My Personal Research Journey

My original topic that I am interested in regarding early childhood is infant temperament.  I have wondered if infants who have calm and easy going parents are more likely to have a calm and easy going baby.  Or if parents who are high strung would have a high strung baby.  To narrow down my topic I had subtopics that included, is a baby’s temperament predetermined or shared with a parent(s), does the mother’s stress have any effect on the baby’s temperament, and what are the temperaments evolution over time.  
 

To choose one of the subtopics was a little difficult for me and hopefully my colleagues will be able to assist me in this.  I am more interested in a baby’s temperament in regards to the mother’s.  But since I haven’t done any research on the topic and don’t quite sure know whether a mother’s temperament has any effects on her baby, I wondered as well if a calm mother were to have an ill-tempered baby.  And if she did, would that just be how the story goes, or did the mother’s perhaps stressful pregnancy have anything to do with the baby having such an opposite temperament from her? 

So ultimately to wonder if a baby’s temperament stemmed from the mother’s actual temperament or from the infant’s unique own, or if the mother’s stress during pregnancy had anything to do with it, was a hard decision to make in terms of a subtopic.  I think it would be difficult to research whether a mother’s child had a temperament normal to what they should have or due to something like stress because the baby cannot be reborn to different circumstances to test out the waters of the other side. 

Although we have an assignment due this week asking us to pick a subtopic for our simulations, I am at best a little undecided and am hoping my colleagues will read this and be able to give me a little help.  I will report back with anything new.