The role of socio-economic status, mother’s psychopathology, reflective functioning and emotion socialization on toddlers’ behavior problems

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between socio-economic status (SES), mother’s psychological symptoms, maternal reflective functioning, and mother’s use of emotional socialization practices and child behavioral problems during toddlerhood. The study also aimed to examine sex and age differences on the display of behavior problems of toddlers. Mothers who had children between the ages 1 to 3 and lived in different cities of Turkey (N = 534) participated in the study. The mothers were asked to complete a package of scales consisting of demographic form, Brief Symptom Inventory, Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, Coping with Toddler Negative Emotions Scale, and Child Behavior Checklist. Based on the mothers’ reports, the results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that SES, maternal symptoms, and mother’s use of unsupportive emotion socialization behavior predicted toddler’s externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Also, there was a significant age and sex differences on the child’ externalizing behavior problems with boys scoring higher than girls and older age children displaying more externalizing behavior problems than the younger ones. However, contrary to our expectations, mother’s supportive emotion socialization and reflective functioning didn’t predict child behavior problems. Overall, the present findings provide further support to family process model in predicting child behavior problems.