In mother-child attachment, kid’s temperament linked: Study

“(Moreover) children with difficult temperaments tend to have more frequent and less constructive conflict with mothers,” the study’s lead author Prof Deborah Laible was quoted by the ‘Child Development’ journal as saying.

Prof Laible of Lehigh University and his fellow researchers at the University of California-Davis recruited 60 mothers and their children through birth announcements in local newspapers.

Subsequently, they observed the participants in two sessions — one 50-minute lab visit when the children were 30 months old, and one 90-minute home visit when the kids were 36 months old.

During each observation, the researchers looked at all episodes of conflict, and examined whether they contained compromise, justification, or aggravation by both mothers and kids. They also examined whether the conflicts were resolved.

Mothers provided information about the children’s temperament and attachment security, or the degree of trust that children have in their mothers’ responsiveness and availability.

The researchers found that mother-child conflict during both observations was frequent (20 times an hour), and there was a lot of variation in the frequency of conflict (from as many as 55 times an hour to as few as five times an hour) and in the quality of conflict between mothers and kids.

Furthermore, children’s temperament was related to the frequency and quality of conflict, that is, children who were highly active and who had problems controlling their behaviour had more conflict with mothers than less active children and children who did not have trouble controlling their behaviour.

In addition, highly active children and children who frequently and intensely experienced negative emotions had less constructive conflict with their mothers, involving less resolution, more aggravation, and less justification, than children who did not have these qualities.

Attachment security was not related to the frequency of conflict between mothers and their children, but to the quality, the study found. Mothers and children who had secure relationships had constructive conflict involving high levels of resolution, compromise, and justification.

In sum, both the quality of children’s relationships with their mothers and children’s personality types were found to shape the nature of conflict between mothers and their children at age two.