Temperament and Parenting

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Temperament and Parenting

• Lea Rose Dougherty
• Social and Personality Development
• Fall, 2004

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Why Study Child Temperament?

• Researchers have recognized the importance of
  examining intrapersonal factors, such as
  temperament, as certain dispositional
  characteristics have been associated with, and
  predictive of, behavioral maladjustment
• Intrapersonal factors affect
• Interpersonal relationships
• Development of psychopathology
• Therapy Outcome

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Overview of Lecture

• The Role of Parenting in the Development of
  Temperament
• Behavioral Inhibition and Parenting Behaviors

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Influences of Parenting and Temperament on Child
Development

• Bell (1968) reconceptualized socialization as a
  mutually interactive process, with both child and
  caregiver seeking to redirect, reduce or augment
  the behavior of the other
• Researchers began to recognize that children
  differ in such qualities as responsiveness to
  parental socialization strategies, capacity to
  control their emotional reactivity, and capacity
  to bring pleasure or distress to their parents
• As Rothbart (1989, p. 195) put it, the infants
  temperament regulates and is regulated by the
  actions of others from the earliest hours.

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Research on Temperament and Parenting

• Temperament and parenting are linked, but it is
  difficult to predict on theoretical grounds what
  the nature of the association should be
• Conceptual and Methodological Issues
• Genetic similarity of parent and child
• Nonindependence of measures (parent reports)
• Any association between concurrent parenting and
  child temperament may also be the result of
  childrearing history
• Few studies allow unambiguous interpretation of
  results

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Research on Temperament and Parenting

• Distress-related temperament attributes (e.g.,
  irritability, difficultness, negative mood) are
  associated with poorer parenting and general
  unresponsiveness (e.g., Hemphill Sanson, 2000
  Hinde, 1989 Linn Horrowitz, 1983)
• Childs positive affect and self-regulation are
  associated with parental responsiveness, social
  interaction, and use of rewards (e.g., Hinde,
  1989 Kyrios Prior, 1990)

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Research on Temperament and Parenting

• It is also possible to argue for another
  association between parenting and child
  temperament
• There are both positive and negative parenting
  correlates of difficult temperament
• Maternal warmth and negative dominance (Rubin et
  al., 1998)
• Cognitive assistance and disapproval from mothers
  (Gauvain Fagot, 1995)
• Thus, difficult temperament may be related to
  widely divergent parenting behaviors

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Intervening Variables Inconsistency in Findings
Why?

• Childs age
• Parents may begin by investing greater amounts of
  time and energy in their distress-prone child,
  but may not be able to sustain this effort over
  time
• Childs gender
• Less parental acceptance of irritability and NE
  in girls than boys
• More parental acceptance of shyness in girls and
  irritability in boys

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Intervening Variables

• Parental characteristics
• Maternal anxiety, self-efficacy, depression,
  personality
• Social and cultural factors
• SES
• Social support
• Different cultures (e.g., parents greater
  acceptance of BI in Asian Cultures)

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Parent and Child Factors in the Development of
Attachment

• Debate continues regarding the relation of
  temperament to attachment (whether the Strange
  Situation is really measuring temperament or
  attachment?)
• Some argue that if temperament is related to
  attachment, then some fundamental processes of
  attachment theory may be incorrect
• This need not be the case!
• From a transactional perspective, it is more
  likely that some combination of individual and
  contextual factors are involved in the
  development of attachment relationships (Cassidy,
  1994)

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Temperament and Parenting Cumulative Influences
on Adjustment

• Additive effects
• Toddler temperament and parental discipline were
  independently related to childrens antisocial
  and coercive behavior when they were 5-7 years
  old (Fisher Fagot, 1992)
• Cumulative risk factors
• Combination of infant difficult temperament and
  poor mother-child relationship was the most
  reliable indicator in the prediction of 4-5 year
  old childrens INT and EXT behavior problems
  (Sanson et al., 1991)
• Resilience factor
• The sociable and adaptable child elicits more
  care and concern from those who can help protect
  the child from adverse outcomes

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Temperament-Parenting Interactions and Adjustment

• Multiplicative combinations of temperament and
  parent variables in the prediction of outcomes
• Views of temperament as a moderator of parenting
  may be usefully applied to prevention programs
  that promote parental sensitivity to childrens
  temperament in the choice of socialization
  techniques
• Views of parenting as a moderator of temperament
  focus more specifically on how parent behavior
  may act as risk or protective factors in child
  development

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Temperament-Parenting Interactions and Adjustment

• An more in-depth example of the multiplicative
  relation between temperament and parenting
• Behavioral Inhibition and Parenting

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What is Behavioral Inhibition?

• Traditional Definition
• A pattern of responding or behaving, possibly
  biologically based, such that when unfamiliar or
  challenging situations are encountered, the child
  shows signs of anxiety, distress, and wariness
  (Kagan, 1989)
• Measurement of BI
• A paradigm developed by Kagan, wherein toddlers
  reactions to unfamiliar objects and adults are
  observed in an unfamiliar setting
• Employed in the very early years of childhood
  (later?)

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Why is the Development of BI Important?

• Later social adjustment problems
• BI many be an early precursor of internalizing
  behavior problems such as anxious and depressive
  symptoms
• Associated with right frontal EEG asymmetry and
  increased cortisol secretion
• Yet, the stability of BI is moderate at best
  (e.g., Broberg, 1993)

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Why is the Stability of BI Only Moderate?

• It is possible that different types of inhibition
  in very early childhood may predict different
  outcome
• Inhibition in the face of unfamiliar peers may be
  very different than BI in the face of unfamiliar
  objects and adults
• Key factors exogenous to the child, such as
  parenting, may play a role in the stability of BI
• Certain parenting practices may increase or
  decrease childrens wariness or fearfulness
  during peer interaction

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What Aspects of Parenting are Important to the
Development of BI?

• Overprotection
• The provision of help and physical comfort in
  situations in which it is not required, as well
  as the intrusive restriction of independence
• Parental Criticism and Derision
• Parents who are critical and derisive, especially
  in the company of others, may incite the
  development of negative thoughts and feelings of
  the self and withdrawal from the social world

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Limitations of Research on Temperament and
Parenting

• Studies primarily involved only concurrent or
  very short term longitudinal analyses of toddler
  and parenting behaviors
• Few, if any, investigators have examined
  inhibition and parenting behaviors as predictors
  of subsequent socially reticent behavior among
  both males and females
• There is a need to examine the extent to which BI
  and parenting independently and interactively
  predict social behavioral and psychological
  outcomes for young children

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Tackling some of these limitations

• Rubin, Burgess, and Hastings (2002) employed a
  prospective longitudinal design
• Assessments at Age 2 and 4
• T1 BI with unfamiliar objects, adults and
  peers parenting behaviors
• T2 Peer play session show and tell speeches

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Findings

• Meaningful specificity was found in the stability
  of behavioral patterns
• Early inhibition appears to be linked to specific
  patterns of social responsiveness underlaid with
  anxiety
• Both traditional and peer-social BI at age 2
  predicted socially reticent behavior during free
  play at 4 years
• What role does parenting play in the development
  of childrens socially reticent behavior?

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Findings The Role of Early Parenting in
Predicting Reticent Behavior in Preschoolers

• If mothers demonstrated relatively high
  frequencies of intrusive control and/or derisive
  comments, then the association between their
  toddlers peer inhibition and 4-year social
  reticence was significant and positive
• Whereas if mothers were neither intrusive nor
  derisive, then toddlers peer inhibition and
  4-year reticence were not significantly
  associated
• Thus, maternal behaviors moderated the relation
  between toddlers peer inhibition and
  preschoolers social reticence

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Conclusions Temperament and Parenting

• Childs temperament is apparent from early
  infancy and is an important influence on
  development
• Temperament is moderately stable over time, but
  is by no means immutable
• Temperament contributes to a wide range of child
  outcomes in behavioral, cognitive and social
  domains
• The task for parents in thinking about
  temperament is to take their childs particular
  characteristics into account when choosing
  parenting strategies and in arranging their
  overall childrearing environment

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Criticisms and Future Directions

• An atheoretical approach to the measurement of
  temperament is not likely to advance knowledge
• Obtain clean measures of both temperament and
  parenting
• Future research needs to specify the
  developmental models being tested and be explicit
  about expected direct, mediated, and moderated
  effects (theory..please!)
• Increase specificity, moving from more global
  measures of temperament, to more specific
  dimensions, along with clearly specified
  dimensions of parenting
• Dont forget gender and fathers

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References

• Bell, R.Q. (1968). A reinterpretation of the
  direction of effects in studies of socialization.
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• Broberg, A.G. (1993). Inhibition and childrens
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• Cassidy, J. (1994). Emotion regulation
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ReviewersLisa BurckellDaniela Owen