Maternal identity and role attainment: long-term relations to children's development

Abstract

Mother-infant pairs were assessed during postpartum for maternal role and identity and a variety of infant and sociodemographic characteristics. When children were school age (8 to 10 years), 77 of the original 124 mothers returned a mail survey that assessed children's social competence and behavioral problems. After controlling for socioeconomic status, neither perceived nor demonstrated role attainment predicted child outcomes. Only a subset of the maternal identity indicators predicted children's social competence and behavior problems at 9 years, and these relationships were few and modest in magnitude. Overall, little support was found for the long-term predictive power of maternal role indicators measured during postpartum.