Er bestaat al lang onderzoek naar hoe ouders en kinderen samen spelen. In een nieuw onderzoek van Jean Ispa en een heleboel collega’s werd gekeken naar de verschillende houdingen van de moeder naar het kind (hier tussen 1 en 5) en het effect op hun onderlinge relatie. Het klinkt evident, maar warmte is cruciaal omdat dit ook de andere reacties van de moeder kleurt, Ispa zegt hierover “We know that children, regardless of culture, need to feel loved. Children take in the meaning of what their mothers are trying to do, so if a mom is being very directive and is generally a very warm person, I think the child feels, ‘My mom is doing this because she cares about me, and she’s trying to do the best for me.’ If that warmth is missing, then the child might feel, ‘My mom is trying to control me, and I don’t like it.'”

Te directief zijn kan negatief zijn tijdens het spel, de onderzoekers stelden vast dat als de moeder genoeg vrije keuze gaf in met wat en hoe het kind speelde, het kind echt kon openbloeien. Ispa zegt hierover: “Mothers often think they are helping their children by correcting them, but they are limiting the children’s creativity and possibly making their children enjoy being with them less. it’s often noted that European-American mothers are less directive generally than African-American and Mexican-American mothers, and that’s also what we found. When children were only a year old, on average, African-American mothers were the most directive, Mexican-American mothers were second and European-American mothers were third. As children got older, mothers of all ethnicities displayed less directiveness.” (bron)

Abstract van het onderzoek:

Objective .
Using the Early Head Start dataset, this study examined change over time in European American, African American, and Mexican American mothers’ directiveness during play with their young children and associations between these patterns and their children’s engagement with and negativity toward them. The influences of maternal positive and negative regard were also investigated.

Design .
Mother–child dyads (938 European American, 849 African American, and 465 Mexican American)participated in semistructured play sessions when children were 1, 2, 3, and 5 years old. Videotapes were coded for mothers’ directiveness, positive regard, and negative regard and for children’s engagement with and negativity toward their mothers.

Results .
All three groups declined in directiveness over time, but varied in initial levels and in rates and patterns of decline. European American mothers had the lowestdirectiveness ratings and African American mothers had the highest; Mexican American mothers showed the steepest declines after the first observation. Directiveness had generally negative implications for children’s behavior toward their mothers, although Mexican American children were least affected. In all three groups,maternal positive regard weakened, while maternal negative regard strengthened, inverse relations between directiveness and child engagement.

Conclusions .
Although there are ethnic differences in levels of directiveness during play with 1- to 5-year-olds, there are also across-group commonalities in the negative implications of high directiveness, especially in the contexts of low positive and high negativematernal regard.