Disengaged and authoritarian parenting behavior of depressed mothers with their toddlers.

Getting a toddler to comply with instructions is a common task for mothers, and one that may evoke different parenting styles as early as toddlerhood. In the present study, depressed adolescent mothers were classified by the “parenting styles” defined by Baumrind (1991) as authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, or disengaged based on their behavior during a structured play/compliance task with their toddlers. Few studies have examined interactions that involve toddlers’ compliance with their mothers. In a prior study from our lab, toddlers were seated on a floor while their depressed mothers were instructed to engage the toddler with various toys and then put the toys in a box (Hart, Field, Del Valle & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1998). In that first study, the behavior ratings showed that the toddlers of depressed mothers were less engaged, and showed less positive and more negative affect than the toddlers of nondepressed mothers, but the parenting style of the mothers was not measured or directly related to the child’s behavior. The major contribution of the present study, however, is that the mothers’ parenting style classification is investigated and a special coding was developed. Based on depressed mothers’ parenting styles with older children (Susman, Trickett, Ianotti, Hollenbeck, & ZahnWaxler, 1985) and data on depressive mothers of infants showing withdrawn and intrusive interaction styles (Field, Hernandez-Reif, & Diego, 2006), the depressed mothers in the present study were expected to show either more disengaged or more authoritarian behavior patterns than non-depressed mothers when interacting with their toddlers in the play/compliance session. To be able to observe a ‘parenting behavior style’ during mother–child interaction, we asked the mothers to try to engage their toddlers in a “clean up” task during which the toddler was encouraged by the mother to help pick up a series of toys and place them in a box.