Mothers' representations of caregiving and their adult children's representations of attachment: intergenerational concordance and relations to beliefs about mothering

Mothers (N= 35) and their adult children completed questionnaires and were interviewed in order to examine relationships between mothers' caregiving representations and their adult children's attachment representations, and relationships between attachment/caregiving representations and beliefs about mothering. Mothers' and their children's accounts of and present thinking about their past relationship were highly similar, indicating that the two parts develop concordant states of mind regarding their relationship. In contrast, there was no relationship between mothers' and their adult children's beliefs about mothering, suggesting that such beliefs are not simply passed on from generation to generation within families. Attachment/caregiving classification interacted with generation in influencing a belief that biological facts determine maternal behavior, young adults with preoccupied attachment being particularly prone to reject this idea. Attachment/caregiving classification also had a significant effect on participants' tendency to adhere to an idealized conception of mothering, this tendency being associated with a dismissive attachment/caregiving representation.     

Mothers' representations of their 13-month-old twins and child-raising attitudes

The purpose of this study was to describe maternal representations of the twin sibling relationship and of the children's differences and similarities. Mothers' mental representations were also analyzed with regard to two aspects of their child-raising attitudes: individualization of childcare routines, and the question of differentiation by “external signs of twinship” (dress, toys, and first names). Data from interviews with 44 mothers of twins conducted 13 months after the birth were analyzed in terms of 8 categories—complicity, rivalry/jealousy, agonistic relations, dominance, imitation, physical appearance, development, and personality. A multiple correspondence analysis of the data pointed out that the first dimension describing the mothers' representations concerns the contrast between the “unalike” representation of dizygotic twins and the “alike” representation of monozygotic twins. The second dimension corresponds to the casual, twinship-minimizing representations generated by the twin condition. Two other dimensions express the issues of aggression and dominance. The relationship between the child-raising behavior of the mothers and their representations of the twin couple turned out to be more complex than expected. The results are discussed in terms of the specificity of the psychological issues facing mothers of twins. Defense mechanisms used by some mothers to cope with the exceptional nature of the twin phenomenon are also suggested. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Mothers' representations of their relationships with their toddlers: links to adult attachment and observed mothering.

Mothers (N = 125) and their firstborn sons were studied over an 11-month period to examine relations between mothers' representations of their relationships with their children (measured at 15 months by using the Parent Development Interview [PDI]), adult representations of attachment (measured at 12 months by using the Adult Attachment Interview [AAI]), and observed mothering (measured at 15 and 21 months). Results indicate (a) that mothers classified as autonomous on the AAI scored highest on the joy-pleasure/coherence dimension of the PDI and mothers classified as dismissing on the AAI scored highest on the anger dimension of the PDI and (b) that mothers scoring higher on the joy-pleasure/coherence dimension of the PDI engaged in less negative and more positive mothering.     

Mothers' negative evaluations of their children's performances enhance boys' memories for crafts

The authors predicted that mothers' evaluative comments would affect their preschool-aged children's learning during a craft-making activity. Each mother (N = 67) taught her child 6 crafts in a playroom in a university setting. Three weeks later, the child returned to the playroom to redo the crafts. Evaluators tested the children's memories of the procedures for completing the crafts. The authors used videotapes of the mothers' teaching to code for statements that positively evaluated their children's performances (praise) or that negatively evaluated their children's performances (criticism). Maternal praise did not affect children's memories. Maternal criticism did not affect their daughters' memories. However, sons were more likely to more accurately redo craft steps for which their mothers had made at least 1 comment criticizing their performances. The authors proposed that emotional arousal was a reason for girls' and boys' differential responses to maternal criticism.     

Stability of young children's attachment representations: Influence of children's and caregiver's characteristics

This research explores the stability of attachment representations, assessed by the Attachment Story Completion Task, within early childhood. Hypotheses were also formed about the influence of parenting, externalizing behavior and intelligence quotient (IQ) on the developmental course of children's attachment representations. Data were collected from 358 French-speaking Belgian children. Security and disorganization showed a linear improvement with age. The effect of time on the two growth curves was influenced by the child's externalizing behavior. When language abilities were controlled for in a subsample of referred children for externalizing behavior, the growth in security was found to be influenced by reasoning IQ, but the effects for disorganization were unchanged. The implications of the results for both research and clinical purposes are discussed.     

Mothers' emotional expressivity and children's behavior problems and social competence: mediation through children's regulation.

The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55-79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems. and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation. and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well.     

Mothers' attachment style, their mental health, and their children's emotional vulnerabilities: a 7-year study of children with congenital heart disease

The long-term contribution of mothers' attachment insecurities to their own and their children's psychological functioning was examined in a 7-year prospective longitudinal study of children with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). Sixty-three mothers of newborns with CHD participated in a three-wave study, beginning with the CHD diagnosis (T1), then 1 year later (T2), and again 7 years later (T3). At T1, the mothers reported on their attachment style and mental health. At T2, the mental health measure was administered again, along with a marital satisfaction scale. At T3, participants completed these two measures again, and their children reported on their self-concept and completed the Children's Apperception Test. Maternal avoidant attachment at T1 was the best predictor of deterioration in the mothers' mental health and marital satisfaction over the 7-year period, especially in a subgroup whose children had severe CHD. In addition, mothers' attachment insecurities (both anxiety and avoidance) at the beginning of the study were associated with their children's emotional problems and poor self-image 7 years later.     

Mothers' beliefs about listening: Implications for children's comprehension and conceptions of listening

Forty-four mothers offered their beliefs about listening and methods for encouraging listening in their 3- to 5-year-old children. Children's comprehension performance and conceptions of listening were also obtained. Mother perceived themselves as the primary agent responsible for children's development of basic listening competencies, such as figuring out the main point of what someone said to them, not interrupting others, and asking a question of the speaker when confused. Children who had strong comprehension skills had mothers who believed that listening is a complex set of activities, emphasized their own responsibility in ensuring that their children develop basic listening competencies, stressed comprehension processes and question asking in their conceptions of listening and in their techniques for enhancing children's listening, and began reading to their children at an early age.     

Longitudinal impact of interhousehold caregiving on adult children's mental health

The wear-and-tear hypothesis of caregiving (the longer care provided, the more psychological strain on caregivers) was examined using panel survey data from 112 adult children providing interhousehold care to an impaired elderly parent. Measures included subjective caregiving stress and perceived caregiving effectiveness ("wear") and depression and affect balance ("tear"). Contrary to the hypothesis, data revealed variability in children's adaptation to caregiving, improvement rather than deterioration being the norm. In a recursive path model, both subjective stress and perceived effectiveness were significant predictors of changes in depression. Depression was not significantly related to duration of caregiving. Discussion suggests that future researchers consider other types of caregivers and care settings, factors predicting variability in caregivers' adaptation over time, and changes as well as stability in care arrangements.     

Predictors of children's emotional distress in a mother-absent situation: implications for caregiving research

Although many factors have been found to be associated with caregiving behavior among preschool-age siblings, few studies have considered the older child's emotional responses to the distress of a younger sibling in the mother's absence. In this study, the authors considered both individual and family factors that predict older and younger sibling distress in a mother-absent situation designed to elicit caregiving behavior. For both older and younger siblings, the strongest predictor of distress following the mother's departure was distress in the other sibling, suggesting the importance of situational factors. Individual and family factors, however, were also found to predict child distress. Among older siblings, shy and sociable temperaments were associated with greater distress during the mother's absence. Higher levels of parenting stress were found to be associated with less distress among both older and younger siblings in the mother-absent situation. Results are discussed in terms of individual and family environment influences on the sibling relationship.     

Place and action in children's representations of stories

The purpose of the four experiments was to examine the prominence of place and action information in the story representations of second (7-year-old), fifth (10-year-old), and sixth (11-year-old) grade children and college students. The subjects were read short stories in which the information in a premise and an outcome sentence were consistent or inconsistent in describing place or action information. Judgments about story adequacy and the conditional probability of an inadequacy judgment given inconsistency detection were measures of prominence in the story representation, and prominence was manipulated by providing place titles, action titles, or no titles. The results showed that place inconsistency is more important than action inconsistency in children's judgments of story adequacy, except when the action involves the story theme. Developmental differences in story judgments generally were larger for inconsistent actions than for inconsistent places, perhaps due to children's problems in abstracting an action theme early in story processing.     

Representational momentum and children's sensori-motor representations of objects

Recent research has shown that 2-year-olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2- and 3-year-olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping at a barrier visible above the occluder. Three-year-olds were able to take into account the barrier when searching for the object, while 2-year-olds were not. However, both groups judged faster moving objects to travel farther as indicated by their incorrect reaches. Thus, the results show that young children's sensori-motor representations exhibit a form of representational momentum. This unifies the perceptually based representations of early childhood with adults' dynamic representations that incorporate physical regularities but that are also available to conscious reasoning.     

Young children's representations of peers' distress: associations to children's social functioning and acceptance of distressed peers

Children's mental representations of situations involving another child's distress were examined in two studies. Study 1 examined 3- to 7-year-old children's (n= 44) ideas about what victims and bystanders would think, feel and do in hypothetical situations. In Study 2, 7- to 8-year-olds (n= 40) described their own cognitive response to situations in which they were confronted with another's distress. In both studies, representational bias was examined in relation to children's display of prosocial and aggressive behavior and in relation to their acceptance of distressed peers. Although not entirely consistent, findings indicate that three types of representational biases are associated with low levels of considerate behavior and with relatively low acceptance of distressed peers: (a) mentally representing the victim's problem without giving thought to its implications for the victim, (b) significantly reducing the emotional significance of the problem and (c) exaggerating negative aspects of the problem.     

Age-related changes in children's use of external representations.

This study explored children's use of external representations. Experiment 1 focused on representations of self: Self-recognition was assessed by a mark test as a function of age (3 vs. 4 years), delay (5 s vs. 3 min), and media (photographs vs. drawings). Four-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds; children performed better with photographs than drawings; and there was no effect of delay. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-olds used a delayed video image to locate a sticker on themselves (self task) or a stuffed animal (other task). The 2 tasks were positively correlated with age and vocabulary partialed out. Experiment 3 used a search task to assess whether children have particular difficulty using external representations that conflict with their expectations: 3- and 4-year-olds were informed of an object's location verbally or through video: on half of the trials, this information conflicted with children's initial belief. Three-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds on conflict trials, indicating that assessments of self and other understanding may reflect children's ability to reason about conflicting external representations.     

Parental conflict resolution styles and children's adjustment: children's appraisals and emotion regulation as mediators

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis and the cognitive-contextual framework, the authors investigated whether the associations between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's internalizing and externalizing problems were mediated by children's appraisals of threat and self-blame and their emotion regulation. Participants were 192 Swiss 2-parent families with children aged 9-12 years (M age = 10.62 years, SD = 0.41 years). Structural equation modeling was used to test the empirical validity of the theoretical model. Results indicated that children's maladaptive emotion regulation mediated the association between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's internalizing as well as externalizing problems. Whereas perceived threat was related only to children's internalizing problems, self-blame did not mediate the links between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's adjustment. Implications for understanding the mechanisms by which exposure to interparental conflict could lead to children's maladjustment and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: the explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord.     

Adults' representations of the Earth: Implications for children's acquisition of scientific concepts

When children are asked to draw the Earth they often produce intriguing pictures in which, for example, people seem to be standing on a flat disc or inside a hollow sphere. These drawings, and children's answers to questions, have been interpreted as indicating that children construct naïve, theory‐like mental models of the Earth (e.g. Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992 ). However, recent studies using different methods have found little or no evidence of these mental models, and report that many young children have some scientific knowledge of the Earth. To examine the reasons for these contrasting findings, adults (N = 350) were given the drawing task previously given to 5‐year‐old children. Fewer than half of the adults' pictures were scientific, and 15% were identical to children's ‘naïve’ drawings. Up to half of the answers to questions (e.g. ‘Where do people live?’) were non‐scientific. Open‐ended questions and follow‐up interviews revealed that non‐scientific responses were given because adults found the apparently simple task confusing and challenging. Since children very probably find it even more difficult, these findings indicate that children's non‐scientific responses, like adults', often result from methodological problems with the task. These results therefore explain the discrepant findings of previous research, and support the studies which indicate that children do not have naïve mental models of the Earth.     

Ambitious mothers – successful daughters: Mothers' early expectations for children's education and children's earnings and sense of control in adult life

Background . Mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment are related to children's educational and occupational attainment. Studies have yet to establish, however, the long‐term links between maternal expectations and offspring earnings, which are not always related to occupational attainment especially in women, or between maternal expectations and offspring sense of control and self‐efficacy, which are pivotal factors in career choice and development. Aims . To explore the role of mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment in children's earnings attainment and sense of control later in life. Method . Data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) were used. The study sample was those cohort members with complete information on all the variables of interest. The study sample (N = 3,285) was more educated and less disadvantaged than the whole sample. If cohort members of this type are more likely to have a mother who has high expectations, then our results are biased downwards, which suggests that we underestimate the effect of expectations on our two outcome variables. Results . Mothers' expectations at the age of 10 were positively related to daughters' sense of control at the age of 30 even after controlling for ethnicity, educational attainment, and concurrent partner, parent, and labour market participation status, as well as the following confounding variables (measured at the ages of 0–10): general ability and general ability squared, locus of control, emotional and behavioural problems and emotional and behavioural problems squared, socio‐economic disadvantage, parental social class, parental family structure, and mothers' education, child‐rearing attitudes, and mental health. Mothers' expectations had no effect on sons' adult outcomes. Conclusions . Given that women are particularly at risk for poor psychological and economic outcomes in adulthood, and that this study likely underestimated the effect of expectations on these two outcomes, this is an important conclusion.     

Mothers' ambivalence with their babies and toddlers: manifestations of conflicts with aggression

In this paper the author continues his study of conflicts over aggression in women, discussing the implications for contemporary theories of feminine psychology of observations of mothers in parent/child groups with their infants and toddlers. Many mothers experience conflicts over aggression (both in themselves and in their children) and become intolerant of their ambivalence toward their children. The author suggests that this observation provides an avenue that allows an integration of psychoanalytic ideas about maternity and childrearing with psychoanalytic understandings of women's conflicts about achievement in the social realm outside the home. In both roles, difficulties mastering conflicts with aggression may cause women to struggle profoundly, and to experience problems, in successfully negotiating their important life goals, whether the goals refer to their roles as effective mothers or their roles as effective individuals in the social sphere outside the home. Some women may demonstrate these difficulties in one sphere or the other, some in both, and others in neither. The author suggests on the one hand that we need to eliminate the concept of normality when considering the activities of women, and on the other hand that we need to normalize the omnipresence of ambivalence in the psychology of women.     

Young children's responses to media representations of intergroup threat and ethnicity

Two studies are reported in which ethnic majority children's reactions to media representations of ethnic minorities are examined. In Study 1, 20 white Scottish 6‐year‐olds viewed short television stories in which white or ethnic minority children were depicted as hostile to the participants’ in‐group (threat present) or not (threat absent). A strong effect of threat on liking was obtained but no effect of ethnicity of target and no interaction. In Study 2, 4‐ and 6‐year‐old white Scottish children viewed PowerPoint displays in which Scottish people were shown only as white (traditional version) or as ethnically diverse (multicultural version). Intergroup threat was manipulated. Again, a strong effect of threat was obtained. However, when threat was absent, participants exposed to the traditional condition liked the white out‐group more than the multi‐ethnic out‐group, while participants exposed to the multicultural condition liked the multi‐ethnic out‐group more than the white out‐group. The results are interpreted as consistent with the predictions of Social Identity Development Theory.