Parent relationship quality and infant-mother attachment.

This project examined interrelations between father-mother conflict, father support of mother, maternal behavior, and infant-mother attachment within a sample of 79 African American families living in a highly stressed urban community. Father support of mother was not related to maternal parenting behavior or infant attachment. Conflicted mother-father relationships were associated with problematic maternal behavior, low maternal sensitivity, infant attachment insecurity, and infant attachment disorganization. The associations between parental conflict and both infant attachment disorganization and insecurity were buffered in families in which fathers co-resided with the mother. Consistent with theory and prior research, links were also observed between maternal sensitive-responsiveness and infant attachment security and between problematic maternal parenting and infant attachment disorganization. However, maternal parenting behavior did not mediate the relation between parental conflict and infant attachment. Results are discussed with respect to whether and under what circumstances child exposure to parent conflict can have a direct effect on infant-mother attachment that is not mediated through dyadic infant-mother interaction.

Mothers' representations of their infants and parenting behavior: Associations with personal and social-contextual variables in a high-risk sample.

Associations between mothers' psychological distress, experiences of verbal and violent relational conflict, representations of the relationships with their infants, and parenting behavior were examined in 100 African American mothers of 17- to 20-month-old infants. Maternal representations of infants were assessed via the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI; Zeanah, Benoit, Hirshberg, & Barton, 1986). Results showed that mothers who experienced more conflict with their own mothers had increased odds of having disengaged representations of the relationship with their infants. Mothers who experienced more conflict with their infants' fathers had increased odds of having distorted views of their infants. Mothers who reported more hostile psychological symptomalogy had greater odds of not having a balanced representation of their infants (distorted or disengaged). Additionally, mothers with disengaged representations were less sensitive, more passive, and used less encouragement and guidance with their children. Maternal hostility and conflict were directly related to parenting and were not mediated by representations. Results show that representations and parenting behavior are linked and multiply determined.

Mother expectation of bother and infant attachment behaviors as predictors of mother and child communication at 24 months in children of methadone-maintained women.

This study used a transactional model of development (Sameroff, 1975) to test whether methadone exposure, mother's expectation of her future infant's degree of bother during pregnancy, infant attachment behaviors assessed at 12 months, and mother and child communication assessed at 24 months reciprocally influence each other in a sample of 30 full-term, African American toddlers exposed in utero to methadone and 42 comparison toddlers. Toddlers were videotaped at 24 months communicating with their mothers in eight scripted situations and at 12 months participating in a separation-reunion procedure to assess attachment behaviors. Mothers in both groups were comparable on race, education, age, SES, parity, IQ, and marital status. The relation between methadone exposure and the quality of mother communication was found to be moderated by mother's expectation of her future infant's degree of bother and mediated by avoidant attachment behavior. Infants' disorganized attachment behavior predicted their own lower quality communication at 24 months regardless of methadone exposure. The organization of affect regulation in both members of the dyad can differentially affect the ways in which methadone exposure impacts on the quality of mother communication by 24 months. Results suggest that preventive intervention is most likely to succeed when both mothers and children participate.