Poster #141 - Maternal Gatekeeping, Father Involvement, and Infant Attachment Security in Mexican Americans: A Pilot Study

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Mexican Americans are exposed to and influenced by cultures of Mexico and United States, which influences how mothers and fathers raise their children (Bornstein & Cote, 2001). Level of acculturation can regulate thinking and behavior toward providing care (George & Solomon, 2008).
Maternal gatekeeping is broadly defined as facilitative and inhibitory behaviors that mothers employ with the goal of regulating fathering behavior (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2008). Mothers can open the gate with support and encouragement or close the gate with criticism or control (Fagan & Cherson, 2017). Gate closing is linked to less father involvement (DeLuccie, 1995; Fagan & Barnett, 2003; McBride et al., 2005) and lower parenting quality (Altenburger et al., 2018). Numerous studies have demonstrated that quality of care is an important predictor of infant attachment (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; Fearon & Belsky, 2016).
The purpose of this pilot study is to examine relationships between maternal gatekeeping, father involvement, and infant attachment security in Mexican American mothers and fathers with their toddler.
Methods
Participants were 27 Mexican American mothers, fathers, and 12- to 18-month-old child (median = 14 months). All toddlers (16 boys and 11 girls) were born in the United States. Demographic characteristics of mothers and fathers are presented in Table 1.
Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II; Cuéllar et al., 1995) assessed acculturation by measuring orientation towards Mexican culture and generation level. Paternal Involvement in Child Care Index (PICCI; Radin, 1982) assessed father’s availability and responsibility for care of their child.
Mothers and fathers were videotaped while playing together with their child for 10 minutes in structured and unstructured tasks with novel toys (McHale, 1995). Mothers’ behaviors were coded for facilitation and negative control (Altenburger, 2012). Strange Situations of mother-child and father-child were reliably coded (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Attachment disorganization was not considered, a dichotomous secure-insecure variable was created, and the significance level was raised to .10 due to the small sample size.
Preliminary Results
Table 2 shows fathers’ Mexican orientation was negatively correlated with facilitation. These results suggest that mothers were less encouraging of fathering behavior when fathers were more Mexican oriented. Fathers’ Mexican orientation was positively correlated with responsibility, and father responsibility was positively correlated with infant-mother attachment security. These findings indicate that more Mexican-oriented fathers perceived higher responsibility in childcare, and mothers that perceived higher father responsibility had securely attached infants. Father availability was correlated with infant attachment insecurity for both mothers and fathers. These results suggest that mothers and fathers with higher perceived father availability in childcare was associated with insecure infant-mother and infant-father attachment relationships.
Implications
Mexican-oriented fathers perceive higher responsibility in childrearing, but receive less maternal facilitation of their caregiving efforts. Fathers’ availability in childcare appears to have a detrimental effect on infant attachment security in this sample. The lack of significant findings relating maternal gatekeeping and father involvement is contrary to existing literature. Results suggest that the mechanisms underlying these relationships may function differently or have different meaning for Mexican Americans than other studied cultures.

Author

• Jennifer Ross, Tuskegee University
  Presenting Author