Impact of "intensive parenting attitude" on children's social competence via maternal parenting behavior.

"Intensive parenting" is a tendency to invest parents' time, money, and energy in their child. This also includes some gender bias concerning a mother being the best person to primarily raise her children. Some psychology scholars have pointed out that this attitude causes much stress, anxiety, depression, and a sense of guilt among mothers. However, its effects on children have yet to be revealed using an extensive survey, and this indicates the need to investigate any possible impact of an intensive parenting attitude on children. The aim of this study was to elucidate a link between a maternal intensive parenting attitude and their children's social competence through maternal parenting behavior. This was based on collecting data from 675 Japanese women who were mothers of preschoolers using the Japanese version of the Intensive Parenting Attitude Questionnaire, the Positive and Negative Parenting Scale, and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire. The results showed that the "Essentialism," "Fulfillment," and "Child-centered" components of intensive parenting attitude influenced the "involvement and monitoring" and "positive responsivity" of parenting behavior. Furthermore, these two parenting behaviors affected children's prosocial behavior and hyperactivity/inattention. These findings suggest that an intensive parenting attitude has some impact on children as well as mothers, both positively and negatively, pointing to a serious effect on society.

Individual differences in changes in infants' interest in social signals in relation to developmental index.

Detection of social signals, such as biological motion and social causality, is of basic importance in early infancy. There have also been some accounts that infants' visual preference or reaction to social signals change during development because of their changing understanding of such signals, and the detective abilities of primary social signals are related to later social development. In this study, we attempted to find different developmental patterns in individuals in terms of their visual preference for biological motion and socially causal movements at 4, 9, and 18 months and 4 and 9 months, respectively, using a cluster analysis. It was found that for both types of social signals, the infants who demonstrated an increased interest in social stimuli at 9 months scored higher on the developmental index than those who showed a decrease, suggesting a difference in the quality of understanding of social signals at 9 months.

Development of infants' request expressions from 11 to 15 months.

Between 10 and 15 months of age, infants seem to become increasingly communicative. The focus of this study was changes in request behavior among infants at ages 11, 13, and 15 months (N = 22) in a longitudinal design. Changes in durations and frequencies of four different modes of behavior were examined, namely, use of hands, eye gaze, facial expression, and vocalization. Both frequencies and durations of the behaviors expressing requests increased with age, while those of nonrequest behaviors showed a different trend. Also investigated were changes in temporal coordination of different request modes. A greater number of infants used greater combinations of co-occurring modes when they were older than when they were younger.

[Infants' responses to the still-face situation at five and nine months: focusing on sex differences].

This study investigated developmental changes and sex differences in infants' responses to a female stranger during a face-to-face interaction, still-face, and reunion phase. Twenty-two infants (11 boys and 11 girls) were observed at five and nine months of age. At five months, the infants smiled less in the still-face phase, while at nine months the infants smiled less at each subsequent phase. Girls, but not boys, smiled more at nine months than five months. Girls' gazing toward the social partner's face decreased during the still-face and reunion phases. Girls gazed toward the social partner's face more than the boys, independent of the phases and age. The findings support the view the effect of a still-face on infants is robust at both five and nine months and for both sexes. But the effect remained in the reunion phase only for the nine-month-olds. These findings suggest that girls have more interest in their social partner than boys.

[Mothers' adherence to "maternal love" influences emotional expression toward children: relation to maternal occupational status and satisfaction in the workplace].

This study examined the impact of mothers' adherence to "maternal love" on maternal emotional expression toward their children. It was postulated that adherence to "maternal love" (defined as the tendency to accept and obey blindly the traditional maternal role and sociocultural belief in "desirable mothers") would have both positive and negative effects on maternal emotional expression, depending on the mothers' occupational status and satisfaction in workplace. The results showed an interaction between mothers' adherence to "maternal love" and the mothers' satisfaction in the workplace, which affected their expression of emotion. When satisfaction in the workplace was rated in the middle, it was positively associated with positive emotional expression. When satisfaction in the workplace was rated as high, it was both positively and negatively associated with positive emotional expression for full-time workers. Moreover, when satisfaction in the workplace was rated as in the middle, it was negatively associated with negative emotional expression, and when satisfaction in the workplace was rated as low or high, it was positively associated with negative emotional expression for all workers. These findings confirmed that mothers' adherence to "maternal love" is "the double-edged sword".