Child behavior, maternal depression, and social coercion as factors in the quality of child care

Abstract

Observational and self-report data were obtained in the homes of 33 mother-child dyads. These volunteer, normal subjects were monitored with respect to their affectionate and aversive interactions, and the mothers were asked to provide three categories of self-report data. Mothers made observational judgments of their children, their own feelings of depression, and the valences of their interactions with adults. Multiple regression analyses were then employed to predict the mothers' child care behaviors, which were composed of observed mother responses and mother observational judgments. In addition, conditional probability analyses were conducted to examine the directionality of correlations between observed mother-child interchanges. Results showed child behavior to be the best single predictor of how the mothers responded to their children, followed by maternal depression and mother coercive interactions with adults. Child behavior was shown to be a significant antecedent “cue” for the maternal responses. However, the findings also showed that mother observational judgments about their children had little to do with how the children behaved. Rather, the maternal judgments were best predicted by mother depression, mother coercive interchanges with adults, and the mothers' observed aversive responses to their children. Results were interpreted within a systems framework in which maternal care is viewed as a response that is “triangulated” by adult-and child-produced stimuli.