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Adolescent and older mothers' interaction patterns with their six-month-old infants
JIXMB/ of Adolescence 1991, 14, 195-200
Brief Report Adolescent and older mothers’ interaction patterns with their six-month-old infants REX
E. CULP”, ANNE M. CULP*, JOY D. OSOFSKYjAND HOWARD J OSOFSKY-I_
Children of adolescent mothers suffer more physical, intellectual, and emotional difficulties than do other children. In order to gain a better understanding of the differences, the interaction patterns of adolescent mothers and non-adolescent mothers interacting with their young infants were compared. One hundred adolescent mothers and 29 married primiparous nonadolescent mothers were observed interacting with their six-month-old infants during a feeding episode and a play episode. All of the mothers had a high school education or less. During feeding, the adolescent mothers demonstrated less expressiveness, less positive attitude, less delight, less positive regard, fewer vocalizations, and a lower quality of vocalizations than non-adolescent mothers. During play, the adolescent mothers demonstrated less inventiveness, less patience, and less positive attitude than the non-adolescent mothers. These results extend and strengthen what is known about adolescent mothers patterns of interaction with their young infants.
INTRODUCTION
Adolescent
parenting
is considered
ment
of the adolescents’
suffer
more
children Arndt,
physical,
a factor contributing
children.
intellectual,
Many
children
and emotional
to high risk developof adolescent
difficulties
mothers
than do other
(Furstenberg et al., 1987; Garcia Coil, et al., 1986; Parks and 1990). Deficits in cognitive development and poor academic
achievement
in children
born
to adolescent
mothers
seem
to result
from
the consequences of early childbearing (Furstenberg et al., 1987). Empirical studies of adolescent mother-child relationships in which appropriate
contrast
groups
are used and behavioral
interactions
between
“Reprint requests should be addressed to Rex E. Gulp, Department of Family Relations and Child Development, 242 HE Building, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-0337, U.S.A. +Department of Psychiatry, Louisiana State University Medical Center. 014~lY71/91/020195
+ 06 $03.00/O
01991
The
Association
for the Psychnrric
Study
of Adolescents
196
R. E. CULP ET AL.
mother and child are observed are few. The results of these studies indicate that the behavioral interaction patterns between adolescent mothers and their infants are problematic. The interaction patterns between adolescent mothers and their newborn infants have been characterized as less positively responsive (Garcia Co11 et al., 1986) and less verbal (Culp et al., 1988) than the patterns of older mothers. Adolescent and non-adolescent mothers show similar differences when interacting with their four and eight-month-old infants (Garcia Co11 et al., 1987; Levine et al., 1985). A picture of a less verbal and less responsive adolescent mother is emerging. The purpose of this study was to compare adolescent and non-adolescent mothers’ interaction patterns while interacting with their six-monthold infants during feeding and play situations. An infant at this age is shifting his/her focus of attention from people to objects and toys. This developmental shift may positively or negatively alter mother-infant interaction patterns, either making it an easy time for adolescent mothers to play appropriately with their child or make it another time during infancy during which they have difficulty.
METHOD Sample
The subjects were 100 primiparous adolescent mothers (M age = 16 years; range = 15-I 7 years) and their healthy, full-term six-month-old infants and 29 primiparous non-adolescent mothers (M age = 22 years; range 20-26) and their healthy, full-term six-month-old infants. The adolescent mothers were recruited through a midwestern city-county health department program; the non-adolescent mothers were recruited through the obstetric clinic or a nearby university medical center. All of the mothers had 12 years or less of formal education. The adolescent mothers averaged ten years and the non-adolescent mothers averaged 11 years of formal education. It is difficult to make explicit the role of socioeconomic status and age as influences on outcomes because there are no established measures of socioeconomic status for adolescents. The usual indicators of employment status and income cannot be applied in the usual way with adolescent mothers. In attempting to match for socioeconomic status, we used years of education. Years of education is not an entirely satisfactory measure of socioeconomic status because it does not take into account potential for education or the fact that individuals less than 18 years of age are not expected to have completed high school. Of the adolescent mothers, 12 per cent were married; all of the non-adolescent mothers were married. Of the adolescent mothers, 45 per cent were
ADOLESCENT
AND OLDER MOTHERS’
INTERACTION
PATTERNS
197
black and 55 per cent were white; of the non-adolescent mothers, 23 per cent were black and 77 per cent were white. On five indicators of infant health, infants born to the adolescent mothers and the non-adolescent mothers did not significantly differ. The infants had a mean weight of 3234 grams, mean gestational age of 39.5 weeks, mean Apgar scores of 7.7 at one minute and 8.8 at five minutes, and a mean hospital stay of 4.9 days. Procedures and measures Infant health data were retrieved from hospital medical records. Interaction data were based on behavioral observations of a 10 minute motherinfant feeding episode and a five minute unstructured play episode videotaped in a “home-like” laboratory setting. Feeding. Maternal feeding behaviors were coded on a 9-point scale (Osofsky et al., 1983) and included expressiveness (no emotion communication; impersonal handling to very much emotion communication; animated), expression of positive regard (none observed to continuous involvement in affectionate activities), attitude toward feeding (strong dislike to much enjoyment), delight (absent to markedly frequent delight), frequency of vocalizations (no verbal stimulation to verbalizes more than 60 per cent of the time), and quality of vocalizations (completely inappropriate-harsh, abrupt to extremely appropriate-warm positive). Play. Maternal play behaviors were coded on a 9-point scale (Vaughn et al., 1980) and included inventiveness (very small repertoire to very large repertoire), appropriateness (not appropriate to mother does “everything right”), patience (impatient and angry to unflappable and encouraging), and attitude (strong active dislike to much active enjoyment). Reliability. Coding was done by a pool of eight observers who coded both adolescent and non-adolescent mothers videotapes. The observers were unaware of the study’s hypotheses. Interobserver reliability ranged from 8597 per cent, employing a +/- 1 as agreement, for the feeding and play ratings over the course of the study. Less than ten per cent of the videotapes were rated on both the feeding and the play scales by the same person. When it did occur there was an interval of several months between ratings.
RESULTS Feeding interaction ratings The feeding ratings were grouped into two clusters and tested by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Two clusters were formed: 1) an
198
R. E. CULP ET AL
expressiveness cluster, consisting of the expressiveness, expression of positive regard, attitude toward feeding, and delight ratings; and 2) a vocalizations cluster, consisting of frequency of vocalizations and quality of vocalizations ratings. The clusters were formed on an a priori basis taking into account previous research (e.g. Culp et al., 1988). The two groups differed significantly in the expressiveness cluster when tested in a MANOVA, F(1, 110) = 5.9, p < 0.055. Follow-up univariate analysis showed the two groups differed significantly in three of the four individual ratings. Adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly less expressiveness (IW = 5.2) than the non-adolescent mothers (n/; = 6.5), F( I, 111) = 7.9, p < 0.01; less positive attitude towards feeding (&I = 6.2) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 7.1), F(1, 111) = 6.0, p < O-02; and less delight (&Z = 5.4) than the non-adolescent mothers (IW = 6.6), F(1, 111) = 4.9, p < 0.03. Likewise, the adolescent mothers tended to demonstrate less positive visual regard to their infants (IW = 5.6) than the nonadolescent mothers (AJ= 6.5). The adolescent and non-adolescent mothers differed significantly on the vocalizations cluster when tested in a multivariate analysis, F(1, 105) = 6.8, p < 0.01. Follow-up univariate analyses showed that the adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly fewer vocalizations (IW = 4.3) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 5.9), F(1, 106) = 13.0, p < 0.001, but the two groups did not differ significantly on quality of vocalizations. Play interaction ratings The adolescent and non-adolescent mothers differed on the play ratings when tested in a MANOVA, F(l,l24) = 12.2, p < 0.001. Follow-up univariate analyses showed that the two groups differed significantly on all four of the play ratings. The adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly less inventiveness (n/r = 4.8) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 5.7), F(1, 127) = 4.5, p < 0.04; less appropriateness (n/r = 5.4) than the nonadolescent mothers (M = 6.2), &‘(I, 127) = 4.7, p < 0.03; less patience (1M = 5.8) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 7.8), F(1, 127) = 43.2, p < 0.001; and less positive attitude (&I = 6.9) than the non-adolescent mothers (&I = 7.7), F(1, 127) = 7.0, p < 0.01.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study are consistent with and extend available data indicating that adolescent mothers demonstrate interaction patterns that are more problematic than non-adolescent mothers. During feeding, the
ADOLESCENT
AND OLDER MOTHERS’
INTERACTION
PATTERNS
199
adolescent mothers were less facially and verbally expressive, had a less positive attitude, and showed less delight while interacting with their infants when compared to non-adolescent mothers. Further, the adolescent mothers talked less often than the non-adolescent mothers. During play, the adolescent mothers were less inventive, appropriate, and patient and had a less positive attitude in their behavior with their infants compared to non-adolescent mothers. The studies on newborn and four-month-old interactions do not differ from these findings with six-month-old infants. Had no differences been found between groups with six-month-old infants, the possibility of the developmental shift at six months of age would have needed further investigation. The findings point to the importance of early intervention with adolescent mothers. The intervention techniques need to be clear and specific so the adolescent mother understands to be verbally and emotionally responsive. The interpretation of these findings was made clearer by the fact that a meaningful contrast group, non-adolescent mothers with only a high school education or less, was found. The use of this contrast group is a methodical strength not found in many studies of adolescent mothers and their infants. So often, the comparison group comes from higher educated samples, thus increasing the chances of a high socioeconomic group of older mothers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
These projects were supported by Grants MH-36895 and MH-39487 from the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Prevention Research and Special Mental Health Programs. Appreciation is expressed to Kermit Krantz, M. D., for his support in helping us carry out this project. We are also appreciative for the cooperation of The Maternal and Infant Project of the Topeka-Shawnee County Health Department.
REFERENCES Gulp, R. E., Appelbaum, M. I., Osofsky, J. D. and Levy, J. A. (1988). Adolescent and older mothers: Comparison between prenatal maternal variables and newborn interaction measures. Infant Behaviour and Development, 11,353-362. Furstenberg, F. F., Brooks-Gunn, J. and Morgan, S. P. (1987). Adolescent mothers in later life. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Garcia Coll, C., Vohr, B. R., Hoffman, J. and Oh, W. (1986). Maternal and environmental factors affecting developmental outcome of infants of adolescent mothers. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 7,230-235.
200
R. E. CULP ET AL.
Garcia Coll, C., Hoffman, J. and Oh, W. (1987). The social ecology and early parenting of Caucasian adolescent mothers. Child Development, 58,955-963. Levine, L., Garcia Coll, C. and Oh, W. (1985). Determinants of mother-infant interaction in adolescent mothers. Pediatrics, 75,23-29. Osofsky, J. D., Gulp. A. M. and Eberhart-Wright, A. (1983). Mumud for six month motherinfant feed&g observations. Unpublished manuscript, The Menninger Foundation, Topeka, KS. Parks, P. L. and Arndt, E. K. (1990). Differences between adolescent and adult mothers of infants. Journal of Adolescent Health Care, 11, 248-253. Vaughn, B., Taraldson, B., Crichton, L. and Egeland, B. (1980). Relationships between neonatal behavioral organization and infant behavior during the first year of life. Infant Behaviour and Development, 3,45-64.
Brief Report Adolescent and older mothers’ interaction patterns with their six-month-old infants REX
E. CULP”, ANNE M. CULP*, JOY D. OSOFSKYjAND HOWARD J OSOFSKY-I_
Children of adolescent mothers suffer more physical, intellectual, and emotional difficulties than do other children. In order to gain a better understanding of the differences, the interaction patterns of adolescent mothers and non-adolescent mothers interacting with their young infants were compared. One hundred adolescent mothers and 29 married primiparous nonadolescent mothers were observed interacting with their six-month-old infants during a feeding episode and a play episode. All of the mothers had a high school education or less. During feeding, the adolescent mothers demonstrated less expressiveness, less positive attitude, less delight, less positive regard, fewer vocalizations, and a lower quality of vocalizations than non-adolescent mothers. During play, the adolescent mothers demonstrated less inventiveness, less patience, and less positive attitude than the non-adolescent mothers. These results extend and strengthen what is known about adolescent mothers patterns of interaction with their young infants.
INTRODUCTION
Adolescent
parenting
is considered
ment
of the adolescents’
suffer
more
children Arndt,
physical,
a factor contributing
children.
intellectual,
Many
children
and emotional
to high risk developof adolescent
difficulties
mothers
than do other
(Furstenberg et al., 1987; Garcia Coil, et al., 1986; Parks and 1990). Deficits in cognitive development and poor academic
achievement
in children
born
to adolescent
mothers
seem
to result
from
the consequences of early childbearing (Furstenberg et al., 1987). Empirical studies of adolescent mother-child relationships in which appropriate
contrast
groups
are used and behavioral
interactions
between
“Reprint requests should be addressed to Rex E. Gulp, Department of Family Relations and Child Development, 242 HE Building, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-0337, U.S.A. +Department of Psychiatry, Louisiana State University Medical Center. 014~lY71/91/020195
+ 06 $03.00/O
01991
The
Association
for the Psychnrric
Study
of Adolescents
196
R. E. CULP ET AL.
mother and child are observed are few. The results of these studies indicate that the behavioral interaction patterns between adolescent mothers and their infants are problematic. The interaction patterns between adolescent mothers and their newborn infants have been characterized as less positively responsive (Garcia Co11 et al., 1986) and less verbal (Culp et al., 1988) than the patterns of older mothers. Adolescent and non-adolescent mothers show similar differences when interacting with their four and eight-month-old infants (Garcia Co11 et al., 1987; Levine et al., 1985). A picture of a less verbal and less responsive adolescent mother is emerging. The purpose of this study was to compare adolescent and non-adolescent mothers’ interaction patterns while interacting with their six-monthold infants during feeding and play situations. An infant at this age is shifting his/her focus of attention from people to objects and toys. This developmental shift may positively or negatively alter mother-infant interaction patterns, either making it an easy time for adolescent mothers to play appropriately with their child or make it another time during infancy during which they have difficulty.
METHOD Sample
The subjects were 100 primiparous adolescent mothers (M age = 16 years; range = 15-I 7 years) and their healthy, full-term six-month-old infants and 29 primiparous non-adolescent mothers (M age = 22 years; range 20-26) and their healthy, full-term six-month-old infants. The adolescent mothers were recruited through a midwestern city-county health department program; the non-adolescent mothers were recruited through the obstetric clinic or a nearby university medical center. All of the mothers had 12 years or less of formal education. The adolescent mothers averaged ten years and the non-adolescent mothers averaged 11 years of formal education. It is difficult to make explicit the role of socioeconomic status and age as influences on outcomes because there are no established measures of socioeconomic status for adolescents. The usual indicators of employment status and income cannot be applied in the usual way with adolescent mothers. In attempting to match for socioeconomic status, we used years of education. Years of education is not an entirely satisfactory measure of socioeconomic status because it does not take into account potential for education or the fact that individuals less than 18 years of age are not expected to have completed high school. Of the adolescent mothers, 12 per cent were married; all of the non-adolescent mothers were married. Of the adolescent mothers, 45 per cent were
ADOLESCENT
AND OLDER MOTHERS’
INTERACTION
PATTERNS
197
black and 55 per cent were white; of the non-adolescent mothers, 23 per cent were black and 77 per cent were white. On five indicators of infant health, infants born to the adolescent mothers and the non-adolescent mothers did not significantly differ. The infants had a mean weight of 3234 grams, mean gestational age of 39.5 weeks, mean Apgar scores of 7.7 at one minute and 8.8 at five minutes, and a mean hospital stay of 4.9 days. Procedures and measures Infant health data were retrieved from hospital medical records. Interaction data were based on behavioral observations of a 10 minute motherinfant feeding episode and a five minute unstructured play episode videotaped in a “home-like” laboratory setting. Feeding. Maternal feeding behaviors were coded on a 9-point scale (Osofsky et al., 1983) and included expressiveness (no emotion communication; impersonal handling to very much emotion communication; animated), expression of positive regard (none observed to continuous involvement in affectionate activities), attitude toward feeding (strong dislike to much enjoyment), delight (absent to markedly frequent delight), frequency of vocalizations (no verbal stimulation to verbalizes more than 60 per cent of the time), and quality of vocalizations (completely inappropriate-harsh, abrupt to extremely appropriate-warm positive). Play. Maternal play behaviors were coded on a 9-point scale (Vaughn et al., 1980) and included inventiveness (very small repertoire to very large repertoire), appropriateness (not appropriate to mother does “everything right”), patience (impatient and angry to unflappable and encouraging), and attitude (strong active dislike to much active enjoyment). Reliability. Coding was done by a pool of eight observers who coded both adolescent and non-adolescent mothers videotapes. The observers were unaware of the study’s hypotheses. Interobserver reliability ranged from 8597 per cent, employing a +/- 1 as agreement, for the feeding and play ratings over the course of the study. Less than ten per cent of the videotapes were rated on both the feeding and the play scales by the same person. When it did occur there was an interval of several months between ratings.
RESULTS Feeding interaction ratings The feeding ratings were grouped into two clusters and tested by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Two clusters were formed: 1) an
198
R. E. CULP ET AL
expressiveness cluster, consisting of the expressiveness, expression of positive regard, attitude toward feeding, and delight ratings; and 2) a vocalizations cluster, consisting of frequency of vocalizations and quality of vocalizations ratings. The clusters were formed on an a priori basis taking into account previous research (e.g. Culp et al., 1988). The two groups differed significantly in the expressiveness cluster when tested in a MANOVA, F(1, 110) = 5.9, p < 0.055. Follow-up univariate analysis showed the two groups differed significantly in three of the four individual ratings. Adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly less expressiveness (IW = 5.2) than the non-adolescent mothers (n/; = 6.5), F( I, 111) = 7.9, p < 0.01; less positive attitude towards feeding (&I = 6.2) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 7.1), F(1, 111) = 6.0, p < O-02; and less delight (&Z = 5.4) than the non-adolescent mothers (IW = 6.6), F(1, 111) = 4.9, p < 0.03. Likewise, the adolescent mothers tended to demonstrate less positive visual regard to their infants (IW = 5.6) than the nonadolescent mothers (AJ= 6.5). The adolescent and non-adolescent mothers differed significantly on the vocalizations cluster when tested in a multivariate analysis, F(1, 105) = 6.8, p < 0.01. Follow-up univariate analyses showed that the adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly fewer vocalizations (IW = 4.3) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 5.9), F(1, 106) = 13.0, p < 0.001, but the two groups did not differ significantly on quality of vocalizations. Play interaction ratings The adolescent and non-adolescent mothers differed on the play ratings when tested in a MANOVA, F(l,l24) = 12.2, p < 0.001. Follow-up univariate analyses showed that the two groups differed significantly on all four of the play ratings. The adolescent mothers demonstrated significantly less inventiveness (n/r = 4.8) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 5.7), F(1, 127) = 4.5, p < 0.04; less appropriateness (n/r = 5.4) than the nonadolescent mothers (M = 6.2), &‘(I, 127) = 4.7, p < 0.03; less patience (1M = 5.8) than the non-adolescent mothers (M = 7.8), F(1, 127) = 43.2, p < 0.001; and less positive attitude (&I = 6.9) than the non-adolescent mothers (&I = 7.7), F(1, 127) = 7.0, p < 0.01.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study are consistent with and extend available data indicating that adolescent mothers demonstrate interaction patterns that are more problematic than non-adolescent mothers. During feeding, the
ADOLESCENT
AND OLDER MOTHERS’
INTERACTION
PATTERNS
199
adolescent mothers were less facially and verbally expressive, had a less positive attitude, and showed less delight while interacting with their infants when compared to non-adolescent mothers. Further, the adolescent mothers talked less often than the non-adolescent mothers. During play, the adolescent mothers were less inventive, appropriate, and patient and had a less positive attitude in their behavior with their infants compared to non-adolescent mothers. The studies on newborn and four-month-old interactions do not differ from these findings with six-month-old infants. Had no differences been found between groups with six-month-old infants, the possibility of the developmental shift at six months of age would have needed further investigation. The findings point to the importance of early intervention with adolescent mothers. The intervention techniques need to be clear and specific so the adolescent mother understands to be verbally and emotionally responsive. The interpretation of these findings was made clearer by the fact that a meaningful contrast group, non-adolescent mothers with only a high school education or less, was found. The use of this contrast group is a methodical strength not found in many studies of adolescent mothers and their infants. So often, the comparison group comes from higher educated samples, thus increasing the chances of a high socioeconomic group of older mothers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
These projects were supported by Grants MH-36895 and MH-39487 from the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Prevention Research and Special Mental Health Programs. Appreciation is expressed to Kermit Krantz, M. D., for his support in helping us carry out this project. We are also appreciative for the cooperation of The Maternal and Infant Project of the Topeka-Shawnee County Health Department.
REFERENCES Gulp, R. E., Appelbaum, M. I., Osofsky, J. D. and Levy, J. A. (1988). Adolescent and older mothers: Comparison between prenatal maternal variables and newborn interaction measures. Infant Behaviour and Development, 11,353-362. Furstenberg, F. F., Brooks-Gunn, J. and Morgan, S. P. (1987). Adolescent mothers in later life. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Garcia Coll, C., Vohr, B. R., Hoffman, J. and Oh, W. (1986). Maternal and environmental factors affecting developmental outcome of infants of adolescent mothers. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 7,230-235.
200
R. E. CULP ET AL.
Garcia Coll, C., Hoffman, J. and Oh, W. (1987). The social ecology and early parenting of Caucasian adolescent mothers. Child Development, 58,955-963. Levine, L., Garcia Coll, C. and Oh, W. (1985). Determinants of mother-infant interaction in adolescent mothers. Pediatrics, 75,23-29. Osofsky, J. D., Gulp. A. M. and Eberhart-Wright, A. (1983). Mumud for six month motherinfant feed&g observations. Unpublished manuscript, The Menninger Foundation, Topeka, KS. Parks, P. L. and Arndt, E. K. (1990). Differences between adolescent and adult mothers of infants. Journal of Adolescent Health Care, 11, 248-253. Vaughn, B., Taraldson, B., Crichton, L. and Egeland, B. (1980). Relationships between neonatal behavioral organization and infant behavior during the first year of life. Infant Behaviour and Development, 3,45-64.