Child care attitudes and adaptation to the maternal role among mentally ill and well mothers.

Discharged psychiatric hospital patients who were mothers of young children were compared with a group of well mothers on child rearing attitudes and adaptation to adult social roles. Mentally ill mothers were found to believe less in the importance of developing a reciprocal mother-child relationship or in differentiating between own needs and those of child, and were more likely to deny ambivalent feelings regarding child care. In each group, less adaptive child-care attitudes were related to greater impairment in adapting to other adult roles.