Neonatal pair-bonding between parent and baby involves eye contact and finger contact. A mother presented with her nude, full-term infant begins with fingertip touching of the infant's extremities. Within a few minutes she proceeds to massage, with encompassing palm contact of the infant's trunk. Mothers of premature infants also follow a small portion of this sequence, but proceed at a much slower rate. When mothers are given their fully clothed infants, it takes several days for them to move to palmar stroking of the trunk.
Fathers go through some of the same routine.
In home deliveries, where the mother rather than a doctor has been in control, she cradles her infant in her arms immediately after its birth and begins touching its face with her fingertips. Mothers who had early contact with their infants looked at them significantly more often than did late-contact mothers during a subsequently filmed feeding session at the time of discharge. Mothers of full-term babies, experimentally given one hour of extra contact with the baby in the first three hours after birth and a total of fifteen hours extra contact in the first three days, two years later conversed differently with their children than did control mothers. They used twice as many questions, more words per proposition, fewer content words, more adjectives, and fewer commands. Independently of the nutritional principles involved, breast feeding also provides both mother and child with sensuous experience.