Soothing and Infant-Mother Relationship: Individual Differences in Real World, Ecologically Valid Maternal Response to Infant Distress

Infant crying and mothers’ efforts to soothe their infants are highly emotional experiences that shape parent–infant co-regulation and bonding. Despite the importance of this process, relatively little research has examined how mothers feel when they soothe their infants, especially with real-time, ecologically-relevant measures. In this study, we collected ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in a geographically representative sample between September 2022 and September 2025 for up to 14 days to capture mothers’ (N = 250; Mage = 33.2 years, range = 19–45, 51.5% Hispanic/Latinx) emotional experiences during soothing interactions with their infants (Mage = 9.4 months, range = 3–23 months; 52.8% female; 57% Hispanic/Latinx). Mothers also completed questionnaires about their distress (anxiety, depression, and stress) symptoms and their child’s temperament. Multilevel models revealed that positive affect decreased as soothing became longer and more difficult. Importantly, higher infant negative affectivity and greater maternal distress were significantly associated with mothers reporting more negative emotions while soothing, whereas more positive maternal emotions were related to less maternal distress, even after accounting for parents’ mood while completing the survey, soothing context (difficulty and duration), child age and sex, and socioeconomic factors. These findings highlight that soothing can be a particularly challenging and emotional experience for mothers high in distress symptoms and those with infants high in negative affectivity, pointing to the need for targeted interventions within this population that support maternal emotion regulation and parent–infant interaction quality.