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A comparative study of mothers' beliefs and chilldrearing behaviour: The effect of the child's disability and the mother's educational level

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Roskam, Isabelle [UCL]

The article presents the results of a data analysis intended to examine the relationship between children's personality, maternal beliefs and childrearing behaviour and various disabilities on the one hand (mildly, moderate or severe mental handicap, sensorial handicap, developmental disabilities) and mothers' educational level on the other. Data were taken from 102 mothers of disabled children between the ages of three and six. The children came from the Walloon Region of Belgium and were regularly counselled by an early intervention team (Services d'Aide Precoce - SAP). Variance analyses were performed on questionnaire data from the total sample (n = 102). The questionnaires were based on the Five Factor Model of personality rating (Roskam, de Maere-Gaudissart, & Vandenplas-Holper, 2000), and on Sameroff's levels of parental development for the rating of maternal beliefs. Factorial correspondence analyses were also performed on maternal self-reported childrearing behaviour as described in 50 interviews with mothers, analysed with a coding grid. The results confirm that the child's disability contribute to changing maternal beliefs about personality and development as well as it may be considered as a main source of a change in the maternal directiveness. The results also confirm that the complexity of the mothers' explanatory models about child's development vary according to their educational level. Furthermore, while earlier studies were comparisons with a broad ranging sample, the present one explore comparisons between several disabilities. Contrary to most of the previous studies, it doesn't focus only on directiveness but also on other subcategories of the mothers' childrearing behaviour. Finally, several results here presented need future research. They are in favour of the relation between mother's educational level and childrearing behaviour while previous ones were much debated. They have also shown that general subcategories were not sufficient to describe mothers' childrearing behaviour. More complex dimensions have been extracted from the analyses.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Publication date 2005
Language Anglais
Journal information "European Journal of Psychology of Education" - Vol. 20, no. 2, p. 139-153 (2005)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Inst Superior Psicologia Aplicada (Lisboa)
issn 0256-2928
e-issn 1878-5174
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL
Keywords beliefs ; causal attributions ; childrearing behaviour ; maternal directiveness ; personality
Links
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Bibliographic reference Roskam, Isabelle. A comparative study of mothers' beliefs and chilldrearing behaviour: The effect of the child's disability and the mother's educational level. In: European Journal of Psychology of Education, Vol. 20, no. 2, p. 139-153 (2005)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/39741