Primiparous mothers' parenting self-efficacy in managing toddler distress: Childhood nonsupportive emotion socialization, adult attachment style, and toddler temperament as antecedents

Abstract

Early maternal sensitivity to child distress is predictive of child subsequent social-emotional adjustment. A mother's global parenting self-efficacy shapes her adaptive responses to child challenging behaviors (e.g., negative emotions). However, little is known about the antecedents of maternal self-efficacy in managing child distress. Using longitudinal data from a diverse sample of 259 primiparous mothers and their toddlers, we tested a model predicting maternal self-efficacy in managing toddler distress. Mothers' remembered childhood experiences of maternal nonsupportive emotional socialization were positively associated with their self-reports of attachment avoidance and anxiety. Furthermore, a negative link between mothers' self-reports of attachment avoidance and their self-efficacy in managing toddler distress was identified when toddlers displayed higher negative affect. Most importantly, a conditional indirect pathway was found. That is, only when toddlers displayed higher negative affect, mothers' remembered early experiences of maternal nonsupportive emotional socialization were negatively associated with their self-efficacy in managing toddler distress through a positive association with their self-reports of attachment avoidance. Although maternal attachment assessed with Adult Attachment Interview was also included in analyses as a parallel mediator to self-reported attachment, no relevant effects emerged. These results suggest that by disrupting attachment development, parents' early emotion socialization experiences hold long-standing implications for their subsequent confidence in managing child distress. Child distress as a threatening, attachment-related stimulus may contextualize such effects via interfering with the operation of caregiving system, especially for avoidant parents. Such findings may inform the designs of more targeted interventions to assist first-time mothers in navigating emotionally evocative challenges during toddlerhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Figure 1.

The model analyses results. Notes. All coefficients are standardized and identified with all covariates included. For clarity, (a) pathways with p > .05 are depicted in gray color and pathways with p < .05 are depicted in black color; (b) direct and mediating effects paths are presented in solid lines, whereas moderating paths are shown in dash lines; and (c) the correlation lines and predicting pathways involving covariates are not depicted, but the relevant coefficients are available in the Supplementary Material. As an additional set of sensitivity analyses, AAI-based attachment also was separately examined as a dichotomous classification score (secure versus insecure) and the patterns of model results were the same as those using the AAI continuous score (coherence of mind).

Figure 2.

Illustration of the moderating role of toddler negative affect in the association between maternal attachment avoidance and self-efficacy in managing toddler distress.