Personality and Demographic Characteristics of Mothers and their Ratings of Child Difficultness

Abstract

The relationships between an indicator of child difficultness and a set of maternal and familial factors were examined in three samples: ages 3-12 months; 12-24 months; and 24-36 months. After initial attempts at using a traditional psychometric approach to measuring difficultness had resulted in a methodologically questionable indicator, factor analytical techniques were employed to develop an alternative indicator of difficultness for each sample. Maternal anxiety was significantly correlated with child difficultness in all three samples. Mother's effectiveness, nervousness, extroversion, and contentment showed the strongest correlations in the age group 12-24 months, and particularly in the male subsample. Familial and demographic factors showed no associations with difficultness in any of the samples. The similarity between these findings based on a Danish sample and those reported in previous studies involving other nationalities confirms the notion of a reliable, relatively culture-independent influence of personality characteristics of the rater on measures of infant and child difficultness.