Links between mothers’ coping styles, toddler reactivity, and sensitivity to toddler's negative emotions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2011.07.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The extent to which engaged maternal coping styles moderate the association between toddler's temperamental reactivity and mothers’ sensitivity to children's negative emotions was examined in 89 mother–child dyads. Primiparous mothers completed a measure of coping styles prenatally. When toddlers were 16 months old, mothers completed a measure of perceived toddler temperament and a self-report of how they respond to toddler negative emotions, and maternal sensitivity and temperamental reactivity were observed during emotionally arousing tasks in the laboratory. Mothers’ disengaged coping style was positively associated with self-reported insensitive responses to children's negative emotions. Engaged coping moderated the association between toddler temperamental reactivity and both self-reported insensitive responses and observed maternal sensitivity, such that temperamental reactivity was more strongly linked with less sensitive maternal behavior when engaged coping was low.

Highlights

► Examined links between maternal coping, toddler reactivity, and sensitivity. ► Disengaged coping was positively associated with reported insensitivity. ► An interaction was found for engaged coping and reactivity on reported insensitivity. ► High engaged coping reduced negative effect of reactivity on observed sensitivity.

Section snippets

Maternal sensitivity to negative emotions and child outcomes

Maternal sensitivity refers to mothers’ timely and appropriate responses to their children's cues with respect to their developmental level and the demands of the situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Maternal sensitivity is important because it fosters children's adaptive social and emotional outcomes (Denham and Grout, 1993, Fabes et al., 2001). Specifically, sensitivity to children's negative emotions is associated with children's subsequent ability to be more sympathetic,

Links between maternal coping and responsiveness to children's negative emotions

Parenting is an inherently stressful process that occurs within an affective context (Dix, 1991). When toddlers behave in ways that are not congruent with mothers’ goals and expectations, negative emotions are likely to occur, and this can create stress for mothers. How mothers cope with this stress is important for the affective context in which the mother–toddler relationship develops and evidence that how mothers think and feel about emotions are an important predictor of their behavior (

The role of child temperament

Child reactivity has also been linked with sensitivity in early childhood. Reactivity is defined as a temperamental characteristic typically indicated by the frequency and intensity of vocal, facial, motor, and physiological indices of stress (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Infants who display distress intensely or frequently may be more difficult to care for as evidenced by greater parenting stress (Belsky, 1984) and more negative parental emotions (Crockenberg and Leerkes, 2003, Dix, 1991) among

Participants

Eighty-nine primiparous mothers participated in a follow-up study from a larger longitudinal sample (N = 118) when children were 16 months old. At the follow-up, significantly more minorities dropped out of the study than European-Americans, χ2(1, N = 118) = 4.29, p < .05. In the final sample, maternal age ranged from 17 to 38 (M = 28.3) and the majority were European-American (81%) or African-American (15%). Ninety-seven percent of the mothers were married to, living with, or dating the child's father;

Preliminary analysis

Data was examined for missing values before analysis. Given that 4.78% of data were missing a single imputation was done using NORM software (Schafer, 1999). Maternal age, minority status (0 = European-American, 1 = Minority), education, income, and child gender were examined as potential covariates; none were significantly associated with any of the outcome variables and were not considered any further. Correlations and descriptive statistics for all predictor and outcome variables are in Table 2.

Hierarchical multiple regression models

Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine links between maternal coping and subsequent reported and observed sensitivity to toddler negative emotions. The results supported the hypotheses that maternal coping styles would be adaptive in relation to sensitivity to toddlers’ negative emotions and would buffer mothers from the negative effect of toddler temperamental reactivity on sensitivity. The nature of the effects, however, varied for engaged and disengaged coping styles as described below. In

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by R03 HD048691, a New Faculty Grant and Summer Excellence Award from UNCG, and funds from the HES Center for Research awarded to the second author. Special thanks to the participating families for their time.

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