Maternal Role Satisfaction, Mother-Child Interaction, and Child Temperament: A Process Model

Using data from the New York Longitudinal Study, this study tested the hypothesis that the relation between maternal role satisfaction and child adjustment is mediated by the quality of the mother-child relationship. Using the child’s temperamental difficulty as an index of adjustment, results of several path analyses indicated that mothers who were dissatisfied with their roles showed more rejection of the child, and in turn, had more difficult children. These results illustrate the use of a process model in the explanation of the relation between maternal role satisfaction and child development.