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Interpretations of Child Emotion Expressions and Coercive Parenting Practices Among Adolescent Mothers
Author(s) -
Strassberg Zvi,
Treboux Dominique
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
social development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1467-9507
pISSN - 0961-205X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9507.00112
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , attribution , anger , social psychology
This study examined the relation between adolescent mothers’ interpretations of various child emotion expressions and coercive parenting practices (n = 4 mother‐child dyads, child ages = 10–34 mos.). The more coercive mothers decoded a range of child emotion expressions as exhibiting greater anger, and attributed greater defiant intentions to the child, compared to less coercive mothers. The findings for attributions of defiance were robust, as they were independent of both emotion decoding and level of child difficulty. Findings are discussed with regard to (a) mothers’ basic assumptions about the child; (b) the robust character of attributions of defiance in relation to coercive parenting; (c) the potential implications of this study for research with adult mothers; and (d) investigation of temporal precedence and developmental pathways in the interrelations among child behavior, maternal cognition, and parenting behavior.