Maternal Care and Control as Mediators in the Relationship Between Mothers’ and Adult Children’s Psychosocial Problems

ABSTRACT

The current research investigated the relationship between mothers’ and adult children’s psychosocial problems through two different aspects of maternal interactions. Data were collected from family triads (N = 286), including a mother, a child, and a sibling. Mothers and their adult children completed measures of depression, loneliness, and self-esteem. The assessment of the maternal interaction variables (i.e., maternal care and maternal control) involved the perspectives of a sibling to minimize common method variance. Results partially supported the hypothesized model, wherein maternal care (but not maternal control) mediated the relationship between mothers’ depression, loneliness, and self-esteem to that of their children. Specifically, mothers who reported higher levels of psychosocial problems had children who reported that their mothers were less caring and, in turn, less maternal care was associated with higher levels of psychosocial problems in their young adult children.

Notes

^1. Because the siblings were all daughters but the adult child could be either brother or sister, we conducted paired t-tests to explore sex differences for each dependent variable. For maternal care, the means from opposite sex focal participants and their siblings were 4.19 and 3.94, respectively (t = 3.61, p < .05); for same sex siblings the respective means were 4.18 and 3.94 (t = 3.81, p < .05). For maternal control, the means for opposite sex siblings were 2.23 and 2.50 (t = 4.38, p < .05); the corresponding means for same sex siblings were 2.34 and 2.53 (t = 3.04, p < .05). So, although there were differences between focal participants’ and siblings’ reports of maternal care and control, there is no evidence that these differences are exaggerated or attenuated as a function of same sex versus opposite sex sibling dyads.