MOTHERS AS TEACHERS OF THEIR OWN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN: THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND TASK STRUCTURE ON TEACHING SPECIFICITY

Abstract

Informational specificity in the teaching of mothers interacting with their own preschool children was studied in relation to SES and aspects of situational press. Specificity in the form of verbal labels and attention-focusing techniques was found to vary both with SES and with differences among task components in their tendency to elicit specificity from the mothers. The data suggest that SES differences in maternal teaching are not describable in terms of two contrasting styles, but instead represent variation from limited, primarily reactive teaching to more diversified, proactive teaching. In general, SES digerences in parental behavior should be greatest in activities initiated and structured by parents and least in reactive situations in which the parent is responding to overt action by his child. Until recently, studies of parental behavior and socialization methods have been concerned primarily with the development of social and personological variables in children, relating them to parental differences on dimensions such as permissiveness-strictness and love-hostility (Becker 1964). However, with the reemergence of Piaget (Flavell 1963), with renewed interest in the effects of environment on the development of intelligence (Hunt 1961), and with general concern over the national problem of cultural disadvantage, socialization research has widened in scope and be

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