The associations between maternal caregivers' self-control, attachment and preschool children's self-control in Chinese urban three-generation families: Test of actor, partner, and indirect effects

Abstract

In China, mother-grandmother co-parenting has emerged as one of the predominant parenting styles. Surprisingly, less is known about the impacts of dynamic interaction among subsystems on children in three-generation households. The current study examined how maternal caregivers' self-control specifically correlates with preschoolers' self-control and how caregiver-child attachment functions as a mediator in a mother-grandmother dyadic situation. A final sample of 495 mother-grandmother dyads in Southern China was recruited in this study. Mothers and grandmothers completed measures assessing caregivers' self-control, caregiver-child attachment, children's self-control and sociodemographic characteristics. The findings showed that both mothers' and grandmothers' self-control were indirectly linked to the child's self-control via the child's attachment to them and to their co-parents, implying that caregiver-child attachment played a major role in the intergenerational transfer of maternal caregivers' self-control. Significant actor and partner effects were obtained between mothers' and grandmothers' self-control and their children’ attachment to them. Additionally, the relationship between grandmother-child attachment and the grandmother's report of child self-control was stronger than that between mother-child attachment and the mother's report of child self-control. By extending the intergenerational transmission model of self-regulation and self-control theory to three-generation families, the present results illustrated the mechanism of intergenerational transmission of self-control in mother-grandmother co-parenting families and the differences in influence modes of mothers and grandmothers on children. Further, the novel findings uncovered in this paper emphasize the importance of considering the family as an interdependent dynamic system and including dyadic interactions between intergenerational caregivers in studies of preschool children's development in three-generation households.