Early Child Development in Relation to Degree of Flexibility of Maternal Attitude1

The three cases presented here have been selected to illustrate the relationship between a mother's child-care practices and the child's early development, contrasting three types of maternal attitude—overpermissive, moderate and rigid. Aside from this difference in degree of maternal flexibility, the cases have been chosen for their similarities, in the belief that contrasts in the children's behavior and the parent-child relationships would thus be more apparent. The three sets of parents are alike in the following respects: they are white, of early American descent, and Protestant. They are between twenty-five and thirty years of age. They are college graduates, and the fathers are graduate students and army veterans. They live under comparable conditions on limited incomes drawn principally from government assistance. The mothers are primiparas who had requested rooming-in and wanted to nurse. The infants are female, born within a few months of each other. At birth, they all weighed slightly over 7 pounds and were 20 inches long. They developed at an above average rate in both height and weight. At three years, when data collection terminated, they were all sturdy, well-developed children.

The fact that the three mothers were in rooming-in is incidental to the parent-child relationship study. The Rooming-In Project provided opportunity for closer contact with the mothers prenatally as well as for