Does Mothers’ Self-Construal Contribute to Parenting Beyond Socioeconomic Status and Maternal Efficacy? an Exploratory Study of Turkish Mothers

This study examined the relative contribution of mothers’ self-construal to parenting above and beyond family socioeconomic status (SES) and maternal efficacy beliefs about parenting. A total of 58 Turkish mothers and their preschool-aged children participated in dyadic tasks in the laboratory setting. For the measurement of parenting, direct behavioral observations of mother–child interactions in three interaction contexts were utilized, and mother ratings of emotion socialization were obtained. Mothers also reported on their parenting efficacy, self-construal, child temperament, and family demographics. Results revealed a more balanced endorsement of autonomous and relational self-characteristics as well as more sensitive parenting among higher SES mothers. Furthermore, mothers’ self-construal contributed unique variance to the prediction of sensitive parenting over and above SES, maternal efficacy and child temperament. Yet, in the prediction of negatively controlling parenting, mothers’ self-construal did not account for unique variance. Lower parenting efficacy and lower SES were the only predictors of punishing, overriding, and distress magnifying responses. Finally, results indicated a marginally significant indirect effect from SES to sensitive parenting via autonomous-related self-construal, controlling for the indirect effect of maternal efficacy

Maternal Self-Construal, Maternal Socialization of Emotions and Child Emotion Regulation in a Sample of Romanian Mother-Toddler Dyads

Over the recent years, there is growing recognition of the social and cultural regulatory processes that act upon individual emotions. The adult-to-child social regulation of emotion is even more relevant, given the development of child self-regulatory abilities during early years. Although it is acknowledged that parental regulatory attempts to their children’s emotional expressions are influenced by cultural models, relatively little is known about the specific relationship between parental cultural models and socialization practices that foster emotion self-regulation, particularly in the case of toddlers. Therefore, in the present study, our first aim was to examine, in a Romanian sample of mother-toddler dyads, the relationships between maternal cultural model of self and maternal regulatory attempts targeting toddlers’ emotions during a delay of gratification task, while controlling for maternal perceptions of child individual characteristics, namely temperament. The second aim was to analyze, within the delay of gratification task, the relations between maternal regulatory attempts, child regulatory strategies and child affect expression, as the outcome of emotion regulation. Results showed that mothers scored higher for Independence as compared to Interdependence dimensions of self-construal. Also, the multidimensional analysis of self-construal revealed that Autonomy/Assertiveness scores were significantly higher than Relational Interdependent scores. Moreover, different dimensions of Independence predicted different maternal regulatory strategies employed during the delay of gratification task. This pattern of results suggests that maternal representations of an independent self, evidenced in our sample, are reflected in regulatory practices, aimed to develop primary control in the toddler. Moreover, our data revealed several significant associations between maternal regulatory strategies and child regulatory strategies expressed during the delay of gratification task. Finally, we demonstrated that child self-regulation mediated the relation between maternal regulatory attempts and child expression of affect during this task

Emotion Displays in Media: A Comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish Children’s Storybooks

Children\u27s books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children\u27s storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze culture norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. We expected that all children\u27s storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that US children\u27s storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness) less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the US storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup) may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to US storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children\u27s storybooks (10 for each cultural group) were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed

Cumulative and interactive influences of risk and protective factors upon social competence of low income preschool children

This study was designed to empirically test and compare two models on the operation of multiple risk, protective factors, and children\u27s social competence. Specifically, the cumulative risk model was tested to explore relations between children\u27s social competence and a cumulative risk index (CRI) of demographic, family, and child risk factors. Next, the interactive risk model was tested through evaluating the potential moderating effect of maternal efficacy and child temperament on the relation between the CRI and preschoolers\u27 social competence. Consistent with past research and supporting the cumulative risk model, the results of this study showed that the CRI was significantly and negatively related to Head Start preschoolers\u27 social competence as measured by teacher ratings of social competence and the aggregated (teacher and observer ratings combined) social competence scores. However, the CRI did not account for significant variance in observational ratings of interactive peer play. Second, contrary to our expectations, we failed to find an additive relation of the CRI with efficacy and temperament variables when predicting preschoolers\u27 social competence. On the other hand, promotive effects of less inhibited and impulsive child temperament were identified such that less inhibited and less impulsive child temperament predicted higher rates of social competence scores. Finally, having a less impulsive or less inhibited temperamental style did not protect children from the negative effects of multiple risk exposure as hypothesized by the interactive risk model. Contrary to our expectations, for children rated by their teachers and caregivers as lower in inhibition, higher number of environmental risk factors resulted in lower teacher-rated social competence, while for children rated as higher in inhibition, comparable rates of teacher-rated social competence were obtained under both high- and low risk environments. The findings are discussed within the context that the influence of multiple risk can be better understood under a cumulative but a linearly weighted cumulative risk approach. Finally, statistical as well as methodological considerations to explain insignificant moderation effect of the maternal efficacy and child temperament on the relation between the CRI and preschoolers\u27 social competence were discussed

Does Parental Mood or Efficacy Mediate the Influence of Environmental Chaos Upon Parenting Behavior?

Using repeated observational and questionnaire data from 57 infants and their parents, lower parental efficacy perceptions and higher parental negative mood states were evaluated as potential mediators to explain the adverse influence of environmental chaos on parenting. Factor analysis revealed noise- and crowdingchaos dimensions in the home. Higher scores on both chaos dimensions were related to less responsive and stimulating parenting. Home chaos was generally unrelated to parental ratings of distressed mood, but parents reported a lower sense of efficacy as noise level in home increased. However, our data did not support predicted links between measures of parenting and efficacy. The overall pattern of results indicates that neither parental mood nor efficacy appears to mediate relations between home chaos and parenting behavior

Cultural Variation in Positive Affect: Shared Smiling Among US, Turkish, and Romanian Mother-Toddler Dyads During a Contentment Task

Although cultural differences in caregivers emotion socialization goals and specific parenting practices have been documented, caregivers socialization of positive emotions and mother-child experiences of mutual positive affect has received little empirical attention to date in cross-cultural research. Expression encouragement and mirroring the childs expression are strategies that are relevant for promoting the childs positive emotion expression. Childs expressions of excitement may also be dampened by the mother if not appropriate. We created a joyful activity for the child and were interested in the mothers support or initiating of positive affect during this task. Although the task may not evoke strong positive emotions, we expected more frequent and more intense smiling in the US dyads, and more initiated smiling by the mothers compared to Turkish and Romanian dyads. As the childs positive expression may also be affected by the childs temperament, we controlled for this variable. N = 52 US dyads, N = 54 Turkish dyads, and N = 30 Romanian dyads participated in the study. The child was asked to color a picture and mother and child were sitting at a table and videotaped for three minutes. The presence or absence of (1) shared positive affect (i.e., co-occurring mother-child smiling or laughter), (2) mother-only positive affect, and (3) child-only positive affect expression was coded in 5-second intervals for occurrence and intensity. The videotapes were cross-coded by raters from all three countries and the interrater reliability was high. Mothers also filled out the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ, Putnam & Rothbart, 2006) and socio-demographic information. Preliminary results pointed to significant cultural differences: US dyads displayed mutual positive affect significantly more often and more intense than Turkish and Romanian dyads during the coloring activity. This difference was significant before and after controlling for child negative affectivity. Detailed results will be presented and the findings will be discussed with respect to child-rearing attitudes and socio-emotional values in independent and interdependent cultures