Mother-child interaction and the socialization process.

Abstract

40 nursery school children were studied in interaction with their mothers during 2 half-hour sessions. Ratings were made of 26 aspects of the child's personality development and 28 of the mother's modes of socialization and affective response. Conceptual groupings of child behaviors were established, and their relations to maternal behavior are explored. The many sex differences in the structure of child behaviors and in their associations with mother variables are discussed. An overall ordering of relations between maternal and child variables was attempted, based on a circumplex model for maternal behavior similar to that proposed by Schaefer (1959).