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Maternal Sensitivity and Child Responsiveness: Associations with Social Context, Maternal Characteristics, and Child Characteristics in a Multivariate Analysis
Author(s) -
Bornstein Marc H.,
Hendricks Charlene,
Haynes O. Maurice,
Painter Kathleen M.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2007.tb00240.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , firstborn , maternal sensitivity , socioeconomic status , context (archaeology) , personality , multilevel model , birth order , social psychology , demography , population , paleontology , machine learning , sociology , computer science , biology
This study examined unique associations of multiple distal context variables (family socioeconomic status [SES], maternal employment, and paternal parenting) and proximal maternal (personality, intelligence, and knowledge; behavior, self‐perceptions, and attributions) and child (age, gender, representation, language, and sociability) characteristics with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness in 254 European American mothers and their firstborn 20‐month‐olds. Specific unique relations emerged in hierarchical regression analyses. Mothers who worked fewer hours per week and reported less dissonance in their husbands' didactic parenting, whose children spoke using more vocabulary, and who reported less limit setting in their parenting and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes were observed to be more sensitive in their interactions with their children. Children in higher SES families, whose mothers worked fewer hours and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes, and who themselves used more vocabulary were observed to be more responsive in their interactions with their mothers. Although potential associations are many, when considered together, unique associations with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness are few, and some are shared whereas others are unique.