... high infant mortality rate which led to parents needing to distance themselves from their children in order to reduce the inevitable emotional distress that would occur (Brazelton, 1979). From this infants came to be viewed as not quite human. This is of course no longer the case, as medicine improved we found ourselves able to save the lives of more and more infants and now the norm is for infants to survive to adulthood rather than die at a young age. This affords the parent(s) the chance to form an attachment to their children with less concern for their own emotional damage. While society has changed, psychology has too. Where men have been previously dismissive of children as the work of women with the emergence of women in psychology we find a new perspective on things. Finally gone is the notion that a baby's smiles were 'just gas' (Gopnik et al, ...

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