The right music can have a calming effect on babies. Thus, some have claimed that serene passages of classical music should be played to babies as part of their formation. However, it is not Mozart who affects infants the most. The soothing tone of a loving mother is much more effective.
A recent study by Yale’s Child Studies Center confirmed the beneficial effect of singing to infants. Researchers sought to measure the advantages of singing over not singing.
An Experiment With Music
The study team divided 110 parents with 3-6-month-old infants into two groups. One parent group was supplied with folk songs, lyrics, and literature promoting the practice of singing during the testing period. The control group received nothing.
The two groups were then asked randomly to report on their care practices. One question asked if the parents had sung to the infant. The enriched music group reported affirmatively 89 percent of the time. The control group registered just 65 percent.
The most important and predictable result was a confirmation of the positive effect of singing to the baby. Infants exposed to singing were less fussy and calmer than those not exposed. The effect was not necessarily immediate but general.
“The babies’ mood improved overall as a result of the intervention,” reported Samuel Mehr, senior author of the study. “Yet not many pediatricians are telling parents of fussy babies to sing to them.”
The researchers further concluded that parents are naturally gifted with the ability to please infants with singing. Dr. Mehr said, “Parents send babies a clear signal in their lullabies: I’m close by, I hear you, I’m looking out for you—so things can’t be all that bad.”
Tunes Tailored to Infants
Indeed, infant tunes and lullabies are especially suited to the audience. They use limited scales and rhythms and a small melodic range to accommodate the less sophisticated ears of infants. The songs often consist of a single musical line repeated many times. Such simplicity is reflected in all infant songs throughout the world, attesting to the universal infant nature.
In the quest for the best parenting techniques, this option is not often discussed. However, it makes sense. The constant effort to increase contact between parent and child is not limited to touch. An intimate relationship involving sound is also important.
A Cultural Problem: How to Create a Lullaby
The study’s findings raise another perplexing cultural issue. Today’s rushed society generally does not promote singing to babies. Thus, it also does not produce the songs and lullabies that are to be sung to them.
The study team had to resort to old folk songs as material to prompt the musically enriched parents to sing. There are no modern folk songs because there is no notion of folk. There is no unity among a community that gives rise to common yet simple experiences that might be memorialized in song.
Gone is the rich imagery of place and community that created conditions for lullabies. There are no points of reference like natural scenes, family connections, and religious devotions that favor childhood innocence and find their place in song. In today’s confusing music scene, there is little to trigger the imagination toward temperate and pure pleasures.
In a culture of death permitting abortion, there is no universal celebration of new life that makes lullabies possible. A society full of loving mothers and fathers, not plunging birth rates, is what it will take to change things. A tender devotion to the Mother of God and Her Divine Infant will be the perfect means to awaken the desire for babies born to know, love, and serve God.
Indeed, it takes much to create a lullaby, but singing whatever is available is a good start to a return to order.
The researchers confirmed what many parents know: In the battle between Mother and Mozart, the maternal lullaby always wins.
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The featured image is “Lullaby” by François Riss (1804–1868), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
