Anticipatory guidance of parents of new infants: potential contribution of the internal working model construct.

Although anticipatory guidance for parents of young children has been well subscribed to as a clinical strategy for over half a century, it has little theoretical substance to guide its practice and to direct research that would develop and test the practice. The assumptions and definitions of the traditional practice of anticipatory guidance focus on providing information about what to expect and how to deal with unwanted or challenging events or conditions related to developmental or life change. In this paper, the potential contributions of social cognition theory, including the construct of internal working models, to the theory of anticipatory guidance are explored and implications of the revised theory are illustrated.