Psychological factors in maternal grandparents of asthmatic children

The presently perceived past family interactions between mothers and maternal grandparents of asthmatic children and nonasthmatic children were compared. All the children included in this study had a common factor in that they suffered from early infantile eczema in the 1st year of life, and in their families there were many cases of asthma, hay fever, and eczema. With the use of two different test instruments for the measurement of family relationships, it was found that maternal grandmothers of asthmatic boys had a highly positive relationship with the mothers of the boys and that the maternal grandfathers were perceived by the mothers as rejecting figures. Even though the correlation between the two tests was rather high, they showed differences in their sensitivity. There was a striking difference between the mothers of asthmatic boys and the mothers of asthmatic girls in both tests. This fact together with the established greater vulnerability of boys to asthma seem to justify studying the sexes separately. It could be assumed that the asthmatic and nonasthmatic children in this study had a similar constitutional-familial allergic predisposition and that the differences between these groups of children were mainly influenced by environmental factors. The mothers' perception of the family relationship with their parents was considered to be minimally influenced by the asthma of their children.