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Specific parenting behaviors have distinct associations with children’s functioning. Mothers’ guiding and controlling behaviors influence the development of a child’s compliance, a reflection of the child’s self-regulatory abilities. Maternal strategies involving collaboration and guidance are often associated with an internalized, committed compliance, and maternal strategies demonstrating high directiveness and control are frequently related to defiance in children (Braungart-Rieker et al., 1997). However, these findings are largely based on samples of European American, adult mothers, whose parenting practices and environmental contexts differ from Latina mothers and adolescent mothers. Due to differences in cultural values, unique mother-child behavior associations are expected in samples of Latinas, as a more directive parenting style tends not to be associated with negative child outcomes as it often is for European American mothers (Ispa et al., 2004). The goal of the current study was to examine associations between maternal behaviors and child compliance and defiance behaviors with the prediction that associations between maternal control and child defiance would differ by mothers’ reported orientations to both Latino (enculturation) and American (acculturation) culture. This study included 146 Latina, adolescent mothers and their 24-month-old children. Behavioral codes extracted from a toy clean-up task measured mother and child behaviors (Kochanska & Aksan, 1995), and enculturation and acculturation were measured with a maternal self-report questionnaire. The current study found a positive association between maternal gentle guidance and child committed compliance, with no significant differences by cultural orientation. Importantly, more frequent use of control was related to more child defiance for mothers reporting high levels of acculturation but not for those reporting low levels of enculturation |
