Although mothers showed striking uniformity in how they restricted infants’ movements, they showed large individual differences in amount and distribution of daily use.
Infants’ movements were indeed severely restricted. 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. However, the practice has been documented only informally in anecdotal reports.
A traditional childrearing practice-“gahvora” cradling-in Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia purportedly restricts movement of infants’ body and limbs.
