Poster #57 - Too close for comfort? An examination of the curvilinear relations between perceived mother child closeness and maternal cortisol

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

Human beings are inherently social creatures, and perceived closeness with other individuals has been documented to have several positive benefits such as diminishing stress (Umberson & Montez, 2010), reducing risk of loneliness (Hall et al., 2020) and buffering the relations between negative parenting and child outcomes (Sichko et al., 2016). At the same time, however, related work suggests that closeness can have negative repercussions in the caregiving domain. Specifically, research with parent-child dyads suggests that high levels of parental empathy, when coupled with having children who display high levels of depressive symptoms, can come at a physiological cost to the parents, namely higher cytokine production–a sign of systemic inflammation (Manczak et al., 2016). Still other studies demonstrate that parenting itself is associated with strain, frustration, exhaustion (Blair-Loy, 2003; Deaton & Stone, 2013; Musick et al., 2016) and lower subjective wellbeing (Aassve et al., 2012; Hansen, 2012), particularly in mothers (Hansen, 2012; Musick et al., 2016; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003). This is consistent with work that demonstrates in stressful caregiving situations, there is a need to balance both distance and closeness (Blomberg & Sahlberg-Blom, 2005). In light of these trends, non linear models testing the relations between maternal perceptions of mother-child closeness and objective markers of stress is much needed. Our sample consisted of 117 mother (Mage = 36.75, SD = 5.18) and child dyads (Mage = 72.68 months, SD = 1.32, 50.86% male) who participated in a study on parenting and social emotional development. We hypothesized a quadratic relationship between maternal perceived closeness with child, measured by the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) scale (Aron & Aron, 1997), and chronic maternal stress as indexed by hair cortisol (Liu & Doan, 2018). Regression analyses were used to test our hypotheses. All models controlled for mother age, income, education, race, child age and child sex. Results suggest that the IOS quadratic term (β = 1.544, p = .019) was a significant predictor of maternal cortisol. Figure 1 illustrates the curvilinear relations. Our findings suggest that both high and low perceived closeness predict greater maternal stress as compared to moderate levels of closeness.

Authors

• Kavya Swaminathan

• Samantha MacDonald

• Alexandra Sara Aringer, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Mayela Norwood, Claremont McKenna College

• Stacey N Doan, Claremont Mckenna College