Journal Article•
Child-care attitudes and emotional disturbance among mothers of young children.
About: This article is published in Genetic psychology monographs.The article was published on 1970-08-01 and is currently open access. It has received 82 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Disturbance (geology).
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: Ass assessments of attachment relationships in high-risk mother-infant pairs were conducted at 12 and 18 months and changes from secure to anxious attachments were characterized by initially adequate caretaking skills but prolonged interaction with an aggressive and suspicious mother.
Abstract: As part of a large longitudinal study, assessments of attachment relationships in high-risk mother-infant pairs were conducted at 12 and 18 months. With data collected prenatally and during the infant's first 2 years of life, this study attempted to discriminate among 3 major attachment classifications and to account for qualitative changes in attachment relationships. The data included maternal and infant characteristics, mother-infant interactions, life-stress events, and family living arrangements. Several patterns seemed to emerge. Mothers of securely attached infants were consistently more cooperative and sensitive with their infants as observed in a feeding and play situation than mothers of anxiously attached infants. Anxious/resistant infants tended to lag behind their counterparts developmentally and were less likely to solicit responsive caretaking. Anxious/avoidant infants, although robust, tended to have mothers who had negative feelings about motherhood, were tense and irritable, and treated their infants in a perfunctory manner. Male babies were somewhat more vulnerable to qualitative differences in caretaking, while, for girls, maternal personality showed a stronger relationship to security of attachment. Changes from secure to anxious attachments were characterized by initially adequate caretaking skills but prolonged interaction with an aggressive and suspicious mother. Changes toward secure attachments tend to reflect growth and increasing competence among young mothers.
687 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the structure and content of the 83 parent attitude questionnaires published from 1899 through 1986 designed to quantify variations in parental attitudes and, presumably, parental behavior and found that one suspected source of problems with the instruments, the use of vague and ambiguous items, was confirmed in a study of mothers' reactions to one survey.
Abstract: Describes historical use of surveys to assess parents' global child-rearing attitudes and reviews the structure and content of the 83 parent attitude questionnaires published from 1899 through 1986 designed to quantify variations in parental attitudes and, presumably, parental behavior. Inspection of the surveys' psychometric properties reveals marginally acceptable levels of reliability and questionable validity. One suspected source of problems with the instruments, the use of vague and ambiguous items, was confirmed in a study of mothers' reactions to one survey. In addition to instrument errors, conceptual problems associated with assumptions about the structure of parental attitudes and how attitudes relate to parental behavior are discussed. Alternative methods for assessing parental social cognitions and individual differences in parents are advocated. One of the oldest and most important questions in psychology concerns the role the environment plays in the development of an individual. At least in the opening scenes of ontogeny, parents are generally recognized to be the protagonists and the family to be the "primary arena" for socialization (Maccoby, 1984). Parents have frequently been implicated as principal causal agents in their children's behavioral, emotional, personality, and cognitive development. This influence is achieved through a variety of active and passive, reactive and nonreactive processes (Baumrind, 1980; Radke-Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler, 1986; Scarr
429 citations
TL;DR: Within the intervention group, level of therapeutic process was positively correlated with adaptive scores in child and mother outcome measures and within the control group, levels did not differ in maternal child-rearing attitudes.
Abstract: Anxiously attached 12-month-olds and their mothers as assessed in the Strange Situation were randomly assigned to an intervention and a control group to test the hypothesis that infant-parent psychotherapy can improve quality of attachment and social-emotional functioning. Securely attached dyads comprised a second control group. Intervention lasted 1 year and ended when the child was 24 months. ANOVAs were used to compare the research groups at outcome. Intervention group toddlers were significantly lower than anxious controls in avoidance, resistance, and anger. They were significantly higher than anxious controls in partnership with mother. Intervention mothers had higher scores than anxious controls in empathy and interactiveness with their children. There were no differences on the outcome measures between the intervention and the secure control groups. The groups did not differ in maternal child-rearing attitudes. Within the intervention group, level of therapeutic process was positively correlated with adaptive scores in child and mother outcome measures.
365 citations
Cites background or methods or result from "Child-care attitudes and emotional ..."
...Egeland et al.'s (1979) abbreviated version of the Maternal Attitude Scale (Cohler et al....
[...]
...This pattern is different from that considered adaptive by Cohler et al. (1970) in their Anglo samples....
[...]
...'s (1979) abbreviated version of the Maternal Attitude Scale (Cohler et al., 1970) was translated to Spanish using the double-translation method and pilot tested on 15 Latino mothers....
[...]
...The views sponsored by mothers in our sample changed in the same direction for the three research groups over the course of the year, supporting the view that child-rearing attitudes are influenced by the child's age (Cohler et al., 1970)....
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the risk and protective factors for child physical abuse (CPA) and propose an etiological model based on moderate to strongly supported risk factors would begin with distal perpetrator variables of being abused as a child/teen and receiving less family social support.
320 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the direct and indirect links among parents' depression, marital quality, parenting style, and their children's externalizing behavior were examined using partial least squares analysis with families of 3-2-year-olds.
Abstract: With families of 3'/2-year-olds, the direct and indirect links among parents' depression, marital quality, parenting style, and their children's externalizing behavior were examined using partial least squares analysis. No direct paths were found between parents' depression and their child's behavior. Instead, parents' depression was mediated by the quality of their relationship as a couple or by their parenting style, or by both. A replication with families of 9- to 13-year-olds supported these findings in the form of the interconnections among family variables and children's outcomes, although the magnitude of the family-child linkage was much lower than it was in the younger sample. Children's cognitive and social competence has been found to correlate with their parents' psychological adjustment, parenting style, and, more recently, the quality of their marriage (C. P. Cowan, Cowan, Heming, & Miller, 1991; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992). Although the direction of influence, from child to parent or parent to child, has not been clearly established, findings have been consistent in relating children's adaptive or maladaptive behavior to parent functioning in intrapersonal , parent-child, and marital domains. The task of describing pathways from adult functioning to children's adaptation raises both conceptual and statistical issues. Conceptually, the fact that there is a correlation between, for example, mothers' depression and children's aggression, does not tell us whether there is a direct link between maternal and child behavior or an indirect link resulting from the influence of mothers' depression on the quality of their relationships with their children. Statistically, the problem is how to analyze direct and indirect effects in nonexperiment al, observationbased family studies. The question of whether family models of children's development have the same form when children are at different developmental levels has not been given the attention it deserves. Part
250 citations