Home and Mother: Relations With Infant Temperament

Mothers of about 100 toddlers at 12, 18, and 24 months completed the Toddler Temperament Scale. Three other data sets were also available: (a) factors representing lab observations; (b) measures of the mothers who completed the Thurstone Temperament Schedule and ratings made by a social worker of the mother's home; and (c) home measures from Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment and the Family Environment Scale. Direct correlations between the first principal component factor from the Toddler Temperament Scale and the corresponding component from the lab factor were .50, .38, .52, at 12, 18, and 24 months, respectively. Maternal characteristics-emotional stability and social dominance-from the Thurstone Temperament Schedule were related to maternal ratings of the toddler on the Toddler Temperament Scale at all ages ( r s = .25 to .46). There were only a few low-order correlations from environmental characteristics. A regression analysis, with lab factors entered first, indicated that, after the lab component was extracted, maternal temperament made a modest but significant contribution to maternal reports of toddler temperament. The results are discussed within a model separating objective and subjective components of maternal reports of temperament.