Child Temp and Parenting - Sanson-Rothbart

CHILD TEMPERAMENT AND PARENTING
Ann Sanson
University of Melbourne

and

Mary K. Rothbart
University of Oregon

Ann Sanson, Department of Psychology, School of Behavioural Science,

University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Australia

Running Head: TEMPERAMENT AND PARENTING 2

INTRODUCTION

Parents often do not become believers in temperament until after the birth of their second
child. Before this time, their child's behavior may be seen as a simple and direct outcome of their
upbringing, "a tribute to" or "the fault of" the parents. With the second child, management strategies
that worked well with the first child may not be effective. Problems experienced with the first child
(in feeding, sleeping, coping with strangers) may not exist with the second, but new problems may
arise. Such experiences suggest strongly that "nature" as well as "nurture" influences child
development, that children differ from each other from very early in life, and that these differences
have important implications for parent-child interaction. A number of these individual differences fall
under the rubric of child temperament, the subject of this chapter. Here, we define temperament as
individual differences in reactivity to internal and external stimulation, and in patterns of motor and
attentional self-regulation.
The modern understanding that children make important contributions to their social
interactions has two roots. The first is temperament research initiated by Thomas and Chess and their
colleagues in their pioneering New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS, Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, &
Korn, 1963). The second is Bell's (1968, 1974) reconceptualization of socialization as a mutually
interactive process, with both child and caregiver seeking to redirect, reduce, stimulate, or augment
the behavior of the other. These insights together have led to the recognition that children differ in
such qualities as responsiveness to parents' soothing strategies, capacity to control their own emotional
responsivity, and capacity to bring pleasure or distress to their parents. As Rothbart (1989a, p. 195)
put it, "the infant's temperament regulates and is regulated by the actions of others from the earliest
hours."
This chapter explores some of the important mutual influences of parenting and temperament,
drawing on both empirical data and clinical insights. We begin by describing the current state of
thinking about temperament, as it has developed from its ancient beginnings, and from Thomas and
Chess' NYLS study begun in the 1950s. Major dimensions of temperament, their stability over
childhood, and relation to other variables are summarized. We then review empirical evidence for
relations between temperament and parenting. Theoretical and methodological problems are
discussed, and future directions for research are suggested. We also briefly discuss some of the
implications of temperament theory and research for parenting.

THE NATURE OF TEMPERAMENT

Historical Background
Views of adult temperament as linked to the physiology of the individual were found in the
ideas of early Greco-Roman physicians; these ideas persisted throughout the Middle Ages (Diamond,
1974). In this approach, a fourfold typology was described and related to a balance of the bodily
humours. The melancholic person, negative and prone to sentimentality and sadness, was seen as
having a predominance of black bile; the choleric individual, explosive and anger-prone, a
predominance of yellow bile; the sanguine person, positive and outgoing, a predominance of blood, and
the phlegmatic person, slow to react, a predominance of phlegm.
Research on individual differences following this tradition or closely related to it has continued
to the present day. In the twentieth century, the ideas directly influenced the work of Pavlov, Wundt,
Ebbinghaus, and Eysenck (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). The term temperament, however, was used
primarily to describe research carried out in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, whereas personality
was the term used to describe the mostly factor analytic research done in Britain, western Europe and
the United States. (See Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Rothbart, 1989b; and Strelau, 1983). Research on
individuality in infants and young children was originally not closely related to the adult tradition (but
see Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981). This situation is now beginning to change, as similarities between
basic dimensions of temperament and personality in children and adults are identified (Halverson,
Kohnstamm, & Martin, in press). These are discussed below.

In some of the earliest research on temperament in childhood, the NYLS (Thomas, Chess, Birch,
Hertzig, & Korn, 1963) took a clinically oriented approach that was strongly related to parenting issues.
The NYLS reacted against a tradition that saw parents as responsible for their children's problems.
Chess and Thomas noted instances of child psychopathology that occurred with healthy and committed
parenting, and other cases where children showed a consistently adaptive developmental course, even
into adulthood, despite severe parental disturbance, family disorganization, and social stress (Chess &
Thomas, 1989). A major starting point for Thomas and Chess was the idea that the child's
temperament must be considered in any discussion of appropriate parenting.
In addition to its practical emphasis, the NYLS was linked to important theoretical issues, as in
this observation by Chess, Thomas, and Birch (1965, p. 21), "Events in themselves can have no
developmental meaning...the environment is first filtered by the child's own characteristics. Children
with different characteristics, therefore, will be affected differently by the same objective
occurrence. Not only does the child screen his environment, he also influences it...The child, by his
own nature, "conditions" his environment, at the same time that the social and cultural environment
affects him." The NYLS concept of goodness-of-fit between characteristics of the child and
requirements of the child's environment has been influential in guiding later research, including that on
parenting-temperament interactions. We discuss these constructs in greater detail below.

Temperament Dimensions
Only in recent years have adult temperament/personality and child development traditions of
temperament begun to come together. Although debate and discussion concerning underlying
elements of temperament continue (Goldsmith, Buss, Plomin, Rothbart, Thomas, Chess, Hinde, &
McCall, 1987), recent research on children's temperament has identified a limited number of
dimensions that appear to have parallels in the higher-order factors extracted in studies of adult
personality (Digman, 1990; Halverson, Kohnstamm, & Martin, in press; Rothbart, 1989a). The three
broad factors that appear to consistently cut across child and adult studies include a positive affect
and approach factor (called variously extraversion, surgency or sociability), a negative affect factor,
and a control or constraint factor.
In the early work of the NYLS, Thomas, Chess, and their colleagues analyzed the content of
interviews of 22 parents of infants 2-3 months and older about their infant's reactions to everyday
situations (Thomas et al., 1963). This analysis produced a set of nine temperament categories:
Activity Level, Rhythmicity, Approach versus Withdrawal, Adaptability, Intensity, Threshold, Quality of
Mood, Distractibility, and Attention Span/Persistence. They also identified behavioral patterns
including "difficult" and "easy" infants.
"Difficultness" describes one pole of a cluster identified in the early NYLS work, including
negative mood, withdrawal, low adaptability, high intensity, and low regularity (Thomas et al., 1963).
The opposite pole of this measure was described as "easy." The "difficult child" construct has had a
strong influence on the field, and many studies of temperament and parenting have employed
measures of child difficultness. In subsequent research in the area, however, dimensions making up
this "difficultness" construct have not been found to cluster together (Bates, 1989). This has led some
researchers to develop their own "difficultness" measures. Thus, a "difficultness" measure in one study
may employ the NYLS definition. In another, it may simply include irritability or negative emotionality,
and in another, it may reflect the actual empirical clustering of temperament variables. This creates
problems for consolidating findings using the construct.
The difficultness construct has been criticized in the literature for other reasons (Plomin, 1982;
Rothbart, 1982). It adds a value connotation to temperament that may not correspond to the actual
feelings of the parent, and ignores the fact that any temperament characteristic (e.g., high or low
approach, high or low attentional control) may be "difficult" or "easy," depending on the requirements
of the situation. Despite our reservations about the usefulness of the construct, a number of the
research studies reviewed in this chapter rely upon "difficulty" because they have been so widely
employed.

The nine more specific NYLS dimensions have also been widely used in research on childhood
temperament. However, questions have arisen about the extent to which scales measuring the
dimensions show conceptual overlap with one another, or are not internally consistent. Because of
these problems, factor analyses of questionnaire items have been carried out on parent report scales of
infant temperament derived from the NYLS categories (Bohlin, Hagekull, & Lindhagen, 1981; Sanson,
Prior, Garino, Oberklaid, & Sewell, 1987). A review of results from these analyses, related to analyses
of scales derived from other theoretical frameworks, suggests that fewer than nine dimensions can
adequately account for infant temperamental variability (Rothbart & Mauro, 1990). This "shorter list"
of temperament dimensions in infancy includes Fear, Irritability/Anger, Positive Affect (including
approach), Activity Level, and Attentional Persistence. A sixth dimension of Rhythmicity has been
reliably extracted, but tends to account for only a relatively small portion of the variance.
Factor analyses of questionnaire items based on the NYLS for older children have revealed
similar broad factors. Data on a large sample of toddlers in the Australian Temperament Project (ATP)
identified factors labeled Irritability, Approach, Cooperation-Manageability, Activity-Reactivity,
Rhythmicity, Persistence, Threshold and Distractibility (Prior, Sanson, & Oberklaid, 1989a; Sanson,
Prior, & Oberklaid, 1991a). When a second factor analysis was performed on these scales, three broad
dimensions emerged, labeled Negative Emotionality, Self-Regulation, and Sociability. The major
factors emerging from factor analyses of the Thomas and Chess (1977) Childhood Temperament
Questionnaire, completed by mothers of children in the ATP at the ages of 3 to 8 years, were
Inflexibility (irritability and uncooperativeness), Persistence, Sociability and Rhythmicity (Sanson,
Smart, Prior, Oberklaid, & Pedlow, in press b); these factors remained constant over three age groups
within this period (Pedlow, Sanson, Prior, & Oberklaid, 1993).
Using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire, an extensive parent report measure of
temperament for 3- to 8-year-olds (Ahadi & Rothbart, in press; Ahadi, Rothbart, & Ye, in press;
Kochanska, DeVet, Goldman, Murray, & Putnam, 1993), three broad factors have consistently been
found. The first, called Surgency, is defined primarily by the scales of Approach, High Intensity
Pleasure, Activity Level, and a negative contribution from Shyness. The second, called Negative
Affectivity, is defined by the scales of Discomfort, Fear, Anger/Frustration, Sadness, and loading
negatively, Soothability. The third factor, labeled Effortful Control, is defined by the scales of
Inhibitory Control, Attentional Focusing, Low Intensity Pleasure and Perceptual Sensitivity. The first
three factors emerging from a recent factor analysis of the NYLS-inspired Middle Childhood
Temperament Questionnaire items (Hegvik, McDevitt, & Carey, 1982) for 8- to 12-year-olds (McClowry,
Hegvik, & Teglasi, 1993) also shows striking similarity to these three factors: Approach/Withdrawal,
Negative Reactivity, and Task Persistence. Their two smaller factors, Activity and Responsiveness, also
parallel smaller factors in the ATP, Activity and Threshold (Sanson, Smart, Prior, Oberklaid, & Pedlow,
in press b).
Considering variability in item content, age of children, and whether analyses were based on
items or scale scores, these levels of comparability among factors is notable (Martin, Wisenbaker, &
Hutunen, in press). Further, these factors show strong similarities with the "Big Three" factors and
three of the "Big Five" factors that have emerged from analyses of self and peer reports describing
personality in adult subjects (Goldberg, 1993; McCrae & Costa, 1987; Tellegen, 1985). The Negative
Affectivity factor from childhood measures appears to map on the broad adult dimension of
Neuroticism or Negative Emotionality. The Surgency, Sociability, or Approach/Withdrawal factors map
on the broad adult dimension of Extraversion or Positive Emotionality. The Persistence or Effortful
Control factors can be seen to map upon the adult dimension of Control/Constraint (see Ahadi &
Rothbart, in press).

Temperament and Biology
Much data has now accumulated in twin, family, and adoption studies on genetic bases for
individual differences in temperament and personality (see discussions of Bornstein, Gaughran &
Homel, 1986; Goldsmith, 1989; Plomin & Stocker, 1989). Current research and thinking in neuroscience
also continues to make links between temperamental variation and neural substrates (Gray, 1987a,
1987b; LeDoux, 1989; Panksepp, 1986; Zuckerman, 1991; reviews by Gunnar, 1990, Rothbart, 1989b;

Rothbart, Derryberry & Posner, in press). Just as ancient students of temperament related behavior to
the human body as it was understood at that time, so current research suggests relations between
individual differences in behavior and physiology.
In current frameworks of affective neuroscience, positive and negative affective processes
underlying tendencies to approach (i.e., Surgency or Extraversion) and avoid (i.e., Negative Affectivity
or Anxiety) have been related to systems labeled Behavior Activation/Facilitation and Behavior
Inhibition, respectively (Gray, 1987a, 1987b). These systems have in turn been related to the activity
of distributed neural circuits linking cortical brain regions to limbic and brainstem regions. The limbic
components of these circuits are proposed to recognize evolutionarily significant information such as
the presence of reward (for Approach) or threat (for Fear). Outputs of these evaluations contact
circuits for motor reactions and the autonomic activity that supports motor action.
In this view, individual differences in temperament reflect variability in the information
processing of the value or significance or events or objects to the individual. This emotional
information can be further influenced by attentional systems of the brain (Posner & Petersen, 1990),
and individual differences in attentional systems can also be seen to support behavioral persistence
and effortful control (Posner & Rothbart, 1991). Although research linking temperament and
physiology is at an early stage, developments in this area will allow a more complete understanding of
basic dimensions of temperament in the future.

Stability of Temperament
It has generally been assumed that, to be meaningful or important, temperament must show
substantial stability across time. Typically, however, modest to moderate stability across age has been
found, with correlations ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 (see Hubert, Wachs, Peters-Martin, & Gandour, 1982;
McDevitt, 1986; Rothbart, 1989a; Slabach, Morrow, & Wachs, 1991). Two recent developments,
however, may serve to modify conclusions about temperamental stability. First, it has been noted that
even genetic underpinnings do not imply immutability over time (Hinde, 1989). Second, when
conceptual and methodological problems are controlled, higher levels of stability are found.
Given major changes in a child's behavioral repertoire, manifestations of temperament will
likely change over time. To assess relative stability of an individual's temperamental characteristics, it
is therefore necessary to establish continuity in the temperament constructs studied across time
(Sanson et al., 1991a). Early work, including research based on the NYLS conceptualization, did not
attend to this issue with rigor. Apparent instability may therefore have been due to discontinuity in
the underlying constructs. Another possible source of instability is likely to be error of measurement,
also rarely taken into account to date.
A recent study by Pedlow et al. (1993) on the ATP sample from infancy to 7 to 8 years of age
illustrates the consequences of dealing with these issues. By using structural equation modeling, a set
of factors that apply either across the whole age range (Approach/Sociability, Rhythmicity) or across
three or more time intervals (Irritability, Persistence, Cooperation-Manageability, and Inflexibility) was
identified. The model, which corrects for attenuation of correlations due to error of measurement,
was then used to assess individual stability on these factors from year to year. Estimates were
considerably higher than those previously reported, mostly in the range of 0.7 to 0.8. Even with these
levels of stability, however, there is considerable room for individuals to change in their relative
characteristics. When children in the ATP were placed in four categories from lowest to highest on the
basis of their temperament scores at each age, few remained in the same category over all years from
infancy to 8 years (Sanson et al., 1991a). On the other hand, very few changed from one extreme
category to the other extreme.

Functional Significance
It is now generally agreed that individual differences in child temperament are predictive of
later development and psychiatric risk (Rutter, 1987). Both concurrent and prospective relations
between temperament and behavior problems have been documented (e.g., Barron & Earls, 1984;
Garrison & Earls, 1987; Kyrios & Prior, 1990; Maziade, 1989; Prior et al., 1989a), but prediction from

infancy is relatively weak (Bates, Maslin, & Frankel, 1985; Cameron, 1978; Maziade, 1989; Sanson,
Oberklaid, Pedlow, & Prior, 1991c). Early temperament is also associated with more specific
behavioral outcomes such as aggression (Sanson, Smart, Prior, & Oberklaid, in press a). Other
outcomes studied include physical health, intellectual development, rate of development, child abuse,
and reaction to stressful life events such as parental divorce. There is at least tentative evidence for
relations with temperament in all these areas, although the effects are generally small (see Prior,
1991). Many of these studies have employed some version of the "difficult temperament" construct;
others have tapped specific temperamental characteristics such as negative affect, distress proneness,
high activity or intensity, and low adaptability, and have found associations between them and
behavioral problems.
Several methodological issues must be considered in interpreting this literature on prediction,
however. Most of the studies are based on maternal reports of both temperament and outcome, so the
measures are not independent of each other. A concern also arises regarding potential confounding of
the concepts of extreme or "difficult" temperament and behavior problems. For example, the
questions asked to assess temperament dimensions such as activity, approach/withdrawal, and
adaptability may be very similar to those used to assess hyperactivity, shyness and oppositional
behavior, respectively. For example, the question, "How wary is your child with strangers?" may tap
approach/withdrawal (temperament) or extreme shyness (a behavior problem). A study by Sanson,
Prior and Kyrios (1990) suggested that measures of externalizing (acting out) behavior disorders are
relatively unconfounded with temperament measures, but some confounding occurs for measures of
internalizing problems (shyness, anxiety). Factors of Activity/Intensity and Irritability showed
confounding with both internalizing and externalizing problems. Although some conceptual overlap
might be expected if temperament contributes to the development of behavior problems (Bates, 1990),
caution is required in interpreting the association. This problem may increase with age--"difficult"
temperament in infancy may be based largely on emotionality, but among older children it may relate
more to manageability and therefore be conceptually closer to behavior problems (Rothbart, Posner, &
Hershey, in press).

DIRECT ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN CHILD TEMPERAMENT AND PARENTING

The expectation that child temperament and parenting would be associated seems reasonable,
but it has proved difficult both to predict on theoretical grounds what the nature of the associations
should be, and to obtain fully persuasive empirical evidence of such links. Methodological issues are
one important basis for this difficulty, and we now consider these issues.
Parent report is the most frequent source of data on infant temperament. If parent report is
also used to assess parenting, there is a clear potential for non-independence of measures, because
characteristics of the parent may affect both their parenting practices and their report of their child's
temperament. Because the child's temperament is likely to be affected by prior parenting, any
association between concurrent parenting and child temperament may also be the result of
childrearing history. In her review of the links between infant emotionality and parenting,
Crockenberg (1986) noted that few studies attain independence between temperament and parenting
variables. In addition, the apparent effects of parenting on the child may be related to the genetic
similarity of parent and child (Scarr, 1992).
Given these caveats, it is not surprising that relatively few studies of parenting and
temperament allow unambiguous interpretation of results. Because of these problems, we do not
attempt a comprehensive review of studies in this area. More detailed reviews of the association
between infant negative emotionality and parenting can be found in Crockenberg (1986), and Bates
(1987) has reviewed the literature on the influence of temperament on parent-child interaction. We
emphasize here studies whose results are more clearly interpretable. We also stress the importance of
third variables such as age and gender in influencing relations between temperament and parenting,
and finally suggest in a section on joint contributions that some of the most promising thinking and
research involves using combinations of temperament and parenting variables to predict outcomes in
children.

Empirical Studies of Parenting-Temperament Linkages
Direct associations. Some general positive relations between parenting and temperament
have been expected: The adaptable, easy to soothe, or sociable child may elicit warm and responsive
parenting, whereas the irritable, demanding, or withdrawing child may elicit parental irritation and
withdrawal of contact or stimulation. Conversely, warm and responsive parenting may decrease the
expression of negative emotionality in the child, and distant or inconsistent parenting may increase it.
There is evidence in favor of these expectations. Most of the relevant studies have focused on distress-
related temperament attributes (e.g., irritability, "difficultness," negative mood) which tend to covary
with poor parenting and general unresponsiveness (e.g., Buss, 1981; Campbell, 1979; Crockenberg &
Acredolo, 1983; Hinde, 1989; Kelly, 1976; Linn & Horowitz, 1983). Others have noted associations
between the child's positive affect and self-regulation and parental responsiveness, social interaction,
and use of rewards (e.g., Hinde, 1989; Kyrios & Prior, 1990; West, McLaughlin, Rieser, Brooks, &
O'Connor, 1986). The direction of causation is, of course, not clear in these studies.
However, it is also possible to argue for another association between parenting and child
temperament. If we assume most parents to be highly invested in their children, we might predict that
parents with more irritable or difficult children will exert more positive efforts with them than with
easier children. Crockenberg (1986) cited seven studies finding greater parent involvement with
greater infant irritability; we have been unable to find more. In none of these studies, however, is
there evidence that "positive" child temperament qualities are related to "negative" parenting; instead,
the links are between characteristics like child irritability and higher maternal contact and stimulation.
For example, Fish and Crockenberg (1986) found that crying and time to calm at 1 and 3 months in a
small sample of infants were associated with more caregiving and social interaction with the mother at
9 months. Similarly, Caron and Miller (1981) found that African mothers were more responsive to
highly irritable babies.
Moderating variables. Evidence for the two contrasting relations between temperament and
parenting discussed above combined with findings of mixed effects (e.g., Klein, 1984) leads to the
conjecture that third factors may also be involved. There are also several published accounts of no
association between temperament and parenting, and given the difficulty in getting such null results
published, these may be an underestimate (Daniels, Plomin & Greenhalgh, 1984; Rothbart, 1986;
Vaughn, Taraldson, Crichton, & Egeland, 1981; Wachs & Gandour, 1983). It is notable that, although
the majority of the null findings are obtained from large-sample studies, most of the studies finding
associations have been obtained from relatively small samples--these findings may be spurious, or it
may be that the influence of competing third variables "cancels out" effects found with smaller and
more homogeneous samples.
Age. There is indeed suggestive evidence of the role of third variables in moderating the
association between parenting and child temperament. One, suggested by Crockenberg (1986), is the
child's age. Parents may begin by investing greater effort in their distress-prone child, but not be able
to sustain this effort over time. Consistent with this notion are findings of Peters-Martin and Wachs
(1984): At 6 months, infant withdrawal as assessed by mothers' report was related to more maternal
emotional and verbal responsiveness, and less restriction and punishment. By 12 months, intensity
(another negative affect temperament dimension) was related to less maternal involvement and more
restriction and punishment. It should be noted, however, that these were the only significant
correlations out of a large set. Similarly, in an observational study by Maccoby, Snow, and Jacklin
(1984), mothers of boys who were "difficult" (fussy, intense, hard to soothe) at 12 months showed a
reduction in their teaching efforts in a joint teaching-learning task at 18 months. Among easy-going
boys, mothers' teaching efforts increased over this time. Greater teaching effort at 12 months also
predicted a decline in boys' difficultness, suggesting bidirectional effects.
Bates, in a series of reports of a longitudinal study following children from 6 months to 2 years
(Bates, Olson, Pettit, & Bayles, 1982; Lee & Bates, 1985; Pettit & Bates, 1984), also found a reversal of
relations. At both 6 and 13 months, babies with high ratings on a "fussy/difficult" factor from maternal
report and observation received more affectionate contact and object stimulation from their mothers.
At 24 months, however, more difficult children resisted their mothers' efforts at control, and received

more negative control from their mothers. Although this may partially reflect changes in underlying
definitions of "difficult," these findings suggest that some mothers respond to their harder-to-parent
infants with greater efforts, but cannot--or do not--sustain this over time.
Sex. A recent meta-analysis by Lytton and Romney (1991) found little difference in parenting
of boys and girls overall, but the authors did not consider potential sex by temperament interactions.
Differences in temperament and parenting associations for boys and girls have been documented.
Gordon (1983) observed 2- to 4-year-old children interacting with their mothers. Children classified as
"easy" on the basis of maternal report did not differ in behavior from "difficult" children, but mothers
gave more commands to "easy" than to "difficult" boys, and fewer commands to "easy" than to "difficult"
girls. Crockenberg (1986), reanalyzing data from Crockenberg and Smith (1982), found mothers to be
more responsive to the crying of irritable girls than boys.
Klein (1984) found that children who typically showed intense reactions to stimulation differed
in the types of maternal contact they received--highly intense boys received high levels of physical
contact and intense girls more distal vocal stimulation. Simpson and Stevenson-Hinde (1985)
documented better relationships with mothers for shy than for non-shy girls, but the opposite for boys.
Two studies of fathers' parenting also found sex differences: Lamb and colleagues (Lamb, Frodi,
Hwang, Forstromm, & Corry, 1982) found fathers to be more involved with difficult sons and easy
daughters, and Rendina and Dickerscheid (1976) found fathers to be more involved in social activities
with difficult boys and less with difficult girls. A subgroup of children in the ATP were followed closely
from 3 to 7 years (Sanson, Smart, Prior, & Oberklaid, 1993). For these subjects, early child inflexibility
was related to later parental punishment for girls only, suggesting less parent acceptance of negativity
in girls than in boys. Overall, there were more significant correlations between early parenting and
later temperament for girls, suggesting possibly greater responsivity in parenting practices to
daughters.
Differential beliefs about the acceptability and desirability of temperamental attributes for
boys and girls might explain these patterns of parental responses, with the predominant pattern
emerging from these data being more positive responses to boys' difficultness, and lower acceptance of
difficultness in girls, especially on the part of fathers. It is likely that failing to differentiate between
girls and boys has resulted in some of the inconsistencies in findings that we have previously noted.
Maternal characteristics. A third category of moderating variables involves mothers'
psychological and social characteristics. Escalona (1968) noted that more anxious mothers tended to
lose confidence when their usual soothing techniques failed to work for their infants, whereas the
confidence of other mothers was relatively unaffected. She suggested that a sense of maternal
incompetence might have far-reaching consequences for mother and child. Her hypothesis was
supported in a study by Teti and Gelfand (1991), who concluded that maternal self-efficacy mediated a
link between "fussy-difficult" ratings for infants and their mothers' lower competence (sensitivity,
warmth, engagement). Similarly, Gowen, Johnson-Martin, Goldman, and Appelbaum (1989) found that
infant irritability predicted both depression and a sense of parenting incompetence, and Cutrona and
Troutman (1986) found that infant difficultness was strongly related to post-partum depression, both
directly and through self-efficacy. Because depressed and nondepressed mothers vary in their
parenting (see Field, in this handbook; Tronick, 1989), temperament difficultness might have an
indirect impact on parenting. Genetic overlap between parent and child needs to be taken into
account, however, in considering these relationships (Scarr, 1992).
Extreme children. Temperament and parenting may be more closely related for some children
than for others. Buss and Plomin (1984) argued that children with extreme temperament
characteristics should be less affected by their environments than those with less extreme
characteristics. A relative immunity to environmental influences would provide one explanation for
the greater stability found for children at extremes on temperamental attributes in the ATP
longitudinal study (Sanson et al., 1991a) and in other data sets (e.g., Kagan, Reznick, & Snidman,
1986). Data from two studies suggest that parenting may affect children with some temperament
profiles more than others. Crockenberg and McCluskey (1985) found a relation between mother
responsiveness at 3 months and babies' crying at 12 months only for babies who were low in irritability
at 3 months. Feinman and Lewis (1983) noted that 10-month-old infants followed the example of their

mothers in being friendly or unfriendly to strangers. This social referencing effect was stronger for
"easy" than "difficult" babies.
In the above two studies, the implied direction of effects is from parenting to temperament, or
at least to temperament expression. Maccoby et al. (1984) noted that potential parenting effects on
temperament have been under-researched, probably because of the belief that temperament is in its
nature relatively immutable. However, as indicated in our discussion of stability, temperament is not
unchanging in its expression, and a case can be made that parenting would be an impetus to change.
In many of the studies reviewed to this point, the direction is moot, and may as easily be parenting-to-
temperament as the hypothesized temperament-to-parenting.
Social and cultural factors. In a study of social support, Crockenberg and McCluskey (1985)
found that, when mothers had low social support and their babies were more irritable as measured in
neonatal testing, the mothers showed less sensitivity to their babies at 12 months. In studies of SES,
Bates et al. (1982) and Bates, Maslin, and Frankel (1985) found no consistent SES interactions on the
effect of temperament on parent-child relationships. However, Prior, Sanson, Carroll, and Oberklaid
(1989b) examined temperament and parenting practices among groups of 3- to 4-year-old children
drawn from the upper and lower SES quartiles of a large sample. They found almost twice as many
significant correlations between temperament factors and parenting dimensions in the high SES group
as in the low SES group, and interpreted this result as evidence of possible greater sensitivity to the
individuality of their children among high SES mothers.
Numerous studies have found mean differences on temperament scales between children in
different cultural contexts (e.g., Ahadi, Rothbart, & Ye, in press; Kohnstamm, 1989; Kyrios, Prior,
Oberklaid, & Demetriou, 1989), and accounts of cultural differences in parenting practices also abound
(see Whiting & Whiting, 1973). No studies appear to have addressed parenting-temperament
interactions in different cultural groups explicitly, although indirect evidence of a link is often found.
For example, DeVries and Sameroff (1984) assessed the temperament of infants from three East African
societies. Substantial differences were found between cultural groups in temperament scores, and
these were argued to be due to "child-rearing behavior encoded in social custom" (p. 93).

Conclusions About Parenting-Temperament Linkages
The studies reviewed here do not lend themselves to simple conclusions about parenting and
temperament. Even when methodological problems are taken into account, variability in findings is
common, and the same temperament characteristics (e.g., negative emotionality, irritability) have
been shown to be related to both "good" and "poor" parenting. To an extent, Bates' (1987) conclusion
that effects are small, inconsistent, and inconclusive thus appears to remain valid. On the other hand,
although the amount of research investigating the influence of third variables is limited, it provides
persuasive evidence that non-temperamental characteristics of the child (age and sex), characteristics
of the caregiver (sex, psychological health), and of the caregiving environment (social support, life
stresses, social class and cultural affiliation), all affect links between temperament and parenting.
These effects in turn suggest that parent attitudes and beliefs about parenting and children are
likely to be very important in temperament-parenting interaction. Super and Harkness (1981; Harkness
& Super, this handbook) refer to this set of attitudes and beliefs as the caregiver's "ethnotheory." The
trend in the data on age effects, for example, makes sense if parents believe the irritable infant "can't
help it," whereas the more negative toddler is "naughty" or will be "spoiled" if parents give in to a
negative disposition. Much of the data on sex effects is interpretable in terms of parental beliefs that
boys will be active, intense, and hard to manage, and need to "stand up for themselves," whereas girls
will be more docile and compliant, and need to "be cooperative."
The ability of parents to adapt to their child's temperamental characteristics may also be
related their own psychological characteristics, such as a sense of competence in the parenting role,
stresses they experience, and supports available to them. In her review of parenting associations with
infant irritability, Crockenberg (1986) noted that mothers in three of the studies where an association
was found between irritability and low maternal responsiveness were in stressed circumstances.
Variations are also likely in the extent to which parent behavior is governed by unconscious (automatic)

reactions, or by active seeking to understand the child and to adapt parenting accordingly (Papousek &
Papousek, this handbook). Social class and cultural differences suggest that parents may differ in their
core beliefs about the nature of the child and whether child individuality "matters." In some cultural
settings (e.g., more collectivistic ones that may value individuality less), it may be seen as less
necessary or appropriate to adapt parenting styles to a child's particular characteristics. Clearly, more
work must be done to understand contextual influences on parenting-temperament relations. The
promising effects of third variables, however, leads us to turn to more complex relations between
temperament and parenting, i.e., joint influences of these variables on child outcomes.

COMBINED EFFECTS OF TEMPERAMENT AND PARENTING

Early formulations of the idea that similar parenting may have different consequences for
children with different temperament characteristics have included Escalona's (1968) concept of
"effective experience," further developed in Wachs and Gruen's (1982) notion of "organismic
specificity," and the term "goodness of fit," first used in the NYLS (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968) and
further developed by Lerner and Lerner (1983). In these conceptualizations, variation in an outcome
measure such as psychosocial adjustment, cognitive development, or behavior problems is seen to
result from differential reactions of children with differing temperament to similar parenting.
We believe that these more complex views of temperament and parenting may prove to be a
good deal more useful than searching for simple direct associations such as those described above.
Here we consider two general classes of outcome variable. One is security of attachment, viewed as
an outcome of transactions between parent and infant; the second is behavioral adjustment. The
significance of temperament on its own for behavioral adjustment has already been outlined; here the
emphasis is on interactions between temperament and parenting in relation to behavioral adjustment.
Other potential outcome constructs, including cognitive development, school achievement and self-
esteem, are not reviewed due to space limitations, and because the research base is generally thinner
in these areas. Bates (1989) has touched upon some of these areas in his review.

Attachment
There is an ongoing debate on the relationship of temperament to attachment. Attachment is
an outcome of the parent-child relationship to which both parent and child contribute, however, and
hence is relevant to the concerns of this chapter. Although it has been argued that parents' sensitivity
to infant behavior is the crucial antecedent to security of attachment (e.g., Sroufe, 1985), there is
substantial empirical support for the notion that the child's temperament is related to how the child
reacts during separation and reunion with the parent in the Strange Situation procedure, and this
affects the child's attachment classification as securely or insecurely attached (see Goldsmith &
Alansky, 1987). Some researchers have failed to find direct relations between temperament and
attachment security (e.g., Bates et al., 1985; Sroufe, 1985). However, Calkins and Fox (1992) observed
that this most frequently occurs in studies using parent reports of temperament rather than
observational measures.
A variety of temperament attributes in infancy has been found to relate to later attachment
security, including sociability to strangers and mother ratings as "easy" (Frodi, 1983), proneness to
distress (Belsky & Rovine, 1987), neonatal distress reactivity such as crying at removal of pacifier
(Calkins & Fox, 1992), and "object-orientation" versus "person-orientation" (Lewis & Feiring, 1989).
Temperament characteristics of fear (Thompson, Connell, & Bridges, 1988) and "difficultness" (Weber,
Levitt, & Clarke, 1986) have also been found to relate to the infant's negative reactions, such as
resistance to the mother in the Strange Situation. One can conjecture about the processes by which
any of these temperamental attributes may be related to the mother-child relationship and
attachment. However, none of these studies included measures of parenting.
Some studies have included measures of both temperament and parenting as predictors of
attachment, allowing us to examine parenting-temperament interactions. Mangelsdorf, Gunnar,
Kestenbaum, and Lang (1990) found no main-effect relations between proneness to distress at 9
months and security of attachment classification at 13 months. However, they did find that

attachment could be predicted from the interaction between maternal personality and infant
temperament. An insecure attachment was more probable when distress-prone infants' mothers had
high constraint scores, indicating rigidity, traditionalism and low risk taking. Teti and Gelfand (1991)
found secure attachment in preschool children to be related to sensitive, involved and flexible
parenting and the child's sociability towards the mother, with both measures taken from free-play
observations. Insecure attachment was related to the child's negative affectivity (irritability,
avoidance, and resistance).
A final study comes even closer to letting us examine mother-child interactions over time as
they affect attachment, and we consider it in more detail. Van den Boom (1989) used a neonatal
behavior scale administered at 10 and 15 days of age to select an extremely irritable group of infants
representing the top 17% of the low-SES sample tested, and a group of non-irritable infants, drawn
from the remaining 83% of the sample. She observed the selected infants with their mothers twice a
month to the age of 6 months, and measured mother sensitivity (looking, affective, stimulating, and
soothing behaviors) and infant behavior (positive and negative social signals). A rating scale of
maternal sensitivity including general attitude, availability, and physical and social contact was also
used. Both mothers and observers completed temperament scales at 6 and 12 months, and attachment
security was assessed at 12 months.
Mother and child behaviors differed in relation to newborn infant temperament. More of the
irritable infants were classified as anxious/avoidant in attachments to their mothers at 12 months, and
their mothers were rated as more unresponsive. This suggested bidirectional effects, with child
irritability hindering maternal responsiveness, and ineffective maternal soothing behaviors failing to
inhibit child irritability. Among the irritable group, van den Boom also found a gradual retreat from
contact with the baby associated with maternal unresponsiveness. Irritability was associated with
perceptions of the infant as "difficult" at 6 and 12 months, and "difficultness" was associated with more
maternal noninvolvement with age. These results are both consistent with and extend the studies
reported above, demonstrating how individual differences in irritability and mothers' responsiveness
mutually interact to affect the attachment processes.
Perhaps the most persuasive part of van den Boom's study is its intervention component (van
den Boom, in press). Here 50 low-SES mothers of 6-month-old irritable infants assessed as newborns
received specific training in soothing and playing with their babies, and were compared to a matched
untreated control group of irritable infants. Differences between the intervention and control groups
were found on measures of quality of mother-child interaction, quality of infant exploratory behavior
at 9 months, and attachment status at 12 months. Intervention group mothers were also more
responsive, stimulating, and controlling. Their babies were more sociable and exploratory and cried
less, and were more cognitively sophisticated in their exploratory behavior. Secure attachment was
significantly more common in the intervention group (68% versus 28% of the control group). Thus
changes in mothers' behavior clearly led to changes in mother-child interaction and to changes in child
behavior. This study highlights the importance of tracking both temperament and parenting in detail
to unravel the bidirectional processes involved. An irritable infant is predisposed to insecure
attachment, likely due at least in part to the mother coming to ignore the infant. Intervention
prevents this maternal component from further leading the child to develop avoidant (independent)
coping strategies.
This set of studies provides persuasive evidence that temperament facilitates or impedes the
attachment process in an ongoing transactional process with parenting. This transactional nature of
attachment development was suggested by Rothbart and Derryberry (1981, p. 68) over a decade ago:
"As important as the mother's sensitivity and flexibility may be, the role of the child's constitutional
capacities and limitations in shaping her behavior should not be underestimated. Nor should the
sensitivity and flexibility of the infant be neglected, for infants vary greatly in their capacity to
augment or reduce their own reactivity, and to bring distress or pleasure to their care-givers. It seems
essential that the mother-infant interaction and the resulting attachment process be viewed as a
function of two intricate and flexible interactional systems, which can achieve a 'balance' in a number
of ways."


Behavioral Adjustment
The first set of studies to investigate the joint influence of temperament and parenting on
behavioral adjustment was the NYLS (Thomas et al., 1968). They developed the notion of "goodness of
fit" as a means of analyzing the ontogenesis and evolution of behavior disorders, and a framework for
treatment and intervention. Goodness of fit was said to result "when the child's capacities, motivations
and temperament are adequate to master the demands, expectations and opportunities of the
environment" (Chess & Thomas, 1989, p. 380). The specific nature of "fit" is undefined, but suggests
that different styles of parenting will fit different children. The implication is that, because "difficult"
babies are more demanding to parent, the usual parenting strategies may be ineffective with them.
They may also often elicit poorer parenting; this provides a link between early temperament and later
behavioral maladjustment.
Within the NYLS, multiple examples have been reported of apparent mismatches between child
and parent preceding poor behavioral outcomes (Chess & Thomas, 1984; Thomas & Chess, 1977). One
example is the case of Roy, a highly distractible child. As an infant, Roy's "easy" distractibility allowed
parental soothing to be quick and effective. As an older child, however, Roy was often unreliable and
forgetful. His mother engaged in extensive nagging to try to gain the child's cooperation. In time, Roy
came to "tune out" the mother's messages, and Roy's mother increasingly judged her child in negative
terms. The child's behavior did not improve, and the mother was not willing to appreciate the
consistency of her child's temperament characteristics.
Other studies can also be conceptualized within a "goodness of fit" framework. For example,
Kochanska (1991) found in the development of conscience that anxious children are more affected by
parenting practices such as power assertion than non-anxious children. Crockenberg (1987) found that
irritable infants who had angry, punitive mothers were more angry, non-compliant, and less confident
as 2-year-olds than less irritable infants with similar parenting.
"Goodness of fit" has more recently been operationalized by the Lerners (e.g., Lerner & Lerner,
1983) as the discrepancy between the child's actual temperament and others' (usually parent's or
teacher's) concepts of the "ideal" temperament for the child. They argue that the same temperament
may be associated with positive or negative parent-child interactions and outcomes, depending on
parents' values and expectations about that temperament attribute. Studies have sought to
demonstrate that the discrepancy between "real" and "ideal" temperament is more strongly related to
outcome measures than is the child's temperament on its own. Several studies have provided some
support for this notion within the school setting, although the improvement in predictive power
provided by the discrepancy score has usually been small (Keogh, 1986; Lerner, Nitz, Talwar, & Lerner,
1989; Talwar, Nitz, & Lerner, 1990). There has been mixed support in other settings (e.g., Hagekull &
Bohlin, 1990; Mangelsdorf et al., 1990; Wallander, Hubert, & Varni, 1988). These studies have not
incorporated measures of parenting per se, however, so there is no direct evidence that the effect of
the discrepancy between "real" and "ideal" is mediated by parenting variables.
This operationalization of "goodness of fit" is also somewhat problematic. Notions of what is an
"ideal" temperament tend to have little variability (Windle & Lerner, 1986), so they contribute little to
discrepancy scores. There has also been a tendency to look at a limited number of parental or teacher
expectations or ideals, ignoring other potentially more complex relations such as those between parent
and child temperament, or between temperament and the physical environment. Finally, the term
"goodness of fit" tends to suggest a symmetrical and unchanging relationship between the child and
his/her world, whereas, as Windle and Lerner (1986) note, it is a dynamic transactional process, and
measures of it need to capture child-environment interactions over time.
Another approach to conceptualizing differential effects of parenting on children of differing
temperaments has been Escalona's (1968) concept of "effective experience." She noted how an active
child will seek out toys, whereas an inactive one may require an adult to present them. Thus, the
presence of toys in the house implies different learning experiences for different children. Similarly,
Gandour (1989) found children's activity level and the intensity of stimulation provided by the parents
to interact in predicting the exploratory competence of toddlers and the total amount of exploration
they display. The notion of "effective experience" has parallels to "active" effects in Scarr and
McCartney's (1983) model of genotype-environment interactions, wherein children seek out and create

environments compatible with their genotypes. Of course, passive effects (mediated through
genetically based similarities in temperament between parent and child) and evocative effects (where
the child's temperament "draws out" particular parenting characteristics) likely also apply.
Others have conducted research framed in terms of "organismic specificity," which like
"effective experience," suggests that the same event may have different effects on children who differ
temperamentally (Wachs & Gruen, 1982). Wachs (1987), for example, found that for highly-active 12-
month-olds, parents' naming of objects was related to less mastery behavior, whereas the opposite
relation held for low-active children. A high level of person traffic in the home was related to lower
mastery behavior for "difficult" children, but not for "easy" ones.
Concepts such as effective experience predict differences in outcome for children depending
on particular combinations of parenting and temperament characteristics (that is, multiplicative or
non-linear interaction effects). Bates (1989) comments that, in the interests of parsimony, the
independent contributions of temperament and parenting to outcome (additive effects) should be
assessed before addressing any interactive effects. This is a fair comment, but researchers, having
found additive effects, have often not gone on to investigate potential multiplicative ones. In fact,
both additive and multiplicative effects have been found.
Findings of additive effects are of course also relevant to this discussion, because they
demonstrate that parenting alone (or temperament alone) is not the sole predictor of the child
outcome. Some theorists predict no additive effects. According to the model proposed by Reid and
Patterson (1989) for antisocial behavior, no independent contribution of temperament would be
expected. They posit parenting practices as the intervening variables between temperament and
behavior. They suggest that temperament characteristics can disrupt parental discipline and
monitoring of the child's behavior, but that discipline and monitoring are the proximal causes of
antisocial behavior.
Additive effects have nevertheless been found by several researchers. Bates and Bayles (1988)
followed children from infancy to 6 years. By adding together 0 to 3 year temperament, maternal
positive involvement (affection, teaching) and 3-year-old behavior problems they were able to strongly
predict internalizing (anxious, fearful) and externalizing (acting out) behavior problems for both boys
and girls at 6 years. Similarly, Cameron (1978) in analyzing NYLS data found that an index of
difficultness and persistence at 1 year, along with poorer parenting at 3 years, predicted later behavior
problems. Additive effects were also found by Fisher and Fagot (1992); here, toddler temperament
and parental discipline practices were independently related to children's antisocial and coercive
behavior at 5-7 years.
In a Canadian longitudinal study, Maziade (1989) found evidence for both additive and
multiplicative effects. Of those children who at 7 years had a "difficult" temperament and came from
dysfunctional families (characterized by a lack of rule clarity, consistency, and parental consensus),
most had oppositional disorders at 12 years. In contrast, almost none of the children with "difficult"
temperament but superior family functioning had behavioral disorders. Maziade labeled this
interactive effect "synergy." In contrast, at 4 years only additive effects of temperament and parenting
on disorder had been found. A study by Martin (1981) of children followed from 10 to 42 months also
found both additive and multiplicative effects for compliance and coerciveness at 42 months. For
boys, the temperament-like characteristic of demandingness at 10 months and maternal
responsiveness both contributed to later child compliance, but a multiplicative interaction of the two
also affected outcome. For girls, only infant demandingness predicted (non)compliance. Coerciveness
in boys resulted from additive effects of infant demandingness and maternal non-involvement at 10
months; these effects were not significant for girls. Thus, despite the somewhat scattered nature of
the evidence, interactions of particular temperament characteristics with particular parenting do seem
to affect behavioral outcome.
Temperament and parenting have also been conceptualized as risk or protective factors for
behavioral outcome, and have been shown to operate cumulatively. For example, prediction from
infancy to 4-5 year externalizing behavior problems (hostile-aggressive and hyperactive-distractible)
and internalizing behavior problems (anxious-fearful) was undertaken for over 1500 subjects from the

ATP (Sanson et al., 1991c). Temperament on its own had little impact on outcome: The most
"difficult" children, as assessed by an infant "easy-difficult" scale including approach-adaptability,
cooperation-manageability and irritability, had only a slightly raised incidence of problems on the
outcome measures compared to the remainder of the children. However, when difficult temperament
occurred in a context reflecting poor mother-child relationship and presumably poor parenting style,
the level of risk for behavioral problems increased substantially. Although other biological and
environmental factors likely to affect parenting quality also contributed to cumulative risk, the
combination of difficult temperament and poor mother-infant relationship was the most reliable risk
indicator. This combination was also particularly characteristic of children who were described as
hostile-aggressive at 7 to 8 years (Sanson et al., in press a). These findings are highly reminiscent of
Sameroff and Chandler's (1975) construct of the "continuum of caretaking casualty," where infants
identified at biological risk tended to show negative outcomes chiefly when caretaking was also
deficient.
In other studies, temperament has been conceptualized as a mediator affecting the relation
between aspects of parenting and outcome (Rutter, 1987). For example, temperament has been seen
as a resilience factor when there is a high level of psychosocial stress and parenting is poor (e.g.,
Werner, 1986; Werner & Smith 1982); in these situations, the sociable or adaptable child may be able
to elicit more care and concern from parents and from significant others, who can act as mentors to
protect the child from adverse outcomes. Temperament has been seen to be important in the divorce
literature; Hetherington (Hetherington & Henderson, in this handbook; Hetherington, Stanley-Hagan, &
Anderson, 1989) suggests that both temperament and parental warmth and control are important in
determining a child's adjustment to marital transitions. Puckering (1989) posits positive aspects of
temperament as a resilience factor for children with depressed mothers.
These findings of additive effects for both parenting and temperament, and sometimes
multiplicative effects, suggest that temperament cannot be seen as operating only through its effects
of parenting. There seems to be strong evidence that combinations of temperament and parenting
variables affect behavioral outcome.
For both outcome variables examined here, attachment and behavior problems, there is thus
substantial evidence for interactive processes posited under the concepts of goodness of fit, organismic
specificity, and effective experience. However, the number of studies which have explicitly examined
interactive effects is quite small, and we are still far from specifying precisely the particular
configurations of temperament and parenting that constitute a "good fit" and optimize outcome. After
a discussion of practical implications, future research directions are suggested.

IMPLICATIONS OF TEMPERAMENTAL VARIATION FOR PARENTING

On the basis of the empirical evidence reviewed above, what can be said about implications of child
temperament for parenting? Although answers to this question are necessarily speculative because of
the incompleteness of the research literature, some tentative conclusions can be drawn in three areas:
Parental attention to and respect for the child's individuality, parental structuring of the child's
environment, and applications of the "difficult child" construct.

Attention to and Respect for Individuality
An implication of taking children's individuality seriously is that it becomes more difficult to
give any universal prescription for "good parenting," other than perhaps specifying the need for
parental sensitivity and flexibility. Because children may differ in their responses to similar patterns of
parenting, parents need to be attentive to temperament characteristics of their children, and to be
able to adapt their parenting behaviors to them. This requires attention to the signals of the child
concerning the child's state and needs. A goal of parenting may then be accomplished in one way for
one child, and in a different way for another, depending on the child's temperament characteristics.
Schaffer and Emerson (1964), for example, noted that babies who dislike being cuddled and
resist mothers' attempts at close physical contact are often highly active. Tactile soothing is not
comforting to these children. If mothers recognize this and substitute other more active forms of

contact (e.g., play or distraction with toys) for cuddling, problems are less likely to result. Parents
need to be able to "operationalize" their warmth, concern, and approaches to parenting goals in
different ways, given the likely reaction of the child to the treatment. Sensitivity is also needed when
parents attempt to modify nonadaptive or unacceptable behavior of the child. Some children will be
highly sensitive to punishment; others will be so strongly driven by potential reward that self-control
will be a problem. Some children will thus need extra encouragement; others will need help with
limits and controls on behavior (Rothbart & Ahadi, in press).
Another conclusion emerging from the literature is that some temperament characteristics
pose more parenting challenges than others, at least in modern Western societies. Although infant
crying and irritability may elicit more maternal contact, this contact often does not seem to be
sustainable over time, and children's proneness to distress can contribute to the emergence of avoidant
or negative, mutually coercive parent-child interactions. Van den Boom's (1989) study, however, shows
that these influences can be countered with extra support and training for mothers of distress-prone
infants. The importance of thoughtful socialization is thus enhanced rather than diminished when the
child's temperament is taken into account.
Prescriptions for good parenting are also dependent on goals, values, and assumptions about
outcomes. Similar temperament characteristics (e.g., shyness, intensity, fussiness) may be reacted to
differently in boys and girls. We suggested that these differences are likely to reflect parents'
"ethnotheories" about sex differences and gender roles. Sociocultural variations in ethnotheories are
likely, affecting characteristics seen as desirable and outcomes that are valued. In both of these
cases, however, individuality of temperament should be a consideration, avoiding a tendency to try to
fit all children, all girls, or all boys into a single mold. If a "surgent," outward-oriented disposition may
be a more valued style in some cultures (e.g., the U.S.), this may not be the case in other cultures
(e.g., China). Recognition of the legitimacy and value of multiple patterns of children's behavior is
needed.

Structuring the Child's Environment
Temperament variation is also important when we take a broader perspective on parenting:
not only in direct parent behavior toward the child but also in decisions made about daycare, timing of
school entry, size and structure of school, kinds of extracurricular activities, and so forth. Although
little research provides a direct guide to these decisions, Wachs's (1987; Wachs & Gandour, 1983) work
suggests that crowded, noisy environments will pose greater problems for some children than for
others. We might also expect that a fearful, withdrawing child would benefit from slower entry to new
situations. Individual differences in attentional self-control should also guide decisions about the time
to start school. Evidence of possible slower maturation of these attributes for boys is relevant to issues
of school readiness.

"The Difficult Child" and Packaged Parenting Programs
Manuals and courses on parenting abound, and community interventions have been directed
toward improving parenting skills. How well can these efforts take individuality in child temperament
into account? Any program giving prescriptions about "the right way to do it" will clearly be deficient if
it does not also direct parents' attention to individuality and to the need to be flexible in their
approach to childrearing. Some books and programs specifically focus on temperament; examples
include Turecki and Tonner (1989) and Cameron, Hansen, and Rosen (1989). In these, there is a focus
on "difficult" temperament. As noted above, some characteristics are often (but not invariably) a
source of difficulty for parents in modern individualistic societies, and acknowledgement that some
children are harder to parent is often helpful. Advice on how to handle particular "difficult"
temperament characteristics can also be useful.
Against these potential advantages however, there need to be weighted several disadvantages.
All the previously-noted problems associated with concept of the "difficult child" apply here. As has
been stressed, whether a particular characteristic is "difficult" depends on its fit with the environment,
whereas the notion of "difficult temperament" implies that the problem lies in the child. To label a
child as "difficult" also has the danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stability of

temperament is quite low from infancy to later childhood, and moderate after infancy. If a child
becomes identified as "difficult," this may in itself serve to maintain that status. Indeed, such labeling
as "difficult" or "easy" may be one basis for the finding (Kagan et al., 1986; Sanson et al., 1991a) that
extreme temperament characteristics are generally more stable than more moderate characteristics.
Family systems theory stresses the importance of assigned roles within families; to be assigned the role
of the "difficult child" may both intensify and maintain the expression of "difficult" characteristics.
The notion of "difficult temperament" may also lead to the expectation that the parent's major
efforts should be directed toward modifying the child's temperamental expressions, when there is
instead an initial asymmetry in parent and child contributions to interactions (Rothbart, 1989a). Young
infants react to their own internal states and to the immediate situation, including the caregiver's
soothing and activating stimulation. Caregivers interpret the infant's emotional reactions as signals of
the need for increasing, decreasing, or changing stimulation. Only at later ages can the child be
expected to play a more active and anticipatory role in the interaction. Thus the initial responsibility
for adaptation lies strongly with the parent.
It is clear that their children's temperament should be an important focus for adults when
considering their caregiving behavior. Although the research evidence to date does not allow for many
highly specific recommendations, general principles of sensitivity to the individual characteristics of
their child, flexibility in parenting behavior in response to these characteristics, and avoidance of
negative labeling of the child are all important.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH

Temperament is an important aspect of the child's contribution to the parent-child
relationship, but our knowledge of parenting-temperament interactions is as yet incomplete. We now
highlight areas where further understanding may be especially useful. We have noted above the
difficulty of obtaining "clean" measures of both temperament and parenting before they start to
influence each other. Parents have attitudes about parenting before the birth of their child, however,
and although it is well known that the relationship between attitudes and behavior is far from perfect,
these attitudes may give us hints about what parenting would be before it is affected by the child's
individuality. Some researchers have shown that prenatally measured attitudes are related to
postnatal temperament ratings (e.g., Heinecke, in this handbook; Vaughn, Bradley, Joffe-Lyle, &
Seiffer, 1987). Others have indicated that values about parenthood remain relatively constant from
the prenatal period to 5 months postnatally (Lamb et al., 1982).
To address the question of parenting-temperament interactions, however, a central issue is
whether parents modify their parenting attitudes and behavior once the child is born, and whether this
is systematic for children with different temperament characteristics. We need to be asking questions
like: You thought X about parenting before your child was born; do you still think so? Is this what you
do? Does it work as you thought it would? There is little direct data on these questions. Observing
several adults interacting with the same children, each differing in their temperament characteristics,
may also inform our understanding of the "active" and "evocative" effects of temperament (Scarr &
McCartney, 1983).
Similarly, to investigate whether and how parenting affects expressions of temperament, we
need evidence of change in temperament when parenting varies, or of mutual parenting-temperament
changes. Van den Boom (1989), in both the observational and intervention phases of her study,
provided a good model of the detailed fine-grained analysis needed to address these issues. Further
work following her model of observation and experimental intervention, that might systematically
address other aspects of temperament, other facets of parenting, and other child outcome variables
among different age groups, would be most beneficial.
The studies we have reviewed provide a strong case for the importance of third variables for
the temperament-parenting relationship. We suggested that the concept of parental "ethnotheories"
may provide a parsimonious explanation of many of the findings. Parents' underlying beliefs, values
and expectations are likely to significantly affect their responses to children's individual

characteristics, including whether parents respond to an irritable and inflexible child with efforts to
find effective ways of soothing and managing the child, or by labeling the child as "difficult" or "bad."
Little research attention has been directed to this issue.
Another area where additional study of parenting-temperament interactions could be highly
informative is in relation to gender. We noted that interactions between temperament and parenting
often differed for boys and girls. Once again, parental ethnotheories may be involved, but another
possibility is that actual differences in temperament between boys and girls may also be involved. In
infancy, while gender differences in temperament are small (Prior, Smart, Sanson, & Oberklaid, 1993),
boys have been found to have higher activity levels (Eaton & Enns, 1986). This, combined with the
possibility of earlier language development among girls (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), may make girls on
average more susceptible to early caregiving socialization than boys (Rothbart, 1989a). Activity level
differences may also promote cycles of coercive interaction with some boys. There is opportunity for
careful longitudinal work from infancy to address these questions.
Current research has been somewhat more successful in identifying combined effects of
temperament and parenting for behavioral and cognitive outcomes. Interactive effects occur, both
additive and multiplicative. However, there is a need for more specificity here, moving from global
measures of temperament such as "difficult," which confound several facets of temperament, to more
specific dimensions (self-regulation, negative emotionality). Comparison with normative data is lacking
in most studies, so that those classified as, for instance, "irritable" in one study are not necessarily
comparable to those so labeled in another. Observations of parenting in extreme temperament groups
may be a useful starting point, and studies need to be specifically designed to be able to detect both
independent and interactive contributions of temperament and parenting dimensions.
If any of the interactive models (goodness-of-fit, organismic specificity, and so forth) are to be
taken seriously, we also need to consider the implications of temperament for broader aspects of
parenting than have traditionally been the focus of research. As noted above, a somewhat neglected
issue has been optimal childcare requirements for children with differing temperament (Bradley &
Sanson, 1992). Wachs's (1993) work suggests that optimal levels of stimulation (both physical and
social) can be defined for children with different temperament characteristics. The implications of
such findings for the introduction of children to new settings, the size of social grouping, the age of
entry, and their relevance for a wider age range than has so far been investigated, are all in need of
research attention.
The question of generalizability of results takes us back to "ethnotheories." It may be no
accident that the current interest in temperament and parenting has arisen in individualistic Western
cultures. In more collectivistic cultures, where individuals are defined by their relation to the group,
temperamental variation among individuals may be of less relevance and salience than in more
individualistic Western culture (Kitayama & Marcus, in press). The applicability of conclusions based on
Western samples to other cultural groups thus also needs investigation.
Finally, a research need that applies to all of the above areas is for investigation of
temperament dimensions that are empirically and theoretically well-grounded. As indicated above, a
limited number of temperament dimensions are emerging in the literature, and for some of these,
biological underpinnings have been put forward. However, most of the research on temperament and
parenting has used more diffuse and sometimes value-laden temperament dimensions such as
"difficultness," limiting our ability to study the processes involved.
For example, if there are differences among children in the strength of reward and punishment
systems (Behavioral Activation and Behavioral Inhibition systems), and also in the maturation of their
attentional control systems, one could expect the same parenting behavior to have predictably
different effects on different children (Kochanska, 1991, 1993; Kochanska et al., 1993; Rothbart &
Ahadi, in press; Rothbart et al., 1993). For some children, parents' low-level punishment attempts may
not work, so parents may escalate their punishment in their effort to gain child compliance, thus
setting the scene for the development of coercive parent-child cycles of interaction. Research
focusing upon basic levels of temperamental variation, especially along the lines developed by van den

Boom (1989, in press) and Kochanska (1991, 1993) holds great promise for increasing our understanding
of temperament and parenting.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

A child's temperament is apparent from early infancy, and is an important influence on
individual differences among older children. Variations in reactivity and self-regulation are related to
characteristic patterns of positive and negative emotionality, sociability, and attentional persistence
for each child. These patterns are fairly stable over time but by no means immutable. They have an
impact on a wide range of child outcomes in behavioral, cognitive and social domains. The task for
parents in thinking about temperament is to take their child's particular characteristics into
consideration in choosing strategies to soothe, control and stimulate their child, and in arranging the
overall childrearing environment.
Guidance can be drawn from analyses of the effects on child outcome of particular
combinations of parent behavior and child temperament. Parental handling can lead to positive
outcomes even for children extreme in temperament. For instance, van den Boom's (in press) study has
shown us how maternal training in dealing with irritable infants can lead to improved cognitive, social
and emotional outcomes for these infants. Similarly, studies by Wachs and his colleagues (e.g., Wachs,
1987) reveal how different levels of social and environmental stimulation appear to be optimal for
children with differing temperament profiles. More adaptable, sociable and persistent children may
also cope with stressful life events such as parental divorce better than those with other profiles,
presumably partly because they are better able to elicit support from adults around them. It may thus
require special efforts to provide support to children with less positive profiles when they encounter
stressful events.
We have suggested that some of the consequences of taking temperament into account might
be to adapt parenting behavior and the child's environment to provide as good a "fit" to the child's
temperament as possible, while at the same time encouraging the child's adaptations to situations; to
recognize that, while a child's temperament is not immutable, changes over time are unlikely to be
dramatic; and to avoid value judgments about these individual differences. Even though it may be
recognized that in a given social and cultural context some children take more effort to parent, there
is nothing inherently inferior about these children, nor are temperament characteristics the result of
"naughtiness."
In sum, the concept of temperament directs our attention to important aspects of child
individuality that must be considered in parenting. It has long been recognized that appropriate
parenting depends on the age of the child; the child's temperament characteristics also determine
what is appropriate. Even if this recognition complicates both the task of the parent and that of the
researcher, such complication is unavoidable. The task then for the parent and the practitioner is to
foster "respect for the individuality and integrity of each child, and flexibility in creating environments
that may lead to positive outcomes for them and for us" (Rothbart, 1989a, p. 236).


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by National Institutes of Mental Health Grant
MH43361 to the second author. The authors wish to thank S. Ahadi, M. Prior and M. Rothbart for their
generous help on a previous version of the chapter. Direct inquiries to Ann Sanson, Department of
Psychology, School of Behavioural Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Australia, or Mary
K. Rothbart, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.


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