This study shows that a home-visiting, relationship-based intervention, as defined in the UCLA Family Development Project, affects certain areas of family functioning by the time an infant reaches 12 months. Within a randomized trial design, we compared two samples of mothers who were identified as at risk for inadequate parenting in the third trimester of pregnancy with their first child. The primary risk characteristics were poverty and a lack of support. Thirty-one of these mothers experienced the intervention and thirty-three did not. Mothers given the opportunity of a positive, trusting, and working relationship with a weekly home visitor as well as a mother-infant group scored significantly higher on measures of their experienced partner and family support. The intervention also made a significant impact on three critical social-emotional mother-infant transactions in the first year of life. Thus, on a variety of indices including the responses to the Ainsworth Strange Situation, the children in the intervention group were more secure and their mothers more responsive to their needs. Children experiencing the intervention were also more autonomous and task oriented and were encouraged in this regard by their mothers.
RESUMEN: Este estudio muestra que la intervencio ´n basada en una relacio ´n de visita a casa, tal como se define en el Proyecto de Desarrollo de la Familia de UCLA, afecta ciertas a ´reas del funcionamiento familiar para cuando el infante alcanza los 12 meses de nacido. Dentro de un disen ˜o experimental al azar, comparamos dos muestras de madres a quienes en el tercer trimestre de su embarazo con su primer nin ˜o se les identifico ´como que estaban "bajo riesgo" en atencio ´n a la inadecuada habilidad para ser madres. Las caracterı ´sticas primarias para que se les clasificara de esa manera fueron la pobreza y la falta de apoyo. Treinta y una de ellas experimentaron la intervencio ´n y treinta y tres no lo hicieron. Las madres