Mother-child conversations about safety: implications for socializing safety values in children

This study examined how mothers socialize their children about safety through conversations about potentially unsafe activities.

Mothers and their 8- and 10-year-old children discussed and rated the safety of 12 photographs depicting another same-gender child engaged in potentially dangerous activities.

Conversations usually unfolded with children giving the first rating or rationale, followed by additional discussion between the mother and child. Mothers and children relied on 2 main types of rationales to justify their ratings: potential outcomes of the activity and specific features of the situation (dangerous and nondangerous). Mothers (but not children) used dangerous feature rationales more often than dangerous outcome rationales. When disagreements arose, mothers typically guided children to adopt their own rating rather than the child's rating. Additionally, children who used more nondangerous feature and outcome rationales had experienced more injuries requiring medical attention.

Mothers' focus on dangerous features appears to reflect their efforts to help children make causal connections between dangerous elements of the situation and adverse outcomes that might result.