The Congruence of Mothers’ and Their Children’s Representations of Their Relationship

Allison Keisler Splaun; Miriam Steele; Howard Steele; Iris Reiner; Anne Murphy

Allison Keisler Splaun
Miriam Steele
Howard Steele
Iris Reiner
Anne Murphy

Abstract

According to attachment theory, parents’ and children’s internalized representations of their relationship should correlate to one another in predictable ways. The current research investigates this correspondence between mothers’ and their 4-8 year- old children’s (M = 6 years, SD = 1.4 years) internal representations in 92 mother-child dyads where the children are at high- risk for psychopathology due to exposure to potentially abusive or neglectful circumstances. Maternal representations were assessed with the Parent Development Interview (PDI; Aber et al., 1985) and children’s were assessed with three stories from the Attachment Story Completion Task (ACST; Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) coded with an attachment-focused system (Reiner & Splaun, 2008). Mothers who expressed high levels of joy, competence, confidence, and low anger had children who were able to address negative themes and feelings in their stories and resolve the central story dilemma. Thus, these qualities seem to enable mothers to help their children learn to address and resolve both difficult situations and feelings. That such cross-generational links were observed in a high-risk population speaks to the influence of parents’ thoughts and feelings about their children on the way children approach and resolve imagined attachment dilemmas.

References

Aber, J.L., Slade, A., Berger, B., Bresgi, I., & Kaplan, M. (1985). The Parent Development Interview. Unpublished manuscript.

Asquith, K., Steele, M., & Hillman, S. (2007). Experience of Parenting Coding System. Unpublished manuscript.

Atkinson, L., Goldberg, S., Raval, V., Pederson, D.,

Benoit, D., Moran, G., Poulton, L., Myhal, N., Zwiers, M., Gleason, K., & Leung, E. (2005). On the relationship between maternal state of mind and sensitivity in the prediction of infant attachment security. Developmental Psychology, 41(1), 42–53.

Baldwin, M.W. (1992). Relational schemas and the processing of social information. Psychological Bulletin, 112(2), 461-484.

Beresford, C., Robinson, J.L., Holmberg, J., & Ross, R.G. (2007). Story stem responses of preschoolers with mood disturbances. Attachment & Human Development, 9(3), 255–270.

Biringen, Z., Matheny, A., Bertherton, I., Renouf, A., & Sherman, M. (2000). Maternal representation of the self as parent: Connections with maternal sensitivity and maternal structuring. Attachment & Human Development, 2(2), 218–232.

Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.

Bretherton, I., Ridgeway, D., & Cassidy, J. (1990). Assessing internal working models of the attachment relationship: An Attachment Story Completion Task for 3-year-olds. In T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E.M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL.

Hodges, J., Hillman, S., & Steele, M. (2004). Little Piggy Narrative Story Stem Coding Manual. Unpublished manuscript.

Hoffman, K.T., Marvin, R.S., Cooper, G., & Powell, B. (2006). Changing toddlers’ and preschoolers’ attachment classifications: The circle of security intervention. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(6), 1017-1026.

Kochanska, G., Philibert, R.A., & Barry, R.A. (2009). The interplay of genes and early mother-child relationship in the development of self-regulation from toddler to preschool age. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50:11, 1331-1338.

Main, M., Kaplan, & Cassidy, (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1-2), 66–104.

Messina Sayre, J., Pianta, R.C., Marvin, R.S., & Saft, E.W. (2001). Mothers’ representations of relationships with their children: Relations with mother characteristics and feeding sensitivity. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 26(6), 375–384.

Page, T.F. & Bretherton, I. (2001). Mother-and father-child attachment themes in the story completions of pre-schoolers from post-divorce families: Do they predict relationships with peers and teachers? Attachment & Human Development 3(1), 1–29.

Reiner, I., Keisler Splaun, A.B. (2008). Story Stems Attachment-Related Coding System. Unpublished manuscript.

Robinson, J., Mantz-Simmons, L., MacFie, J., Kelsay, K., Holmberg, J., & the MacArthur Narrative Working Group. (2007). MacArthur Narrative Coding Manual. Unpublished manuscript.

Slade, A., Belsky, J., Aber, J.L., & Phelps, J.L. (1999). Mothers’ representations of their relationships with their toddlers: Links to adult attachment and observed mothering. Developmental Psychology, 35(3), 611-619.

Steele, M., Henderson, K., Hodges, J., Kaniuk, J., Hillman, S., & Steele, H. (2008). Chapter Six: In the best interests of the late-placed child: A report from the Attachment Representations and Adoption Outcome study. In S. Berger, E. Jurist, & A. Slade (Eds.), Mind to Mind: Infant Research, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis, p. 152–183. Random House: New York.

Suchman, N., DeCoste, C., Catiglioni, N., Legow, N., Mayes, L. (2008). The Mothers and Toddlers Program: Preliminary findings from an attachment-based parenting intervention for substance abusing mothers. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 25(3), 499–517.

Trapolini, T., Ungerer, J.A., & McMahon, C.A. (2008). Maternal depression: Relations with maternal caregiving representations and emotional availability during the preschool years. Attachment & Human Development, 10(1), 73–90.

Waldinger, R.J., Toth, S.L., & Gerber, A. (2001). Maltreatment and internal representations of relationships: Core relationship themes in the narratives of abused and neglected preschoolers. Social Development, 10, 41-58.