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Publication #FAR0047

 

Nurturing Mothers1

Suzanna Smith2

Did you grow up in a warm and nurturing home? Did your parents show they cared, listen and talk things over with you, teach you new things, and respect you? Recent research shows that positive parenting behaviors can be passed down from one generation to the next.

According to an international team of researchers reporting in the journal Child Development, mothers who were raised in a positive, nurturing home during childhood and adolescence are more likely to raise their own children that way. This study was based on interviews and observations of more than 200 New Zealanders followed over 20 years, beginning during childhood and as participants in the study became parents themselves (Belsky, Jaffee, Sligo, Woodward, & Silva 2005).

Researchers found that mothers who were reared in supportive homes tended to support their own children in warm, sensitive, and stimulating ways. Those who were raised in a low-authoritarian household as preschoolers, in sharing, low-conflict homes during middle childhood, and who had trusting and close relationships with their parents during their early teen years, were more likely to engage in such positive parenting with their own young children.

This research suggests that a mother's own experiences shape her parenting style. Likewise, parent education for all new parents, where they learn to create a positive environment for their children, can start a chain reaction that lasts across generations.

Listening, learning, and living together: it's the science of life. "Family Album" is a co-production of University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, and of WUFT-FM. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our website at http://www.familyalbumradio.org.

To listen to the radio broadcast:

http://radiosource.net/radio_stories/nuturemoms.mp3

http://radiosource.net/radio_stories/nuturemoms.wav

Reference

Belsky, J., Jaffee, S. R., Sligo, J., Woodward, L, & Silva, P. A. (2005). Intergenerational transmission of warm-sensitive-stimulating parenting: A prospective study of mothers and fathers of 3-year-olds. Child Development, 76 (2), 384-397.

Footnotes

1.

This document is FAR0047, one of a series of the Family Youth and Community Sciences Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Broadcast as program 199. Published February 2008. Revised May 2008. Reviewed March 2012. In the interest of time and/or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Visit the EDIS website at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.

2.

Suzanna Smith, associate professor, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, University of Florida, and executive producer, Family Album Radio, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Nick T. Place, Dean.