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Maternal Low Self-Control, Maternal Attachment Toward Children, Parenting Practices, and Adolescent Low Self-Control: a Prospective 15-Year Study

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Abstract

Research surrounding the intergenerational transmission of self-control has expanded recently. Yet, findings are mixed, and key limitations regarding the inclusion of distinct measures of parental attachment toward children and parenting practices within a longitudinal framework remain. We seek to address these limitations by providing a longitudinal test of serial mediation linking maternal low self-control, maternal attachment toward children, maternal parenting practices, and adolescent low self-control. We employed structural equation modeling to examine direct and indirect effects between maternal low self-control measured when children were 6 months old, maternal attachment toward children measured when target children were 7 years old, maternal parenting practices assessed when children were 12 years old, and adolescent low self-control when children were 15 years old. Findings partially support assertions from self-control theory in that maternal low self-control was positively related to later adolescent low self-control indirectly via maternal attachment toward children and, in turn, maternal parenting practices. However, direct associations between maternal low self-control and maternal parenting practices and, even more, between maternal low self-control and adolescent low self-control were also observed. Limitations and implications of our findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990:97) also state, “All that is required to activate the system (of monitoring and discipline) is affection for or investment in the child.”.

  2. To be clear, several studies testing self-control theory have measured attachment as the child/adolescent’s attachment to parents, finding that stronger attachment to parents is related to higher self-control in children/adolescents (Alvarez-Rivera 2016; Alvarez-Rivera, Price, and Ticknor 2017; Miller et al. 2009). This, however, is not our focus, nor is it the stated focus of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) arguments (see p. 98).

  3. We describe the SECCYD as having concluded in 2007, as this reflects the end of primary data collection that has been archived at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). It is the case, however, that additional funding has been provided to some of the original SECCYD researchers, which has enabled additional follow-up data collection from the study participants. Currently, data from these follow-ups has not been archived for researchers to freely access and use. For additional details, see https://seccyd.weebly.com/.

  4. The factor loadings for this latent measure, as well as for the latent measures of maternal low self-control and maternal parenting practices, can be found in Appendix Table 3. Because the latent factors in this study are constructed based on different sets and numbers of items, the value ranges would be different if we simply summed the values of raw items for a given factor. Given this, and following past practice (Gelman et al. 2008; Magidson & Vermunt 2002), we standardized the latent factor loadings so that they are more comparable.

  5. The item “Too often, when things go wrong, I get discouraged and feel like giving up” is similar to the item “When things get complicated, I tend to quit or withdraw” appearing in the Grasmick et al. (1993) “simple tasks” subscale. Likewise, the item “I often feel tense and jittery” is similar to the item “is nervous, high strung, or tense” included in measures of low self-control in past research (e.g., Raffaelli et al., 2005; Turner & Piquero, 2002).

  6. Even though the information on maternal warmth is based on adolescent reports, there is some conceptual (though certainly not temporal) overlap between this measure and the maternal-reported indicator of maternal attachment toward the child previously described. Given this, we estimated all models when excluding the latent measure of maternal warmth from the second-order latent measure of maternal parenting practices. Importantly, the results based on the reduced measure of maternal parenting practices were substantively identical to those when the warmth measure was included as part of the second-order latent variable. Given this, we report results based on the more inclusive measure of maternal parenting practices.

  7. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) do acknowledge there are other sources of self-control, such as school socialization. Still, their theoretical emphasis is on the role of parental socialization, and it is unclear whether something like schooling would mediate any effect of maternal low self-control on adolescent low self-control.

  8. We also estimated both model 1 and model 2 when specifying each of the control variables as predictors of maternal attachment toward the child and parenting practices in addition to adolescent low self-control. Importantly, none of the associations (both direct and indirect) between the key variables of interest was substantively (or statistically) changed when these additional control paths were specified. Because of the decrease in degrees of freedom that results from the inclusion of these additional paths, we elected to present the models where the controls are only used to predict the outcome of adolescent low self-control.

  9. The CFI of 0.81 is below the conventional standard cutoff for an acceptable model fit of 0.90. In analyses not shown, however, we re-estimated model 2 when excluding all control variables other than race, as none of them was predictive of the outcomes of interest. Of note, when excluding these controls, CFI increased to 0.97 and the TLI increased to 0.90. The RMSEA also decreased to 0.04 and the SRMR decreased to 0.02. Because anonymous reviewers recommended the inclusion of certain controls in the analysis, however, we have chosen to retain the controls in the model.

  10. While we have interpreted some of the items to be reflective of a lack of persistence and diligence, others may interpret the items as reflecting internalizing behavior such as depressive symptoms.

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  1. Social Sciences: Criminal Justice, DeSales University, 2755 Station Avenue, Center Valley, PA, 18034, USA

    Michelle A. Bolger

  2. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Ryan Charles Meldrum & Lin Liu

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Bolger, M.A., Meldrum, R.C. & Liu, L. Maternal Low Self-Control, Maternal Attachment Toward Children, Parenting Practices, and Adolescent Low Self-Control: a Prospective 15-Year Study. J Dev Life Course Criminology 8, 206–231 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00198-8

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