Abstract
Persistence of a distant goal is an important personality trait that determines academic and social success. Recent studies have shown that individual differences in persistence involve both genetic and environmental factors; however, these studies have not examined the role of maternal factors on a young children's persistence. The present study examined whether mothers' persistence is associated with persistence in children aged 3–6 years. In addition, the associations between mothers' persistence/parenting style and children's self-control/social development (prosocial behaviors and difficulties) were examined. Our results showed that maternal persistence is essential for the child's persistence. Children's self-control and social development were also associated with the mothers' persistence and parenting style. Our findings suggest that a young child's persistence may develop under the influence of a familiar adult (i.e., mother) and characterizes their social development, highlighting the importance of persistence in parenting.
Highlights
Persistence is the tendency to pursue long-term challenging goals
These findings have suggested that caregivers serve as role models for children (Bandura, 1977, 1986), no studies have directly examined the relationship between parents’ own persistence and children’s persistence
We found significant moderate positive correlations between young children and mothers for each score of grit scale (Grit-S) (ρ[105] = 0.31, p = 0.001; ρ[105] = 0.43, p = 0.001; ρ[105] = 0.29, p = 0.003)
Summary
Persistence is the tendency to pursue long-term challenging goals. Persistence of a distant goal is a powerful measure of the classroom in children’s engagement and a robust predictor of academic achievement and a social success (Duckworth et al, 2007; Duckworth and Gross, 2014; Eskreis-Winkler et al, 2014; Li et al, 2018). A few studies have shown that parents’ nurturing attitudes are significant for the children’s persistence. Adults’ efforts promoted attempts to achieve the goal of children at 15 months (Leonard et al, 2017). It was revealed that the amount of praise from caregivers for their efforts, such as “good job,” predicted 18-month-old children’s persistence (Lucca et al, 2019)
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