Infants and Parents is a publication of the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs. Since its establishment in 1977 the Center has been an effective resource and disseminator of information in the burgeoning field of infant psychiatry. Among its many valuable contributions is its series, Clinical Infant Reports.

Sally Provence, one of the founders of the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs, was a natural choice as editor. In her excellent introduction she lays out the book's purpose, an effort to "… share experience … telling the stories of individuals who touch, puzzle, challenge and inevitably instruct us …" She describes the "shared assumptions" that inform all the reports despite their clinical heterogeneity.

First, is the assumption that all work, diagnostic and therapeutic, "… can best be carried out when the parents have an opportunity