How Do Infants Experience Caregiving

Bibliographic Data

ID9685828
AuthorsAnita Jones Thomas (0000-0003-1239-883X, corresponding author), Ashley J Thomas, Christina M Steele, Christina Steele (0000-0003-2063-1873), Alison Gopnik (0000-0002-7183-0867), Rebecca Saxe (0000-0003-2377-1791), Rebecca R Saxe
Year2025
Volume154
Issue1
Pages14-35
Publication date2025-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDaedalus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-5266 • E-ISSN: 1548-6192
PublisherMIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/daed_a_02121
OpenAlexW4407677801
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Almost all of human infants’ experience and learning takes place in the context of caregiving relationships. This essay considers how infants understand the care they receive. We begin by outlining plausible features of an “intuitive theory” of care. In this intuitive theory, caregiving has both a distinctive foundational structure and distinctive features that differentiate it from other social relationships. We then review methods and findings from research on infants’ understanding of people and social relationships. We propose that even before infants can use language, they may understand caregiving as an abstract intuitive theory with some features in common with how adults think about caregiving. In particular, infants understand care relationships as intimate, altruistic, and asymmetric. We review work that starts to shed light on this proposal, including the findings that infants distinguish between intimate relationships and merely positive ones and that they have asymmetric expectations of responses to distress in intimate relationships between large and small individuals. The proposal that infants can make these inferences has societal and political implications for how we structure caregiving in early life

Developmental psychology · Political science · Family and Disability Support Research · Family Support in Illness · Infant Health and Development · Psychology

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