Cardiac vagal tone and quality of parenting show concurrent and time-ordered associations that diverge in abusive, neglectful, and non-maltreating mothers.

Abstract

Concurrent and lagged maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was monitored in the context of parenting. One hundred and forty-one preschooler-mother dyads-involved with child welfare as documented perpetrators of child abuse or neglect, or non-maltreating (non-CM)-were observed completing a resting baseline and joint challenge task. Parenting behaviors were coded using SASB (Benjamin, 1996) and maternal RSA was simultaneously monitored, longitudinally-nested within-person (WP), and subjected to MLM. Abusive and neglectful mothers displayed less positive parenting and more strict/hostile control, relative to non-CM mothers. Non-CM mothers displayed greater WP heterogeneity in variance over time in their RSA scores, and greater consistency over time in their parenting behaviors, relative to abusive or neglectful mothers. CM group also moderated concurrent and lagged WP associations in RSA and positive parenting. When abusive mothers displayed lower RSA in a given epoch, relative to their task average, they showed concurrent increases in positive parenting, and higher subsequent levels of hostile control in the following epoch, suggesting that it is physiologically taxing for abusive mothers to parent in positive ways. In contrast, lagged effects for non-CM mothers were observed in which RSA decreases led to subsequent WP increases in positive parenting and decreases in control. Reversed models were significant only for neglectful mothers: Increases in positive parenting led to subsequent increases in RSA levels, and increases in strict, hostile control led to subsequent RSA decreases. These results provide new evidence that concurrent and time-ordered coupling in maternal physiology and behavior during parenting vary in theoretically meaningful ways across CM and non-CM mothers. Implications for intervention and study limitations are discussed.