Mother-Child Bidirectional Influences on Prosocial Development: A Domains Approach

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Positive parenting practices foster children’s prosocial development. Maternal warmth and inductive reasoning have both been consistently associated with children’s concern for others. The domains model of socialization contends that distinct parenting behaviors are needed for scaffolding children’s specific competencies within distinct domains (protection, reciprocity, group participation, guided learning, control). In the control domain, parents socialize moral behavior through inductive reasoning, enabling children to take perspective and reflect upon other’s needs. Although evidence indicates that maternal warmth is influential for prosocial development, from a domains perspective, inductive reasoning may be particularly important for children’s development of concern for others. The present study aimed to disentangle the unique influences of these distinct positive parenting practices by examining the concurrent and prospective, bidirectional relations between maternal warmth and reasoning and young children’s concern for others over two years. Further, these associations were tested in two independent samples – a community sample (Study 1, N=71) and a sample with externalizing risk (Study 2, N=98).

Identical measures of maternal warmth, maternal reasoning, and children’s concern were used at ages 4 and 6 in both studies. Mothers reported on their parenting, and children’s concern was observed in response to an accident simulation. In Study 2, targeted recruitment was used to obtain a sample that was over-represented for externalizing problems as indicated on the Child Behavior Checklist – Externalizing Problems (CBCL-EP; 37% above subclinical cut-off). A median split of the CBCL-EP created a low risk group (CBCL-EP <51, n=53) and a high risk group (CBCL-EP >51, n=45) to probe for EP as a moderator of socialization.

In Study 1, a cross-lagged model (CLM; χ2(2)=1.13, p=.57, RMSEA=0.00, NFI=.99; Figure 1) showed that warmth predicted children’s concern over two years (β=0.79, p=.04) whereas reasoning did not (β=-0.02, p=.96). Following bidirectional socialization models, however, children’s earlier concern predicted later maternal reasoning (β=-0.09, p=.04). In Study 2, allowing paths to vary between the low and high externalizing groups improved model fit relative to constraining paths to be the equal, suggesting that EP moderated the associations (χ2(43) = 61.04, p = .04). The Study 2 CLM (χ2(8)=5.70, p=.67 RMSEA=0.00, NFI=.98) with multigroup comparison revealed that earlier warmth predicted subsequent concern only for children with elevated EP (β=1.40, p=.03), partially replicating Study 1 (Figure 2).

These findings provide mixed support for the domains model, suggesting that warmth – an indicator of relationship quality and potentially of the protection domain – may be particularly important for fostering concern for others in early childhood. Warm, comforting maternal parenting practices may be especially salient in facilitating effective emotion regulation in children with elevated EP who may have more difficulty in regulating their own negative arousal when witnessing another in distress, enabling them to respond prosocially. Regarding reasoning, mothers may adjust reasoning in response to their child’s behavior. Mothers of highly prosocial children may reduce reasoning because their child already displays the desired behavior. Conversely, mothers of less prosocial children may increase reasoning to scaffold prosociality. Comprehensively, these findings suggest that children may differentially benefit from different positive parenting practices.

Authors

• Lindsey Partington, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Paul David Hastings, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author