Spotlight on Maternal Perceptions of Child Behavior: A Daily Diary Study with Child Welfare-Involved Mothers.

Christina M Rodriguez,Paul J Silvia

doi:10.3390/bs12020044

Abstract

Research has documented a variety of factors—including stress, attributions, and anger—that may increase parents’ risk for child maltreatment, but most of this research is based on low-risk, community samples of parents’ perceptions about themselves and their children. Moreover, parents are usually asked to provide self-reports wherein they summarize their general impressions distal from actual parenting. The current study employed experience sampling methods with a high-risk sample. Mothers identified for child maltreatment reported on their stress and coping as well as their perceptions regarding children’s misbehavior and good behavior using end-of-day surveys for up to four weeks. Only maternal reports of children’s good behavior based on personality and mood were relatively stable; stress, coping, and reports on child misbehavior varied considerably across days, implying that contributors to daily fluctuations in these factors could represent intervention targets. Although maternal perceptions of misbehavior severity, anger, and negative attributions were interrelated, only anger about misbehavior related to maternal stress levels. Mothers who reported better coping perceived their child’s behavior more favorably that day and were more likely to ascribe positive behavior to the child’s mood and personality. Current findings highlight the importance of positive coping mechanisms in parental perceptions of children; such findings should be replicated to determine how to maximize parental resources that reduce child maltreatment risk.

Highlights

Child maltreatment is recognized as a critical public health concern worldwide [1].Child welfare services—the agency tasked with investigating and identifying cases of child maltreatment in the U.S.—received 4.4 million referrals in 2019, with 656,000 children either substantiated or indicated victims of maltreatment [2]
In order to prevent maltreatment, researchers and practitioners attempt to estimate a parent’s child abuse risk based on their beliefs and behaviors that can reliably predict the likelihood of the occurrence or recurrence of child [7,8]
We examined whether mothers who experienced more stress or lower coping in a given day were more likely to perceive child behavior as problematic, to report their child’s misbehavior was more severe, to ascribe more negative intent to their child’s misbehavior, and to report greater anger associated with the misbehavior; we investigated whether mothers who reported better coping or lower stress in a given day were more likely to characterize their child’s good behavior as attributable to the child’s good mood or personality

Summary

Introduction

Child welfare services—the agency tasked with investigating and identifying cases of child maltreatment in the U.S.—received 4.4 million referrals in 2019, with 656,000 children either substantiated or indicated victims of maltreatment [2]. Given high levels of underreporting, U.S prevalence rates estimate 1.25 million children experience maltreatment annually [3], with evidence that substantially more child maltreatment occurs than what is reported through official channels [4]. Research using new approaches that track families across time reveal that one of every eight U.S children (12.5%) will be confirmed as a victim of maltreatment before they reach age 18, which is a cumulative estimate exponentially higher than national annual rates of officially reported child maltreatment cases convey [5]. In order to prevent maltreatment, researchers and practitioners attempt to estimate a parent’s child abuse risk based on their beliefs and behaviors that can reliably predict the likelihood of the occurrence or recurrence of child [7,8]

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion