By Stephen Beech
Parents should sing to their babies more often as it really does have a "positive" impact on their mood, suggests new research.
Singing to infants can, in turn, benefit the health and well-being of moms and dads too, say scientists.
Many parents know that babies love to be sung to.
But there had been limited research until now into the long-term effects of parental singing.
A new study by an international team of scientists, published in the journal Child Development, examined whether using a music enrichment intervention program to encourage parents to sing more frequently to their babies could improve the health of both infants and their caregivers.
Researchers in New Zealand, the United States, the Netherlands and Canada advertised for study participants by visiting baby fairs, distributing flyers at local daycare centers, preschools, and delivery hospitals, and making an announcement on the radio.
The study required all the participants to have a smartphone to be able to communicate and complete surveys online in English and be a primary caregiver of the infant.
The study was conducted with 110 parents and their babies, who were on average nearly four months old.
Most of the caregivers were from the United States and New Zealand, predominantly white, educated, and socioeconomically advantaged.
Study participants were randomly assigned to the intervention or a control group.
The main portion of the study lasted six weeks.
Parents in the intervention group completed a brief, smartphone-based music enrichment program to help them sing more often to their babies.
Throughout the study, the participants completed smartphone surveys up to three times daily, reporting on both baby and parent mood, stress, sleep quality, and music use.
The findings suggest that simple, low-cost interventions, such as increasing baby-directed singing, have the potential to improve health outcomes for both babies and their parents.
Dr. Samuel Mehr, of Auckland University in New Zealand, said: "During the four-week intervention, participants in the intervention group were encouraged to sing more to their infants than usual.
"Our main finding was that the intervention successfully increased the frequency of infant-directed singing, especially in soothing contexts, and led to measurable improvements in infants' general mood as reported by caregivers.
"One interesting finding was how intuitively caregivers incorporated singing into soothing routines for their infants, even though the intervention did not explicitly instruct them to use singing for this purpose.
"Among a dozen soothing strategies, singing was the only one that showed a significant increase in use following the intervention."
He added: "Our findings suggest that encouraging parents and caregivers to sing more frequently to their infants can have a positive, causal impact on infant mood.
"Singing is a universal practice - parents from almost every culture and throughout history have intuitively used singing to soothe and connect with their infants.
"It's easy to do, requires no special equipment or training, and is accessible to everyone.
"Because infant mood is closely linked to parenting stress, caregiver-infant bonding, and later social-emotional development, such a simple intervention could have meaningful downstream benefits.
"For paediatricians and professionals working with families, recommending increased infant-directed singing is a practical, accessible strategy to support infant well-being."
Dr. Mehr says that, despite the intervention lasting only four weeks, the team observed "clear benefits" for infant mood.
He added: "This suggests that the positive effects of singing to infants may be even more pronounced with longer-term, higher-intensity interventions - and may also extend to caregiver well-being and additional aspects of infant health beyond mood."
The research team is now working on longer follow-up studies comparing the effects of singing, listening to music and reading on the mood of babies.
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