about the baby's future normality and the additional costs that will result.

6. Postnatal Adjustment of the Baby

The more quickly the baby adjusts to the environment after birth, the more favorable the parents' attitudes will be. Conversely, if adjustment is slow and unsatisfactory, parents' attitudes can become less favorable. It is advisable for parents to change their lifestyle after the baby is born. This is important to ensure parents' attention and readiness to care for their baby.

7. Baby Crying

A baby who cries continuously for no apparent reason will encourage the development of an unpleasant attitude, not only in the parents but also in all family members. In response to this, parents and other family members must understand the baby's condition and reflect on the experience of caring for a baby, just as they are now experiencing when the baby was a baby. Patience and confidence in a brighter future will motivate them to provide the best for their baby's development and growth, so they grow up healthy and intelligent.

8. Parental Displeasure at Increased Work and Expenses

If parents face the reality that caring for a baby requires more work, takes up time and privacy, increases household needs, and requires more expenses than previously imagined, their attitude toward the baby will be less pleasant than if the parents had prepared everything from the start.

9. Anxiety about the baby's well-being

If a baby has to stay in the hospital longer than usual due to being underweight, having a disability, or having difficulty adjusting postnatally, parents will not only be anxious about the baby's well-being but also their ability to care for the baby after discharge.

10. Anxiety about the baby's survival

If a baby has to stay in the hospital longer than usual and requires special attention, parents become anxious about the baby's well-being. If the baby survives, parents tend to be very protective, but this overprotective attitude can develop into an unpleasant attitude.

11. Parental Expectations

If the baby is the gender desired by the parents and has an attractive appearance, parents will be much more favorable than if the baby is the unwanted gender and the appearance does not meet the parents' concept of the "ideal baby."

Children are the hope of parents and the fruit of their love, so they are given maximum attention and care.

Children are a gift from God who must be cared for as well as possible so they grow optimally and become good children. Therefore, parents must accept this trust with complete sincerity and patience. This sincere acceptance will be good and have a mentality that will make children grow healthily.