Teaching or learning from baby: Inducing explicit parenting goals influences caregiver intrusiveness.

Abstract

Caregivers' goals influence their interactions with their children. In this preregistered study, we examined whether directing parents to teach their baby versus learn from their baby influenced the extent to which they engaged in intrusive (e.g., controlling, adult-centered rather than child-centered), sensitive, warm, or cognitively stimulating caregiving behaviors. Mothers and their 6-month-old infants (N = 66; 32 female infants) from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in a 10-min "free-play" interaction, coded in 2-min epochs for degree of parental intrusiveness. Prior to the final epoch, mothers were randomly assigned to receive instructions to focus on (a) teaching something to their infant or (b) learning something from their infant. A control group of mothers received no instructions. Analyses of within-person changes in intrusive behavior from before to after receiving these instructions indicated that mothers assigned to teach their infant increased in intrusiveness whereas mothers assigned to learn from their infant and mothers in the control group did not significantly change in intrusiveness. The study provides experimental evidence that caregivers' explicit goals to teach infants result, on average, in more controlling and adult-centered caregiving behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).