Indirect Effect of Maltreatment on Child Cooperation and Exploration Through Maternal Sensitive Guidance

Child maltreatment is a pathogenic relational experience that has deleterious effects on child functioning. Mothers who have engaged in child maltreatment have difficulties with emotion socialization (i.e., maternal sensitive guidance) while reminiscing with their children about past emotional experiences. Difficulties in maternal sensitive guidance are associated with child emotional maladjustment and decreased emotion regulation; however, the quality of children's contributions to reminiscing (i.e., child cooperation and exploration) has not been examined in the context of maltreatment. The present study aimed to assess the indirect effect of maltreatment on child cooperation and exploration during reminiscing via maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing. We also evaluated child sex as a moderator. Participants were 159 maltreating and 81 nonmaltreating mother-child dyads with 3- to 6-year-old children. Mother-child dyads reminisced about four past, everyday times that the child felt different emotions. Maltreatment was negatively associated with maternal sensitive guidance (b = -0.26, p < 0.05), and maternal sensitive guidance was positively associated with child cooperation and exploration (b = 0.81, p < 0.01). The indirect effect was significant. Multigroup analyses indicated that this indirect effect did not differ as a function of child sex. Findings demonstrate how lower levels of maternal sensitive guidance may be a process through which maltreatment negatively impacts children's cooperative and exploration while reminiscing about their past, everyday emotional experiences.