Studies of parental caregiving and child compliance/defiance have yielded
inconsistent and often weak findings. In this study, we investigated whether
differences in the predictive power of maternal control in relation to child
behaviour varied as a function of the type of measure employed. We hypothesised that
ratings of maternal behaviour would predict child behaviour better than would
maternal frequencies because ratings take the child's needs into account in
assessing maternal behaviour. A sample of 95 mothers and their 2-year-old children
were observed in laboratory and home settings. It was found that maternal ratings
and frequency counts predicted child defiance equally well within the laboratory
setting. Across settings, only maternal ratings correlated with child defiance, and
this correlation was significantly greater than that between maternal frequencies
and child defiance. The frequencies and ratings provided evidence of convergent
validity for one another as measures of quality of maternal control.
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