BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Poster #132 - Child Competence as a Predictor of Mothers’ Controlling Practices

Sat, March 23, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

In the guided learning domain of socialization (Grusec & Davidov, 2014), studies examining the antecedents of controlling parenting have shown that situations suggesting a lack of competence in children trigger controlling parenting practices (Dumont et al., 2014). However, a stringent test of this relation remains to be conducted as past research mostly focused on academic achievement. Yet, children’s academic achievement may not be the optimal way to assess children’s competence as it greatly depends on contextual variables such as teacher’s abilities (Rivkin et al., 2005) or school climate (Wang & Holcombe, 2010). In addition, past studies have not controlled for important confounding variables (i.e., parents’ prior perceptions of their children’s academic skills, the difficulty level of the studied task or parents’ general parenting style) that could account for the link between academic achievement and controlling parenting.
The objective of the present research was thus to test the relation between children’s competence in a task and maternal controlling practices during mother-child interactions while addressing the limitations of past research. First, rather than focusing on academic achievement, we evaluated child competence using an unfamiliar and standardized measure, the WISC-IV’s block design (Weschler, 2003). Second, we assessed parental practices during a task that was calibrated to represent an optimal challenge for each child. This allowed us to create an equivalent guided learning interaction for each mother-child dyad. Lastly, we included mothers’ controlling parenting style and their perceptions of their child’s academic skills as covariates.
A total of 101 mother-child dyads (M age = 10.21 years) participated in this study. During a single home visit, we first invited mothers to report their preconceptions of their children’s academic skills. Meanwhile, children accompanied the experimenter in a separate room where they were asked to complete the WISC-IV’s block design. The experimenter coded children’s competence in the task and determined the block image that constituted an optimal challenge. Mothers then joined their children and assisted them with the block design, starting with that optimally challenging image. Interactions were filmed and coded to assess mothers’ controlling practices. Favoring a multi-informant approach, we also asked children to report their perceptions of their mother’s controlling practices during the task. Finally, mothers reported their general controlling parenting style.
Controlling for the covariates, structural equation modeling revealed that children’s initial lack of competence in a task predicted higher levels of coded maternal controlling practices during the mother-child interaction involving that task, which in turn were positively linked to children’s perceptions of their mother’s practices as controlling (see Figure 1). A bootstrap analysis also confirmed that the indirect link from children’s competence to perceived controlling practices through coded maternal controlling practices was significant. The present research strengthens the idea that child competence is an important determinant of parental practices in the guided learning domain. Whereas academic achievement had been previously related to controlling practices, this study reveals that a similar effect can be observed using a standardized form of competence, during tasks that are optimally challenging and when controlling for key covariates.

Authors