Abstract

The present study was designed to explore how maternal guidance (i.e., involvement and monitoring) is associated with parent-level (e.g., the mother-child relationship) and contextual factors (e.g., the home environment) as well as appropriate child behaviour in unstructured and structured tasks. Participants were mothers (mean age = 30.47) with their preschool aged children (aged 2-6 years; n males = 39, n females = 50). All participants were drawn from families who participated in the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project. The mother-child dyad was observed in three contexts: 1) command (i.e., mother gives a series of short commands to their child from a list provided), 2) interference (i.e., mother is emotionally unavailable as she completes a questionnaire) and 3) free play (conducted before and after the command and interference tasks). Maternal guidance was divided into two categories: directive (i.e., commands, command repetitions) and nondirective (i.e., queries, verbal prompts, and explanations).
Hierarchical regressions were conducted predicting maternal guidance, controlling for mother’s level of education, and child’s age and sex. Results revealed that mothers with more directive guidance displayed lower quality of the home environment, higher parental stress, poorer mother-child relationship, and higher levels of maternal childhood levels of social withdrawal. Furthermore, more nondirective maternal guidance was associated with higher quality home environment, lower parental stress, and a better mother-child relationship. The correlation between directive and nondirective guidance was .10. Taken together, results suggest that parenting practices are best understood in relation to other parenting and contextual variables, and generating parenting profiles may be helpful in developing and implementing parenting interventions for high-risk mothers.