Crying

Infants typically cry between thirty minutes and two hours a day. Over two hours a day is too much and may be an indication of a physical ailment. It has been estimated that an infant will experience 4,000 crying episodes before the age of two. Many studies have been conducted around the world in an effort to determine whether or not different circumstances can affect the amount of crying by an infant. Surprisingly, the results were inconclusive and in some areas contradictory. Despite the fact that these studies were conducted in different cultures, it was found that on average, extra handling, on-demand feeding, and other nurturing from the mother made little difference to the amount of crying or even to the specific times the babies cried. In fact, evening time proved to be the peak time for infant crying across the board, and gender was shown to have no impact on the amount or duration.

It has been shown through a longitudinal study of twenty-six infant-mother pairs in 1972 by Bell and Ainsworth that there does exist a relationship between crying and maternal response. Mothers who responded quickly to a crying baby over the first nine months actually yielded a baby that cried less after the nine-month period. It is thought that because of the prompt attention of the mother, the infant becomes more secure and less demanding of the mother's contact. Although other studies have substantiated these findings, it is not possible to generalize for all infants because amount of crying depends on the mother's responsiveness, personality, individual needs for love and closeness to mother, and a tolerance for boredom, jealousy, hunger, pain, and fatigue.