Implications of the mother-child relationship in infancy for socializationin the second year of life

We examined implications of two components of the early mother-child relati onship, maternal responsiveness and shared interactive positivity, for futu re socialization. Each component was assessed at 9 and 14 months using mult iple behavioral measures in 112 mother-child dyads who were observed intera cting in lengthy naturalistic paradigms. The two components were internally coherent, stable over time, and they converged significantly. Although the role of each component differed depending on the outcome measure, they gen erally predicted a host of positive socialization effects, all assessed at 22 months, as expected. These effects encompassed maternal diminished use o f power in discipline contexts, children's higher empathy to maternal distr ess, their more eager and successful performance in a mother-child imitatio n paradigm, and more distress when they believed they had violated a standa rd of conduct. The value of an approach that focuses on qualities of early relationship for later socialization is discussed.