Maternal self-efficacy and infant attachment: integrating physiology, perceptions, and behavior

48 mothers of 5-month-old infants were asked to estimate their control over the termination of an infant cry in a laboratory-simulated child-care task. Mothers who greatly overestimated their control differed from low or moderate "illusion-of-control" mothers by exhibiting a depression-prone attributional style, a depressed mood state, perceiving the father as participating less in child care, and responding to impending infant cries with heart-rate acceleration characteristic of aversive conditioning. At age 16 months, 40 of the mother-infant pairs participated in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Insecure infant attachment at 16 months was associated with maternal perception of overcontrol, depressed mood state, and aversive conditioning to the impending cry in the laboratory task at the 5-month period.     

Maternal sensitivity and patterns of infant-mother attachment

48 12-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Each infant-mother dyad was also filmed for 3 min while the mother completed a questionnaire and the infant was left to explore the room devoid of toys, a situation in which maternal compliance with the request to complete the questionnaire was expected to compete with attentional demands made on her by the infant. Infant-mother attachment was classified as secure, anxious-avoidant, or anxious-resistant on the basis of behavior in the Strange Situation. Assessment of maternal sensitivity during the questionnaire situation included behaviors classified as reflecting appropriate, insufficient, and intrusive responses to infant cues. 3 summary measures of maternal sensitivity, each of which distinguished between mothers of securely and anxiously attached infants in 1-way analysis of variance tests, were entered into a discriminant function analysis. Using the discriminant function coefficients for combining the maternal sensitivity scores, 94% of the infants were correctly classified as securely or anxiously attached on the basis of their mothers' behavior in the questionnaire situation.     

Maternal antenatal attachment style and potential fetal abuse

OBJECTIVE: Maternal antenatal emotional attachment (MAEA) to the fetus has been proposed as an important factor for the emergence of harm to the unborn child. The present study investigated whether MAEA was associated with self-reported intent to harm the fetus. METHOD: Forty pregnant women, referred for psychological evaluation, completed a self-report measure of MAEA, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-2 (MCMI-2) and confidential self-report questions on irritation with the fetus, urge to harm the fetus and predicted future loss of control with the child. Interview data was used to determine the mothers' adult attachment styles. RESULTS: (1) Negative preoccupied MAEA was associated with increased likelihood of reported irritation with the fetus, preoccupied adult attachment, borderline, histrionic, paranoid personality dimensions and symptoms of anxiety, mood disturbances and depression. (2) Negative disinterested MAEA was associated with a dismissing adult attachment, narcissistic, antisocial, aggressive-sadistic and passive-aggressive personality dimensions, alcohol dependence, but not self-report intention to harm the fetus. CONCLUSION: The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding difficulties which may emerge in mother-fetus bonding and the identification of and interventions for mothers who report an intention to harm the fetus.     

Treating twins as individuals: Maternal educative practices

For twins’ parents, the process of building up each child’s individuality is more complex than for singleton’s parents. The dyadic interaction becomes a triadic situation and the mother has to face the problem of distinguishing one twin from the other without comparing them. The analysis of mother’s twin care patterns provides highly relevant information on the processes promoting twins’ individualization and maternal adjustment to the triadic situation. An empirical study illustrates this point of view. It surveys forty parents of twins on their attitudes towards twin rearing and observes parental behaviour in the home to assess consistency between statements of actual practices. Observation and correspondence analysis show that: I) Some types of child care are more conductive to implementing differentiation strategies than others (dress and choice of toys in contrast to bedtime and meals); 2) mothers of twins who are explicit about child rearing practices are generally coherent about putting them into practice; mothers with less explicit views are less inclined to try to individualize their twins; 3) SES and degree of physical resemblance between twins both affect the type of differentiation strategies.     

Maternal adverse childhood experiences,attachment style,and mental health: Pathways of transmission to child behavior problems

BackgroundInvestigations have found mothers’ adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) confer an intergenerational risk to their children's outcomes. However, mechanisms underlying this transmission have only been partially explained by maternal mental health. Adult attachment insecurity has been shown to mediate the association of ACEs and mental health outcomes, yet an extension of this research to children's behavioral problems has not been examined.ObjectiveTo examine the cascade from maternal ACEs to risk for child behavioral problems at five years of age, via mothers’ attachment insecurity and mental health.Participants and settingParticipants in the current study were 1994 mother-child dyads from a prospective longitudinal cohort collected from January 2011 to October 2014.MethodsMothers retrospectively reported their ACEs when children were 36 months of age. When children were 60 months of age, mothers completed measures of their attachment style, depression and anxiety symptoms, and their children's behavior problems.ResultsPath analysis demonstrated maternal ACEs were associated with children's internalizing problems indirectly via maternal attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and depression symptoms, but not directly (β = .05, 95% CI [−.001, .10]). Maternal ACEs indirectly predicted children's externalizing problems via maternal attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and depression. A direct effect was also observed from maternal ACEs to child externalizing problems (β = .06, 95% CI [.01, .11]).ConclusionsMaternal ACEs influenced children's risk for poor behavioral outcomes via direct and indirect intermediary pathways. Addressing maternal insecure attachment style and depression symptoms as intervention targets for mothers with histories of ACEs may help to mitigate the intergenerational transmission of risk.     

Maternal separation in bonnet monkey infants: altered attachment and social support

Maternal separation in young pigtail (M. nemestrina) monkeys results in an agitation-depression reaction that is a useful animal model of the behavioral and physiological consequences and separation and loss experiences in humans. In this study, 5 social-group-living bonnet (M. radiata) monkey infants were separated from their mothers for 4 days, and behavioral, physiological, and sleep-pattern changes were monitored. Behavioral and physiological changes were consistent with an agitation reaction. There was evidence of depression in both behavioral and physiological measures; these changes were not as pronounced as in pigtail infants, however. All infants were adopted by another adult female during separation. Our findings suggest that, in bonnet monkey infants, adoption by a female within the social group ameliorates the response to loss.     

Maternal mind-mindedness and attachment security as predictors of theory of mind understanding

This study investigated relations between social interaction during infancy and children's subsequent theory of mind (ToM). Infant-mother pairs (N = 57) were observed in a free-play context at 6 months. Interactions were coded for (a) mothers' use of mental state language that commented appropriately on the infants' mental states, and (b) mothers' use of mental state language that did not appropriately reflect their infants' minds. A third variable was (c) security of attachment, which was assessed using the Strange Situation procedure at 12 months. Performance on a battery of ToM tasks at 45 and 48 months was positively correlated with (a), but was not related to (b) or (c). A regression analysis showed that mothers' use of appropriate mental state comments independently predicted overall ToM performance, accounting for 11% of the variance. Children's verbal ability was the only other independent predictor of ToM performance, accounting for 16% of the variance. These findings represent the earliest known social predictor of individual differences in ToM.     

Maternal questions while reading to deaf and hearing twins: a case study

This study examined the frequency and types of questions that a mother used during storybook reading sessions with her 3-year-old twin daughters. One had normal hearing and one was deaf. Results indicated that the mother asked almost twice as many questions of the hearing twin as she did of the deaf twin. The types of questions asked also varied. With the hearing twin, the mother primarily asked conventional test questions. While questions asked the deaf twin appeared to serve the same function as conventional test questions, they were asked in a form not examined in previous research. Differential changes in questions asked the twins across three reading sessions also were noted. Implications for the quality of language during book reading with young deaf children are discussed.     

Infant approach behavior as related to attachment.

The chief purpose of this study was to identify characteristics that distinguish approach as an attachment behavior from approach serving other behavioral systems. Locomotor approaches of 16 male and 10 female white middle-class infants to an attachment figure (the mother) and to a nonattachment figure (the visitor-observer) were examined under naturalistic conditions at home. Observations were made during 4-hour home visits at 3-week intervals; those from 26 to 54 weeks were used. When approach was examined in a free-choice situation and without regard to behavioral context, infants approached the mother proportionally (though slightly) more often than the visitor (p less than .05). In 2 behavioral contexts, however, spontaneous infant approaches were sharply differential to the mother; approaches accompanied by crying and approaches terminating in a pickup appeal were directed almost exclusively to the mother (p less than .0001 for both). Touching upon completion of the approach was not differential, except in the context of a pickup appeal. Object-oriented approaches were more often directed to the visitor than to the mother (p less than .002) and may be either exploratory or affiliative. It is suggested that neither approach nor touching can be assumed to serve the attachment system without consideration of context- both environmental and behavioral.     

Attachment behavior, attachment security, and temperament during infancy

In summary reviews and empirical research, investigators have suggested that attachment classifications derived from the Ainsworth Strange Situation may reflect variations along dimensions of temperament as well as, or perhaps instead of, individual differences with respect to infant-mother attachments. In this study, relations between temperament dimensions from the Infant Temperament Questionnaire (Revised) and Strange Situation behaviors were evaluated. Relations between the behavioral style scores and the categories of attachment quality were also tested. The hypothesis that temperamental difficulty would be related to negative emotionality, as indexed by infant distress during separation (but not during the reunions), was tested and supported. Neither the behavioral style dimensions nor the temperamental diagnoses (e.g., "easy" vs. "difficult") were associated significantly with attachment classifications. The results are consistent with previous findings that temperament measures do not predict attachment security. Nevertheless, certain behaviors indexing negative emotionality that may be observed in the context of the Strange Situation are related to temperamental variability.     

Effects of maternal interference on the attachment and exploratory behavior of one-year-olds

Effects of maternal interference on social behavior toward mother and exploratory play were examined in a laboratory experimental paradigm. Subjects were 40 1-year-olds and their mothers. Mothers of the 20 interference-group infants were instructed periodically to physically interfere with their child's independent object play during the first half of the observation session. A postinterference free-play period immediately followed. The 20 control-group infants were permitted by mother to play freely throughout the session. Groups were matched for exposure to play materials. Despite its aversiveness, interference had no subsequent effect on infant social initiatives to mother, responsiveness to mother's social bids, or exploratory play.