A traditional childrearing practice—“gahvora” cradling—in Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia purportedly restricts movement of infants’ body and limbs. However, the practice has been documented only informally in anecdotal reports. Thus, this study had two research questions: (1) To what extent are infants’ movements restricted in the gahvora? (2) How is time in the gahvora distributed over a 24-hour day in infants from 1–24 months of age? To answer these questions, we video-recorded 146 mothers cradling their infants and interviewed them using 24-hour time diaries to determine the distribution of time infants spent in the gahvora within a day and across age. Infants’ movements were indeed severely restricted. Although mothers showed striking uniformity in how they restricted infants’ movements, they showed large individual differences in amount and distribution of daily use. Machine learning algorithms yielded three pattern
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DURHAM, N.C. Mortality rates among young adults are rising in the U.S. due in part to deaths of despair preventable deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related liver disease. An intensive childhood intervention program called Fast Track could help reduce these deaths by reducing risky behaviors in adolescence and young adulthood, finds new research from Duke University and the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. To reduce deaths of despair, we must prevent the hopelessness and destructive behaviors that often lead to these deaths, says study co-author Kenneth A. Dodge, the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke s Sanford School of Public Policy. Dodge is a member of the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group that created the Fast Track program.