Content area
Full Text
Researcher, activist, and pediatrician, T. Berry Brazelton, MD (1918-2018), devoted his career to understanding children's behavior and development, the strengths that parents bring to raising them, and the challenges that parents face. In particular, Brazelton was deeply concerned about the conditions and contexts in which families raise children, how these can disrupt children's development, and what might be done-through research, policy, and practice-to foster more favorable environments for families.
Medical science and care was one of the first environments on which Brazelton focused his attention. Among the first European American scientists to study newborns, he turned to the beginning of life to understand who babies are before their interactions with parents can affect them. At that time, parents were still being blamed when their children had what we now call autism spectrum disorders. Brazelton knew that this explanation was destructive and sensed that there had to be a neuro-genetic basis beyond parents' control. In his studies of newborns, he discovered that
* Each one is a unique individual at birth
* Their behaviors have meaning and purpose
* They are endowed with competencies that allow them to
о Regulate themselves
о Engage in social interactions
о Shape their caregivers' behaviors as much as they are shaped by those of their caregivers
This research, which culminated in Brazelton's Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS), was used to address other ways in which health care environments challenged child rearing. For example, general anesthesia was commonly used during labor and delivery, even when cesarean sections were not performed. Studies of newborn behavior demonstrated that this led mothers and their new babies to be drowsy for the first week after delivery, interfering with feeding and early bonding. The NBAS has also been used in numerous studies to demonstrate the negative effects of environmental toxins, including lead and PCBs (polychlorinated bromides), among others, on fetal brain development and newborn behavior. Brazelton always sought to bring his research directly to parents, and his first widely acclaimed book, Infants and Mothers, helped parents understand and adapt to their infants' unique temperaments and personalities.
Brazelton also studied parent-infant interactions in the first months and years of life; he was one of the first scientists to do so using video recordings. With one camera documenting...