Differential Contexts of Maternal Control: Relations to Children’s Self-Regulation

• In Event: 2-027 - Understanding the Complexity of Parental Control: Definitions, Measures, Outcomes, and Moderators

Integrative Statement

Maternal control is often viewed as interfering with children’s development of self-regulation, especially in early childhood, but researchers are recognizing the multifaceted nature of maternal control, where reasoned, negotiated control may be beneficial in some contexts. When mothers create a context of mutual respect in mother-child interactions, control in compliance situations may be related to positive outcomes because children do not see the control as coercive and forceful. To examine these ideas, we tested interactions between maternal behavior during an unstructured freeplay and maternal control in two compliance tasks. We predicted that mothers who were more directive and less sensitive, involved, and positive in freeplay would have less optimal patterns of mother-child interaction in preschool, and in these cases, maternal control in compliance tasks would be negatively related to children’s self-regulation 4 years later.

When children were preschoolers (T1, n=116), maternal assertive control was observed during two compliance tasks: do not touch (DNT) and clean-up (CU). Maternal positivity, sensitivity, involvement, and directiveness were coded in freeplay (mothers played with children as they normally would). To measure self-regulation at school-age (T2, n=95), children completed a puzzle while not looking at it. A self-regulation summary score was created from the latency to first cheat and the percentage of time spent not cheating.

Four regression analyses (Tables 1 & 2) examined the interaction of T1 maternal behaviors in freeplay and control behaviors in DNT and CU as predictors of T2 child self-regulation. More maternal assertive control was associated with less child self-regulation; the direct association was qualified by significant interaction terms. More assertive control in DNT was associated with lower self-regulation when mothers were low in positivity, β=-1.70, p<.001, and involvement, β=-1.56, p<.01, but not when mothers were high in positivity, β=-.37, ns, or high in involvement, β=-.36, ns. Maternal assertive control in CU also interacted with both sensitivity and directiveness to predict self-regulation. More maternal assertive control was associated with lower self-regulation when mothers were high in sensitivity, β=-1.28, p<.05, and low in directiveness, β=-1.50, p<.05, but not when mothers were low in sensitivity, β=.58, ns and high in directiveness, β=.16, ns.

Our findings highlight the complexity of interrelations among maternal behaviors in understanding children’s self-regulation. More maternal control in DNT was associated with less child regulation 4 years later but only when positivity and involvement in freeplay was low. It may be that children see the control as more forceful because of a lack of general warmth in their relationships with mothers, indicated by low positivity and involvement in freeplay. Contrary to our expectations, when mothers were more sensitive and less directive in freeplay, maternal control in CU was related to less child self-regulation, indicating that the nature of control in this context was different from the DNT. Our results show that maternal control may be experienced differently by children and that these different facets of maternal control are hard to tease apart. Furthermore, the consistency of maternal behaviors across contexts is important, especially for preschool-aged children’s self-regulation.

Authors

• Cynthia L Smith, Virginia Tech
  Presenting Author

• Lin Tan, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author