Maternal Regard Research Articles

Parent-Child Closeness and Study Attitudes and Methods of Children of Overseas Filipino Workers

Parental support and guidance are essential to the education of children of OFWs. These students feel pressured to repay their parent’s sacrifices through their academics, and are overwhelmed with balancing their school assignments and household responsibilities. This study aimed to determine the levels of parent-child closeness and study attitudes and methods, and determine its relationship. It sought to compare the level of parent-child closeness, in terms of sex, birth order, and number of years abroad. A quantitative research approach, specifically a descriptive, comparative, correlational design, was used to examine the parent-child closeness and study attitudes and methods of 100 adult children of OFWs studying at university. Findings revealed that children of OFWs are moderately close to their mothers, and very close to their fathers. They have a high academic interest and study methods, and have low academic drive-conformity, study anxiety, manipulation, and alienation towards authority. Maternal and Paternal closeness to the adult child was not found to significantly differ, in terms of sex, birth order, or number of years abroad. Furthermore, maternal regard was found to be positively correlated with academic interest (r=0.43), academic drive-conformity (r=0.38), and study methods (r=0.27), while maternal responsibility was negatively correlated with academic interest (r=0.29). The study’s findings can be a basis for the development of programs and activities for children of OFWs, to assist them in balancing home and school responsibilities.

Adult attachment and psychopathic traits: Investigating the role of gender, maternal and paternal factors

Individuals with psychopathic traits have been identified to display insecure attachment. However, it is not clear which attachment dimension contributes more to high psychopathic traits, and more specifically to callous-unemotional (CU) traits, which parental relationship is more influential and if this differs across gender. This study examined the associations of adult attachment dimensions (avoidance and anxiety) and parental factors (regard, responsibility and control) with CU traits (N = 1149) using Hierarchical Linear Regression. The relationship with both parents was assessed separately to identify their unique contribution to CU traits in males and females respectively. The avoidant attachment positively predicted while the anxiety attachment dimension negatively predicted CU traits and this was the case for both male and female participants. Interestingly, maternal regard was a negative predictor of CU traits in males only, whereas paternal responsibility arose as a positive predictor of CU traits in females only. Attachment dimensions explained the largest variance in both males and females. Findings point to the importance of attachment dimensions contributing to CU traits even in an adult sample. Parental variables were less influential on CU traits compared to attachment related variables and findings suggest that there are differences between males and females. These findings have important implications for gender differentiated attachment based interventions for individuals with CU traits.

Disordered eating in college women: associations with the mother-daughter relationship and family weight-related conversations.

Extensive work in the field has found multiple risk factors of disordered eating among women; however, there is limited research regarding the associations of maternal influence and family weight-related conversations during childhood with eating disorder psychopathology later in adulthood. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore how the mother-daughter relationship and family weight-related conversations may influence the development of disordered eating in college-aged women. A diverse sample of 551 college-aged women completed an online survey with instruments that assessed disordered eating risk (dependent variable) with the following independent variables: aspects of the mother-daughter relationship (maternal regard and responsibility) and family weight-related conversations (emphasis on maternal weight, appearance weight control, and parent weight talk). Mediation analysis was performed using hierarchical regression analyses to examine the influence of maternal factors in combination with family weight-related conversations with disordered eating risk. Using hierarchical regression analyses, aspects of the mother-daughter relationship were significantly associated with risk of disordered eating. However, this significant relationship was diminished in the presence of family weight-related conversations. Furthermore, a test of the mediation suggests that family weight-related conversations may act as a pathway for influencing perceived maternal factors in the development of disordered eating. Findings illustrate the important role mothers may have in shaping their daughters eating attitudes and behaviors. Future disordered eating prevention programs and interventions may consider developing strategies in educating parents on conversations regarding weight. Descriptive cross-sectional study, Level V.

Parent–child gender interaction in the relation between retrospective self‐reports on parental love and current self‐esteem

A retrospective questionnaire study investigated the relation between current self‐esteem in adult men (n=34) and women (n=99) and self‐reported experience of parental “unconditional positive regard” during childhood. For both men and women the perception of the father's unconditional regard was significantly related to self‐esteem. For women only a weak relation was found between the reported experience of maternal regard and self‐esteem in adulthood; a comparison of younger and older women showed that this relation was weaker for younger women. The results were interpreted in terms of a greater ambivalence in women towards the mother, possibly as a result of women's more complex separation and identification processes; the difference between younger and older women could indicate that this ambivalence decreases over the years. The implications of this interpretation for the validity of retrospective accounts is discussed, suggesting that the validity could increase over the years.