Intuitive Parenting As a Model for Understanding Parent-Infant Interactions When One Partner Is Deaf

This paper reviews the concept of intuitive parenting, with particular focus on its applicability to parent-infant dyads in which the parent or child is deaf. Although the conceptual model discussed in this paper was developed primarily from observations of hearing dyads, it has the potential to contribute to our understanding of early adaptive processes in other populations as well. Examples of nonconscious or intuitive parental behaviors are presented in terms of the ways they help infants adapt to the postnatal environment and in the later transition from preverbal to verbal stages of development. In addition, implications are drawn for difficulties in parent-infant interactions that may occur as a result of deafness in the parent or child.