Poster #149 - The Academic Implications of Parental Intrusion: A Mediating Path Through Children’s Relational Representations

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Internal working models can be thought of as the lenses through which children understand the world, themselves, and others (Bretherton, 1990). Caregivers play a crucial role in shaping these mental representations to the extent that if caregiving experiences are good, children carry forward positive expectations of others, and, in turn, of themselves (Bowlby, 1973). Evidence supports these assertions in early development, but fewer studies have focused on middle childhood. Likewise, several studies point to concurrent relations between representation and adjustment, but fewer have done so prospectively and across settings. The current study sought to address these gaps in the literature by evaluating hypothesized relations between observations of maternal intrusion at age four on children’s representations of the mother at age six and, in turn, from children’s caregiver representations to the child’s relationship quality with teachers in the school setting one year later, with negative consequences for child academic achievement.
Participants were 245 child/caregiver dyads who were participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of child development. Five dyads of the original 250 were excluded because the caregiver changed between the time of the parenting observation and the assessment of the child’s representation. Intrusive parenting was measured by independent raters who coded a series of parent-child interactions across four laboratory administered teaching tasks at age four. At age six, children completed six stems from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB; Bretherton, Oppenheim, Buchsbaum, Emde, & the MacArthur Narrative Group, 1990), and independent raters coded the stories. For the present analyses, a composite of negative mother themes was used, consisting of the following ratings: harsh mother, rejecting mother, ineffectual mother, and controlling mother, across all stories. At age seven, teacher-child conflict was measured using teacher reports on the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 2001), and children’s academic achievement was assessed one year later in the laboratory using the Woodcock Johnson IV Letter-Word subtest score. Missing data were handled using Full Information Maximum Likelihood estimation in Mplus. The path analysis controlled for child IQ and family socioeconomic status at age four.
The final model fit the data well with a CFI of .94, SRMR of .03, and a RMSEA of .14. Results revealed a significant indirect pathway between parental intrusiveness and lower academic achievement via negative the child’s negative representation of the mother and elevated rates of teacher-child conflict in the school setting. These findings support a core tenet of attachment theory, which is that children’s representations of the parent may be carried over time and across settings with enduring implications for child development.

Authors

• Jessie M Bridgewater, University of California, Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Sara R. Berzenski, California State University, Northridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tuppett M Yates, University of California, Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author