Personality, Marital Relationships, and Parenting in Two Generations of Mothers

It has been suggested that early experiences in families may be related to one's parenting as an adult. Conceptual models were tested that investigated how personality and marital relationships are linked to parenting within and between generations. Eighty mother-grandmother pairs completed questionnaires concerning personality, marital relationships, and parenting. Restrictive and nurturant parenting of grandmothers was positively correlated with restrictive and nurturant parenting of mothers, but these relationships were attenuated in the presence of marital relationship and personality variables when structural equation models were tested. Personality characteristics and marital relationships were linked to parenting within and across generations. The importance of early experiences in linking ideologies and/or behaviours across generations has been proposed by a number of socialisation theorists and researchers who have posited that children often learn from their parents' behaviours, attitudes, or from their spoken We are grateful to the mothers and grandmothers who participated in the study. children become parents, they may draw on specic experiences in their family of origin in determining how they will parent. Parenting, as a method of socialisation of children, has been conceptualised as being composed of two critical dimensions. One dimension, parental support, may be demonstrated through behaviours such as warmth, affection, nurturance, and acceptance. Control, a second dimension, includes actions that are used by parents to modify either the internal states or behaviours of children (Peterson & Rollins, 1987; Rollins & Thomas, 1979). Empirical research has shown that both dimensions of parenting are important because of their relationship with academic and Although these two dimensions of parenting have been examined extensively in studies of parenting and child outcomes, in the intergenera-tional literature, research has generally been more focused. A major thrust has been the investigation of how detrimental types of parenting are linked across generations. For instance, empirical research indicates that harsh may mediate these relations. Thus, although previous studies have helped us better understand intergenera-tional dynamics when parenting may be less than optimal, one limitation of past research is that only a few studies (cf. Simons et al., 1993; Vermulst, de Brock, & van Zutphen, 1990) have investigated the processes involved in linking more positive dimensions of parenting across generations. Furthermore, research is especially lacking among emotionally healthy families (Martin, Halverson, Wampler, & Hollett-Wright, 1991). A further limitation of past intergenerational research is its reliance on one family member who reports concerning the parenting of both generations (see Caspi & …