Childrearing Attitudes and Mother-Child Interaction in the First Year of Life.

Abstract

The relation between childrearing attitudes and parental behavior remains one of the unresolved issues in the study of socialization. It is believed that childrearing attitudes are associated with the manner in which mothers relate to their young children, although empirical data have generally been inconclusive (Marshall, 1961,-Zunich, 1961, 1962, 1966; Stern, 1963; Brody, 1965). Ambiguous results from studies in this area have led Moss (1965) to suggest that indirect methods of studying socialization, such as assessing maternal atti tudes, are of minimal value, and that direct observations are essen tial if we are to describe the mother-infant relationship with any degree of precision [p. 482]. The present study reports on the re lation between childcare attitudes and mother-infant interaction using a somewhat different strategy than has been followed in much of the previous research in this area. Whereas most previous attempts to study the relation between attitudes and behavior have relied primarily on one dimension, that of authoritarian control (Becker & Krug, 1965), assessment of a broader range of issues might yield more promising results. Develop mental theorists have described a number of sequential issues which are negotiated between mother and child during the first five years of the child's life (Kris, 1950; Erikson, 1963; Sander, 1962, 1964, 1969; Ainsworth, 1969). This developmental approach assumes that the child's maturation presents her mother with a series of develop mental tasks. The manner in which the mother resolves each of these developmental tasks with her child has consequences for the future direction of the mother-child relationship. This developmental ap proach has been followed in the construction of the Maternal Atti tude Scale, used in the present study, which is more directly con