Positive Socialization Mechanisms in Secure and Insecure Parent-Child Dyads: Two Longitudinal Studies

It has now become generally accepted that children play an active role in their own socialization. At first, that active role was seen mostly in a negative light, as children's ability to elicit conflict and strife, and actively to resist parents (Bell, 1968; Kuczynski & Kochanska, 1990; Lytton, 1990; Putnam, Sanson, & Rothbart, 2002). But more recently, children's ability to play a positive role in socialization has been increasingly acknowledged. Children can willingly, even enthusiastically embrace parents' goals, and they can eagerly participate in their own socialization (Kochanska, Aksan, & Carlson, 2005; Maccoby, 2007). This view is compatible with the neo-psychoanalytic model that emphasizes children's willing identification with warm, emotionally available parents (Emde, Biringen, Clyman, & Oppenheim, 1991), and with the attachment research that portrays securely attached children as eager to embrace parental rules (Bretherton, Golby, & Cho, 1997; Thompson, 2006; van IJzendoorn, 1997). Research has increasingly focused on mutually positive socialization mechanisms in the parent-child dyad. Warm, responsive, synchronous parenting elicits an eager, willing stance in the child, and fosters parent-child mutually responsive, cooperative orientation (Criss, Shaw, & Ingoldsby, 2003; Deater-Deckard & Petrill, 2004; Kochanska, 2002; Kochanska, Barry, Aksan, & Boldt, 2008; Kochanska, Forman, Aksan, & Dunbar, 2005; Maccoby, 1983; Shaw, 2003). Several forms of children's willing, receptive stance toward their parents, beginning with infancy, over time evolve into internalization of parental rules. Children's early committed compliance – eager, internally regulated compliance – predicts many aspects of future internalization (Kochanska, Aksan, & Koenig, 1995). As well, child responsive imitation of the parent in a teaching context predicts future conscience (Forman, Aksan, & Kochanska, 2004). Early attachment organization has been long seen as having substantial implications for future development (Thompson, 2006, 2008; Weinfield, Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 2008), but few studies have focused on indirect sequelae of early attachment. Only recently, research has shown that early security and insecurity may serve as moderators or catalysts of the future socialization process by altering its dynamics (Allen et al., 2002; Thompson, Laible, & Ontai, 2003). Early security can “boost” future positive socialization processes, whereas early insecurity can be a catalyst for maladaptive processes between the parent and the child. We have begun to test such a model in two longitudinal studies, Study 1 and Study 2. In both, families of young children were followed from infancy to early school age. Attachment organization was assessed at the beginning of the second year. In Study 1, for secure infants, mothers' positive parenting in the first 3 ½ years predicted children's honesty in games, a view of oneself as moral, and moral cognition at 56 months (Kochanska, Aksan, Knaack, & Rhines, 2004). But there were no such relations for insecure infants. We proposed that secure children were more willing and receptive with regards to maternal influence, and that receptiveness served to augment the effectiveness of maternal positive parenting. We did not, however, measure directly the child's willing stance. In the present article, we return to the Study 1 data to examine the role of the child's willing stance. Specifically, we explore whether the links between children's willing stance toward their mothers and positive socialization outcomes were amplified for secure children. The willing stance construct was operationalized as children's eager, willing, committed compliance toward the mothers at 14 and 22 months. We then examined the links between? thus assessed willing stance and children's internalization of maternal prohibition from 33 to 56 months and mother-rated children's externalizing behavior problems at 73 months. In Study 2, in an earlier report (Kochanska, Barry, Stellern, & O'Bleness, 2009), we examined security as moderating a common maladaptive trajectory from parental power assertion, to child resentful opposition, to child antisocial conduct, in both mother-child and father-child dyads. In insecure dyads, parental power assertion predicted children's resentful opposition, which then predicted antisocial conduct. This causal chain was absent in secure dyads. Thus, early insecurity acted as a catalyst for a dyad embarking on a mutually adversarial path toward antisocial outcomes. Again, we reasoned that the secure child's trusting, willing stance toward the parent disrupts the maladaptive trajectory, but we did not directly measure that stance. Moreover, those data elucidated maladaptive socialization dynamics in insecure parent-child dyads, but shed little light on adaptive processes in secure dyads, other than suggesting that children's willing stance in those dyads defuses the mutually adversarial process. In this article, we return to the Study 2 data to examine the children's willing, receptive stance toward each parent, and to examine whether early security amplified the links between that stance and socialization outcomes. Compared to Study 1, the measures of the willing stance needed to cover a much longer time span, and to extend well past the second year (through age 5 ½). Because by approximately age three, children's committed compliance with a prohibition reaches 90%, we sought other measures of the willing, receptive stance, appropriate for older age. To that effect, we assessed the child's responsiveness to the parent in naturalistic interactions and his or her eager, responsive imitation in teaching contexts. Note that committed compliance (Study 1), responsiveness in interactions (Study 2), and responsive imitation (Study 2) can all be legitimately treated as indices of the child's latent willing, receptive, cooperative stance toward the parent (Forman & Kochanska, 2001; Kochanska et al., 2008). The current analyses of two studies examine parallel but not identical socialization outcomes. In Study 1, we focus on children's internalization of maternal prohibition not to touch off-limit objects in the 2 ½ to 4 ½ age range, and on their externalizing problems at age 6, rated by mothers. In Study 2, we focus on socialization outcomes at 80 months. As children mature, variability in the measure of internalization of prohibition decreases, with most children approaching the ceiling (by 5 ½, violations occur in approximately 5% of coding segments). Consequently, in Study 2, we use an established, clinically diagnostic measure of manifestations of Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder, and thus reflecting a failure of socialization -- the child's salient disregard for and violations of rules of conduct. Parallel principles were followed in both studies to permit replication. All behavioral data were collected during lengthy, scripted laboratory sessions, conducted by female staff, and videotaped. All constructs were coded by multiple coding teams. At least 20% of cases were used for reliability, followed by “realignments” to prevent drift. Variables were substantially aggregated across coded segments, contexts, and occasions of measurements to yield robust final constructs (Rushton, Brainerd, & Pressley, 1983). Table 1 presents the overview of the assessments and constructs in both studies. Table 1 Overview of Measures, Study 1 and Study 2