The Developmental Cascade from Attachment to Parenting to Internalization of Rules: Moderation by Child Difficulty

• In Event: Community and Clinical Perspectives on the Development of Children’s Committed Compliance to the Maternal Agenda

Abstract

Early secure attachment serves as a foundation for children’s future internalization of parental rules (Thompson, 2016), but specific developmental paths from security to internalization are not fully understood. We propose that in secure relationships, children cooperate with parents, which reduces power-assertive, harsh control, whereas in insecure ones, parents often need to resort to harsh control. In turn, power-assertive, forceful control predicts children’s poor internalization of parental rules and values (Gershoff, 2002; Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Hoffman, 1983; Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco, & Adams, 2008). According to differential susceptibility model, children with difficult temperaments may be particularly susceptible to the influence of coercive, power-assertive parenting (Belsky & Pluess, 2009), but few moral development studies have tested this hypothesis.

We examined the developmental cascade from attachment security to parents’ power-assertive control to children’s internalization of parental rules, moderated by child difficulty, in 102 community families (mothers, fathers, and children). At 15 months, trained observers coded parent-child attachment security using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS; Waters & Deane, 1985). At 2 years, we observed the child’s difficult temperament (anger) in standard episodes from Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Goldsmith & Rothbart, 1999). At 2 and 3 years, we coded parents’ power-assertive control in lengthy observed discipline contexts (toy cleanups, prohibitions). At 5.5 and 6.5 years, we coded the child’s internalization of parental rules as committed, self-regulated compliance, observed when child was asked by the parent to clean up toys alone after play.

We tested the moderated mediation models separately for mother- and father-child dyads, with attachment security as the predictor, parents’ power-assertive control as the mediator, and internalization as the outcome (Figure 1). Child difficulty was modeled as moderating the path from power-assertive control to internalization. Analyses were conducted in Mplus, using bias-corrected bootstrapping with 10,000 resamples to obtain the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the indirect effects.

For mother-child dyads, attachment security negatively related to power-assertive control, and power-assertive control negatively related to children’s internalization for moderately (0 SD) to highly (+1 SD) difficult children, but not for easy children (-1 SD; see Figure 2 for simple slopes). As a result, the indirect effect from attachment to power-assertive control to internalization was only present when the child was moderately (0 SD) to highly (+1 SD) difficult (B = 0.111, SE = 0.061, 95% CI [0.023, 0.271], and B = 0.249, SE = 0.115, 95% CI [0.070, 0.516], respectively), and absent when the child had an easy temperament (B = -0.027, SE = 0.065, 95% CI [-0.190, 0.076]). Of note, difficult children who received gentle, non-assertive control showed more internalization than their easy peers, fully supporting a differential susceptibility model for mother-child dyads.

For father-child dyads, the relation between attachment and children’s internalization was not mediated by power assertion, nor was it moderated by child difficult temperament. The moderated mediation model was not supported.

Results suggest that attachment may impact children’s internalization through parental control, to which difficult children are especially sensitive. We discuss the reasons and implications of the different findings in mother- and father-child dyads.

Authors

• Danming An, Lehigh University
  Presenting Author

• Grazyna Kochanska, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author