How Mothers with Extraversion Address Contextual Challenges

SYNOPSIS Objective. The study documents how the personality trait of neuroticism is implicated in two aspects of parenting under two forms of challenge, low income and rearing a difficult child. Design. Relations of maternal neuroticism with sensitivity and stimulation in parenting and the total HOME score were examined when children were 54 months old and 5th grade, with a focus on how neuroticism moderates the effect of low household income and child temperament on parenting. Results. Mothers high in neuroticism were less likely to manifest sensitivity or provide stimulation. Maternal neuroticism moderated the effects of low income on sensitivity, stimulation, and the overall home environment, particularly at 54 months. However, significant interactions between maternal neuroticism and child difficult temperament were only found for the total HOME score at age 11. Conclusions. Living in adverse circumstances may make it difficult for mothers with neuroticism to engage productively in parenting.

A child's difficult temperament can elicit negative parenting and inhibit positive parenting behavior. However, mothers appear to be differentially susceptible to child temperament. The author examined the differential susceptibility to the effects of a child's temperament on the mother–child interaction style (i.e., maternal warmth and responsiveness) as well as plausible reasons for these differences. With 2,130 mothers of 14-month-old infants (51% male) as subjects, a regression mixture analysis identified three latent classes with varying associations between the child's temperament and mother–child interactions: nonsusceptible class, susceptible–high class, and susceptible–low class. Mother-reported depression was most predictive of class membership. Latent class differences in the maternal self-efficacy, marital conflict, and coparenting alliance were also found. On the other hand, family income, maternal employment, and the child's gender were not significant predictors of class membership when individual and contextual resources were considered. Overall, mothers with abundant individual and family resources (i.e., less depressed, highly self-efficacious, few marital conflicts, and high coparenting alliance with their spouse) showed that their interaction style with a child would vary according to the child's temperament, whereas mothers with slender resources interacted with their children in a less warm and responsive manner, regardless of the child's temperament. The implications of these findings are also discussed.

To examine maternal parenting behaviors, child temperament and their potential interactions in families of obese children and demographically similar families of nonoverweight children. A total of 77 obese youth (M body mass index (BMI) z-score values, zBMI=2.4; ages 8-16, 59% female, 50% African American) and their parents were recruited from a pediatric weight management clinic and compared to 69 families of nonoverweight youth (M zBMI=-0.03). Comparison youth were classmates of each obese participant matched on gender, race and age. Maternal report of child temperament, parenting style and anthropometric assessments were obtained. Compared to nonoverweight youth, mothers of obese youth described their child as having a more difficult temperament and their parenting style as lower in behavioral control. A logistic regression model indicated that difficult temperament, lower behavioral control and the interaction of low maternal warmth and difficult child temperament were associated with increased odds of a child being classified as obese. Treatment-seeking obese youth and their parents are characterized by different parent and child factors when compared to nonoverweight comparison families. These findings direct investigators to test more complex models of the relation between parent and child characteristics and their mutual role in the weight-related behavior change process.

Current research supports a link between maternal depression and difficult child temperament. The direction of effect is often assumed to be from parent to child, but few studies have addressed child to parent effects. In a large cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) (N=14663), we aimed to further existing knowledge by investigating the relationship between maternal and paternal depressive symptoms and child temperament, and determining the direction of any effects found. Data was collected at 2 time-points (when the children were 6 and 24 months old), using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the Mood and Intensity subscales of the Carey Temperament Scales. Significant parent to child effects were seen, with maternal and paternal depressive symptoms at Time 1 leading to more difficult temperament at Time 2. Father to child effects were significant only in male children. Little evidence was found for child to parent effects.

What children bring to the table: The association of temperament and child fussy eating with maternal and paternal mealtime structure

Family Socioeconomic Position as a Moderator of the Association Between Parental Psychopathology and Children's Outcomes: Data From France

Research has shown that interactions between young children's temperament and the quality of care they receive predict the emergence of positive and negative socioemotional developmental outcomes. This multimethod study addresses such interactions, using observed and mother-rated measures of difficult temperament, children's committed, self-regulated compliance and externalizing problems, and mothers' responsiveness in a low-income sample. In 186 thirty-month-old children, difficult temperament was observed in the laboratory (as poor effortful control and high anger proneness), and rated by mothers. Mothers' responsiveness was observed in lengthy naturalistic interactions at 30 and 33 months. At 40 months, children's committed compliance and externalizing behavior problems were assessed using observations and several well-established maternal report instruments. Parallel significant interactions between child difficult temperament and maternal responsiveness were found across both observed and mother-rated measures of temperament. For difficult children, responsiveness had a significant effect such that those children were more compliant and had fewer externalizing problems when they received responsive care, but were less compliant and had more behavior problems when they received unresponsive care. For children with easy temperaments, maternal responsiveness and developmental outcomes were unrelated. All significant interactions reflected the diathesis-stress model. There was no evidence of differential susceptibility, perhaps due to the pervasive stress present in the ecology of the studied families. Those findings add to the growing body of evidence that for temperamentally difficult children, unresponsive parenting exacerbates risks for behavior problems, but responsive parenting can effectively buffer risks conferred by temperament.

The purpose of the current study was to examine power assertive parental discipline and child difficult temperament as predictors of children’s behaviour problems (internalizing, externalizing, and total behaviour problems) as well as mediating role of difficult temperament between power assertive parental discipline and children’s behaviour problems. Participants were 118 children (53 boys) and their parents for the current study. Children’s age ranged from 16 months to 36 months (M = 27.91, SD = 5.67). Mothers reported on their power assertive parental discipline, child temperament, and behaviour problems of children. Results from regression analysis showed that: (1) there was a positive association between parents’ power assertive discipline and child behaviour problems. (2) Child difficult temperament was positively associated with children’s internalizing, externalizing and total behaviour problems. (3) Children’s difficult temperament mediated the association between power assertive discipline and child behaviour problems. Limitations and future directions of the current study are discussed.

Maternal childrearing practices play a prominent role in a child's developmental outcomes. Difficult child temperament, specifically, negative emotionality, impacts parenting practices. The present study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the mediating role of parenting practices on associations between children's temperament and academic and behavioural outcomes in a low-income and ethnically diverse sample. The present study consists of a sample of 163 families. The average age of the children was 32.40 months (SD = 2.61 months). The average age of the mothers was 34.35 years (SD = 5.32 years). Structural equation modelling examined the relationship between children's temperament, parenting practices, and child outcomes. A two-step procedure was conducted to test this model: confirmatory factor analysis followed by latent path analysis. The results show that children's temperament was significantly and positively associated with mothers' hostile parenting and children's conduct problems. Hostile parenting was positively associated with children's conduct problems. While overprotective parenting was negatively associated with children's receptive vocabulary scores, maternal responsivity was positively associated with better receptive vocabulary in children. Finally, hostile parenting was found to play a significant and positive mediating role in children's conduct behaviour. Maternal practices are associated with outcomes in children with negative emotionality, underscoring the need for tailored interventions in diverse, low-income families.

This study examined how parental reflective functioning is shaped by maternal attachment, general reflective functioning, marital quality, and child temperament. The sample comprised 419 mothers of preschool-aged children. The instruments used were: Serbian version of the Modified Experiences in Close Relationships scale - Revised (SM-ECR-R), Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (R-DAS), and Integrative Child Temperament Screener (ICTS). Results showed that mothers? tendency toward prementalizing was predicted by attachment anxiety and difficult child temperament, particularly hyperactivity and frustration, with hypomentalization mediating this association. Mothers? certainty about their child?s mental states was predicted by lower attachment anxiety and mediated by higher general reflective certainty and marital quality, whereas child frustration negatively affected mothers? certainty about their child?s mental states. Interest and curiosity in the child?s mental states were similarly linked to attachment anxiety and marital quality, with child behavioral inhibition moderating the relationship between general reflective functioning and interest and curiosity. The findings suggest possible directions for parenting interventions.

The relationship between parental personality characteristics and infantile autism has been viewed in various ways. When demonstrable personality characteristics or psychopathology are found in parents of autistic children, one interpretation of these results is that autism in the child is the result of the parents’ deviant personality characteristics. Within interpretation, there are a number of different hypotheses. An version is that deviant parents have created autism in a biologically normal child as a result of their isolation, coldness, rage, psychosis, etc. Goldfarb (1961) felt that this conceptualization was appropriate for only one subgroup of autistic children. Neurological impairment was seen as the primary etiological agent in the other subgroup. From Goldfarb’s point of view, deviant parents are only associated with a portion of the autistic children. A different parental-biological interaction hypothesis states that deviant parents exacerbate psychological abnormalities in children with special biological vulnerabilities. These parents may have failed to provide adequate support for the biologically vulnerable infant because of inadequate child-rearing practices. Thus, demonstrable personality characteristics have been interpreted as the cause of autistic development in the child.

The present study examined the intergenerational risk of instrumental filial responsibility in the first generation on children's externalizing behaviors in the next generation and examined difficult child temperament as a potential moderator of this association. Filial responsibility refers to children's instrumental or emotional caregiving roles (Kuperminc, Jurkovic, & Casey, 2009). Moderate levels of instrumental responsibility, such as age-appropriate responsibilities, may be normative whereas too much (parentification) or too little (infantilization) responsibility are associated with risk to development (Jurkovic, 1997), parenting, and offspring development (Nuttall, Valentino & Borkowski, 2012). Prior work has not isolated the unique effects of instrumental caregiving or identified the children most susceptible to intergenerational risk. A multi-site, longitudinal design assessed a diverse sample of first-time mothers and their children. Data from the present study (N=374) were drawn from the third trimester of pregnancy, 12-month and 36-month assessments. Results support the curvilinear association between maternal history of instrumental caregiving and offspring externalizing symptoms controlling for emotional caregiving. Difficult child temperament moderated the association. Maternal instrumental caregiving history increases risk to children's externalizing symptoms, particularly at high (parentification) and low (infantilization) levels of instrumental caregiving and when child temperament is easy rather than difficult.

We examined child temperament, maternal parenting, and the effects of their interactions with each other on child social functioning. A total of 355 children aged 5-18 years old (54% male; mean age=10.8) were evaluated. Regression equations were used to test models of the main and interactive effects of temperament and maternal parenting behavior on the Social Problems and Social Competence Subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), a questionnaire assessing internalizing and externalizing behavior problems in children ages 4 to 18. Higher levels of child Novelty Seeking and Harm Avoidance and lower levels of Persistence were significantly associated with poorer social functioning. When accounting for child temperament, neither maternal parenting nor the interaction between maternal parenting and child temperament were significantly associated with social functioning. However, the interaction between maternal positive involvement and harm avoidance trended toward significance, such that at higher levels of harm avoidance, more extreme levels of maternal positive involvement were related to lower levels of social functioning. Further research on the interplay between child temperament and parenting across different stages of development is warranted.

BackgroundPrevious studies of relations between parenting self-concepts, parental adjustment and child temperament have been ambiguous regarding the direction of influence; and have rarely followed families from pregnancy through the first year of life. The current study examines change and stability in maternal depressive symptoms, parenting competences and child temperament through the perinatal period until nine months postpartum.MethodsCzech mothers (N = 282) participated at three time points: the third trimester of pregnancy (Time 1), six weeks (Time 2) and nine months postpartum (Time 3). Questionnaire data concerned depressive symptoms (T1, T2, T3), maternal parenting self-esteem (T1, T2) and sense of competence (T3), and child temperament (T2, T3). A path model was used to examine concurrent and longitudinal relations between these variables.ResultsThe analyses indicated longitudinal stability of all constructs, as well as concurrent relations between them. Longitudinal relations supported child-to-parent, rather than parent-to-child, effects: child difficult temperament predicted decreases in perceived maternal parenting competences, but maternal variables did not predict change in infant temperament. In addition, we observed weak mutual relations between maternal depression levels and parenting competences, such that maternal depression diminished perceived parenting competences that in turn contributed to higher levels of depression.ConclusionMothers’ confidence in their ability to parent is influenced by their experience with a difficult infant and by their depressive symptoms during the child’s first year of life. Depressive symptoms are, in turn, aggravated by mothers’ low perceived competences in the parenting role.

Agreeable mothers: How they manage adverse circumstances and difficult children