Longitudinal Adolescent Mother-Infant Interactions: How Do They Happen Within Vulnerable Backgrounds?

This chapter aims to discuss relationships between adolescent mothers, living in vulnerable backgrounds, and their infants throughout the first postpartum year. Life in poverty is often associated with worse developmental outcomes for both adolescent mother and her infant, namely, on the quality of established interaction often affected by ecological distress factors. Assumingly, by taking this information into account, individual development and maternal behaviors are interconnected to the context where they take place. So, it is worth understanding the influence from its characteristics on human development. The chapter presents data about personal and contextual variables, as well as some methodological challenges related to the longitudinal research performed in naturalistic settings. The chapter addresses the impact of background resources on mother-infant interactions, which are the basis of human development. The subject is innovative because it presents some methodological procedures and challenges focused on capturing human development based on ecological background.