Avoiding Conflict: Mothers as Tacticians in the Supermarket

HOLDEN, GEORGE W. Avoiding Conflict: Mothers as Tacticians in the Supermarket. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 233-240. Controlling a young child's behavior is a frequent parental task. This study examined the ways mothers manage their children in a potentially difficult setting, the supermarket. 24 middle-class mothers and their 2%-year-old children were observed there twice. All the mothers were found to employ 2 types of control techniques: those that were in immediate response to and contingent on the child's undesired behavior, and those that avoided conflicts by directing the child's attention without any prior elicitation on the part of the child. The intentionality of this latter type of control was confirmed in a subsequent interview. Mothers who frequently used preventive control techniques had children who exhibited fewer undesired behaviors than the other children. The results illustrate the bidirectionality of parent-child influence but highlight the mothers' greater power to anticipate and direct the course of interchanges.