Mother–Child Relationships and Children’s Psychosocial Functioning: The Specific Roles of Attachment Security and Maternal Behavior

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This paper aimed to examine the contributions of a second assessment time point of attachment security, along with assessments of maternal behavior (sensitivity and autonomy support), to the prediction of children’s behavior problems. Design. Maternal behavior and mother–child attachment were assessed in 73 mother–child dyads when children were between 15 months and 26 months old. Children’s internalizing and externalizing problems were reported by their teachers in kindergarten and first grade. Results. Each assessment time point of attachment security, as well as maternal behavior, explained comparable portions of the variance in children’s anxious/depressed behavior, jointly predicting more than three times the variance explained by either measure of attachment alone. Conclusion. Researchers should consider a multidimensional approach to the assessment of the quality of mother–child relationships, at least when attempting to explain the development of child internalizing problems.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding: This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [grant number MOP-119390], the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 410-2010-1366], and le Fonds de Recherche du Québec––Société et Culture [grant number 2012-RP-144923].

Role of the Funders/Sponsors: None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to express their gratitude to Émilie Rochette, Nadine Marzougui, Natasha Ballen, Natasha Whipple, Isabelle Demers, Jessica Laranjo, Véronique Jarry-Boileau, Célia Matte-Gagné, Marie Deschênes, Stéphanie Bordeleau, Christine Gagné, Andrée-Anne Bouvette-Turcot, Émilie Tétreault, Marie-Ève Bélanger, Gabrielle Lalonde, Sarah Hertz, Élizabel Leblanc, Élodie Larose-Grégoire, Catherine Cimon-Paquet, and Rachel Perrier for help with data collection, as well as George M. Tarabulsy who trained home visitors. Special thanks go to the participating families of the Grandir Ensemble project who generously opened their homes to us. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the University of Montreal is not intended and should not be inferred.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [grant number MOP-119390], the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 410-2010-1366], and le Fonds de Recherche du Québec––Société et Culture [grant number 2012-RP-144923].