Implications of the mother-child relationship in infancy for socialization in the second year of life

We examined implications of two components of the early mother-child relationship, maternal responsiveness and shared interactive positivity, for future socialization. Each component was assessed at 9 and 14 months using multiple behavioral measures in 112 mother-child dyads who were observed interacting in lengthy naturalistic paradigms. The two components were internally coherent, stable over time, and they converged significantly. Although the role of each component differed depending on the outcome measure, they generally predicted a host of positive socialization effects, all assessed at 22 months, as expected. These effects encompassed maternal diminished use of power in discipline contexts, children's higher empathy to maternal distress, their more eager and successful performance in a mother-child imitation paradigm, and more distress when they believed they had violated a standard of conduct. The value of an approach that focuses on qualities of early relationship for later socialization is discussed.