Maternal Recollections of Childhood Peer Relationships: Implications for their Children's Social Competence

Abstract

The relations between mothers' recollections of their childhood peer relationships and their child-rearing intentions, parenting behaviors and their preschoolers' social competence were examined. Mothers with predominantly anxious/lonely peer recollections appeared to take the most active role in their children's social development and had the most socially competent children as compared to mothers reporting either predominantly positive or negative peer recollections. This pat- tern of effects was influenced by the sex of the child. Implications of these results for a gender-moderated model of socialization were discussed.