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Research aims to understand how to help mothers cope
BY REBECCA KENDALL
A mother's unresolved issues related to childhood trauma and the impact this can have on her ability to parent and develop a secure relationship with her child is the focus of new research at U of G.
Prof. Heidi Bailey of the Department of Psychology is studying how incidents of childhood trauma due to neglect, loss of a loved one, or physical, sexual or emotional abuse can affect a woman's ability to relate to her child and be a nurturing parent.
“Secure attachment relationships have been related to a wide range of positive social, emotional and cognitive outcomes in children,” says Bailey. “By understanding how to help mothers cope with trauma in their childhood, we can help them develop mutually rewarding relationships with their children that foster these positive outcomes.”
A history of unresolved trauma is not necessarily related to parenting problems later in life, she says.
“Some people who were abused in childhood are resilient and find ways to cope with their painful memories.”
There are moderating factors, including external supports and personal coping mechanisms, that may help women in navigating their way to becoming sensitive and emotionally responsive mothers, says Bailey.
“For others, difficult early experiences get in the way of developing a relaxed, positive relationship with their child. We want to understand and help those parents.”
To aid her research, Bailey is developing a lab that will include instruments to record physiological data such as heart rate as a way to measure intensity of emotion. Physiological data will be integrated with video recordings of mothers' interactions with their children.
“It's important to use measures other than self-report to assess the quality of parent-child relationships. Often, the way we say we parent and the way we actually parent are two different things.”
Bailey is also studying how a mother's personal understanding of her early experiences affects her parenting. Of particular importance is evaluating the words a mother uses to answer questions about her experience and her feelings about it.
“It's not only about what happened, but it's also about how the person remembers it. It's more about the process of how the women talk about their relationships. Subtle differences in the way they share their experiences can be telling.”
A synchronization of these various elements will provide a multi-level approach to data collection, which is important because the links among memories, feelings, behaviour and relationships are complex, says Bailey.
“Within relationships, we often do things and behave in ways we're not aware of, so rather than rely solely on a mother's self-report, we need to look at the ways her perceptions of relationships and memories of past experiences relate to how she actually interacts with her child, and how she and her child actually feel during these interactions.”
