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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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When mothers have favourites
— conditions under which mothers differentiate among their children | | Author(s) | J Jill Suitor, Jori Sechrist, Karl Pillemer |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 26, no 2, Summer 2007 |
| Pages | pp 85-100 |
| Source | http://www.utpjournals.com |
| Keywords | Mother ; Attitude ; Family relationships ; Children [offspring] ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Research has shown that mothers differentiate between their adult children in terms of closeness and support. However, studies have not looked at why some mothers report preferences between children and others do not. To distinguish between mothers who do and do not report favouring some of their adult children, the authors used data from a within family study in Massachusetts in which 553 older mothers were interviewed about each of their children. Almost all mothers reported differentiating between their children regarding emotional closeness, confiding, or preferred caregivers. Multivariate analyses revealed that mothers' values and mother-child value similarity predicted which mothers differentiated between children regarding closeness and confiding, whereas mothers' and children's demographic characteristics predicted which mothers differentiated regarding preferred caregivers. Black mothers were less likely than white mothers to differentiate when seeking a confidant; however, race played no role in mothers' likelihood of differentiating regarding emotional closeness or help during illness. Taken together, these findings indicate that differentiating between adult children is common; further, family-level predictors of mothers' differentiating mirror the patterns shown in dyad-level analyses of mothers' favouritism. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-071031202 A |
| Classmark | SRM: DP: DS:SJ: SS: 3F: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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