On the Broader Significance of Maternal Sensitivity: Mothers’ Early and Later Sensitive Parenting Matter to Children's Language, Executive Function, Academics, and Self-Reliance

Abstract

Researchers have demonstrated the important contribution of mothers’ sensitive parenting to children's developing cognition over the first 5 years of life, yet studies examining sensitivity beyond the early years, controlling for earlier effects, are limited. In this exploratory study, we examined the developmental pathways through which mothers’ early and later sensitive parenting transacted with children's language, executive function, academics, and self-reliance to predict child outcomes from infancy to adolescence. To a national longitudinal dataset (n = 1364; 52% male; 80% white), we applied random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling to examine between-person and within-person associations for maternal sensitivity and child outcomes. Our findings show that over the first 15 years of life relations between maternal sensitivity and these child outcomes are best characterized by stable, trait-like associations that persist over time with limited state-like time-varying associations. Importantly, we found that maternal sensitivity at both early and later developmental stages is associated with these between-person differences. Given the nature of these associations over four developmental stages, we extend prior research by demonstrating that mothers’ sensitivity is enduring because of its consistency both early and later in development.