Singing Improves Babies' Moods

According to a recent Yale study published in Child Development, singing can significantly improve a child’s mood. Across cultures and around the world, singing to babies seems to be something instinctive for caregivers. New findings now confirm that singing is a simple, safe, and free way to improve the mental well-being of infants. Since a better mood in infancy is associated with a higher quality of life for parents and babies, this in turn has a positive effect on the health of the entire family, according to the researchers. The study also provides an explanation for why musical behavior may have developed in parents.

More Singing Leads to a Better Mood in Infants

“Everyone can sing, and most families already do,” said Eun Cho, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Child Study Center and co-first author of the study. “We show that this simple practice can lead to real health benefits for babies.”We don’t always have to focus on expensive, complicated measures when there are others that are just as effective and easy to implement,” added Lidya Yurdum, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Amsterdam who is affiliated with the Child Study Center and co-author of the study.

The new study involved 110 parents and their babies, most of whom were younger than four months old. The researchers randomly divided the parents into two groups and encouraged one group to sing to their infants more often by teaching the parents new songs, providing them with karaoke videos and child-friendly songbooks, and sending weekly newsletters with ideas for incorporating music into everyday life. For four weeks, these parents received surveys on their smartphones at random times of the day. The parents answered questions about their child’s mood, restlessness, the time they spent calming them down, the mood of the caregivers, and the frequency of musical activities. For example, parents were asked to rate their baby’s mood as positive or negative in the two to three hours before receiving the survey. The 56 parents in the control group received an identical intervention in the four weeks after the first experiment.

The researchers found that parents were able to spend more time singing. Not only did parents sing more often, they also used music in a specific context: to calm their babies when they were fussy. “We didn’t tell parents, ‘We think you should sing to your baby when they’re fussy,’ but that’s exactly what they did,” said Samuel Mehr, associate professor at the Child Study Center and director of the Music Lab. Mehr is also the lead researcher on the study. “Parents intuitively turn to music as a means of regulating their babies’ emotions because they quickly learn how effective singing is at calming a fussy baby.

Most surprising was that the survey responses showed that increased singing led to a measurable improvement in the overall mood of the infants compared to the control group—in other words, parents who sang more rated their babies’ moods as significantly better. Importantly, the improved mood was observed across the board and not just as an immediate response to the music. Although singing did not have a significant effect on the mood of caregivers in this study, Mehr believes that there could be knock-on effects on the health of young families. “All parents know that an infant’s mood affects everyone around them,” says Mehr. “If infants’ moods improve over a longer period of time, this could also have an impact on other aspects of their health.”

Follow-Up Study Could Clarify Whether Singing Alleviates Postpartum Depression and Helps Babies Sleep

The team believes that the benefits of singing may be even greater than the current study shows. “Even before our intervention, these participating families were particularly musical,” Yurdum explained. “Nevertheless, and despite the intervention lasting only four weeks, we were able to identify benefits. This suggests that singing is likely to have an even greater effect on babies in families who do not yet use music as a means of calming their infants.“ Researchers at the Child Study Center are currently recruiting parents and babies under four months of age for a follow-up study called ”Together We Grow,” which will examine the effects of singing on infants over an eight-month period.

Although the researchers did not observe any improvement in caregivers’ moods within four weeks, they are eager to see whether singing can help alleviate stress or conditions such as postpartum depression in the long term. They also want to investigate whether singing could have other positive effects on infants beyond improving mood, such as better sleep. Previous work by the Music Lab has shown that music aimed at infants is universal among humans and that people can even understand the context of songs—for example, whether it is a dance song or a lullaby—in foreign languages and from other cultures. Given these fundamental scientific findings, the new insights are understandable to Mehr. “Our understanding of the evolutionary functions of music points to a role for music in communication,” says Mehr. “Parents send their babies a clear signal with lullabies: I’m nearby, I hear you, I’m watching over you – so it can’t be that bad.” The babies seem to be listening.