Relationships Between Infants 'Social Behavior and Their Mothers' Behavior

BECKWITH, LEILA. Relationships between Infants' Social Behavior and Their Mothers' Behavior. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 397-411. 24 middle-class mothers and their adoptive infants were observed for 2 1-hr sessions. The amount of maternal physical and verbal contact with the baby, how much the mother ignored the baby, the amount of opportunity for exploration, the amount of experience with people other than the mother, and the mother's answers to the Parental Attitude Response Inventory were related to how much their babies initiated and/or responded to and/or ignored the mother and a stranger. Differences in quantity of contact between mother and baby affected how much the baby ignored his mother as well as how much he stimulated himself. Qualitatively, the more suppressive and critical the mother, the less responsive the baby was in social play with her. The more the baby responded to his mother, the less he responded to a stranger.