Socializing toddlers :  autonomy-supportive parenting practices and potential risk factors

According to self-determination theory, psychological autonomy is a basic, universal need that, when supported, enables individuals to function more positively and experience greater psychological well-being (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2008).  Parenting that supports the autonomy of a child is classically defined as the parental support for their self-determined functioning and includes practices such as providing rationales and choices for requests, communicating empathy, and encouraging initiatives while using non-controlling language (e.g., Soenens et al., 2007).  The benefits of autonomy-supportive parenting have been well-documented (e.g., Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997) however, few studies to date have been conducted with toddlers.  The present thesis thus sought to enrich the parenting literature by exploring what autonomy-supportive parenting practices are used by parents of toddlers in a socialization context (Study 1) and by examining the factors that may hinder their use (Study 2).   The first study examined a wide range of socialization practices that parents who favoured AS to a greater extent may use more frequently when making requests to their toddlers.  The study allowed us to explore how parents manifest AS towards their toddlers and whether AS in this context is associated with greater rule internalization.  Parents (N = 182) of toddlers (M age = 27.08 months) were thus asked to report the frequency at which they used 26 potentially autonomy-supportive practices when asking their toddlers to complete important yet uninteresting activities and the extent to which they valued AS.  Eight practices were identified as being autonomy-supportive:  four forms of communicating empathy, providing short rationales, explaining why the task is important, giving an informational and neutral description of the problem, and modeling the desired behaviour.  The set of eight practices was positively associated with toddlers’ level of internalization, further suggesting that they embodied the concept of AS.  Future studies may seek to replicate these findings in more potentially volatile or distressing contexts (e.g., reacting to misdeeds, with children with developmental delays).  The second study extended the results further by examining what factors influenced the use of parental AS in socialization contexts.  Since the literature points to parental stress and toddler difficult temperament (i.e., higher levels of negative affectivity, lower levels of effortful control, and lower levels of surgency) as possible risk factors, we explored how they related to the frequency of use of autonomy-supportive practices.  The goals of the study were:  (1) to examine how toddlers’ temperament and parental stress influenced parental AS, and (2) to verify if parental stress played a mediating role in the putative relationship between toddlers’ temperament and parental AS.  Using the same sample, parents were asked to answer questions regarding their toddler’s temperament and their own stress levels.  The results showed that greater child negative affectivity was associated with greater parental stress, which in turn predicted lower parental AS.  Moreover, parental stress partially mediated the positive relationship between child effortful control and parental AS.  Future research could investigate possible interventions that aim to help parents preserve their autonomy-supportive stance during challenging socialization contexts, in the face of exacting child temperamental characteristics, and in addition to the stress brought on by daily life.

Keyphrases: Autonomy support, Parenting, Toddlerhood, Parental stress, Negative affectivity, Effortful control, Surgency, Internalization, Self-determination theory