Maternal Separation Anxiety: Its Developmental Course and Relation to Maternal Mental Health

Abstract

Maternal separation anxiety is a construct that describes a mother's experience of worry, sadness, or guilt during short-term separations from her child. This investigation examined potential differences in psychological correlates between mothers with high and low levels of anxiety when their children were 8 months, 3 1/2 years, and 6 years of age. High levels of maternal separation anxiety had different psychological correlates contingent upon the age of the child. Depressive symptomatology and separation anxiety were unrelated at times 1 and 2, but when the children were 6 years old, mothers who had the highest levels of anxiety tended to have more depressive symptomatology, fewer coping skills, a more negative representation of self, and embraced more traditional sex-role values. Study findings are discussed with respect to their relevance to the mother's role as developmental partner to the child and linked to major theoretical perspectives that address the mother-child relationship.

The relationship of maternal separation anxiety and differentiation of self to children's separation anxiety and adjustment to kindergarten: A study in Druze families

“…The abundant research on mothers' anxiety regarding separation from their children supports the belief that maternal anxiety is an important psychological construct and is meaningfully related to both maternal behaviors towards the child and other aspects of maternal personality (e.g., DeMeis, Hock, & McBride, 1986;Hock, Hart, Kang, & Lutz, 2004;Hock, McBride, & Gnezda, 1989;Hock & Schirtzinger, 1992;Lutz & Hock, 1995;McBride & Belsky, 1988). Yet, the familial antecedents of maternal anxiety have not been fully explicated, nor has their impact on children's separation anxiety and their adjustment to kindergarten.…”

“…It was found that employed mothers are less anxious about separation than are mothers who are not employed (Stifler et al, 1993). It is argued that mothers who are less traditional in their sex-role behavior have lower levels of separation anxiety than mothers who maintain traditional sex-role behavior (Hock & Schirtzinger, 1992).…”

“…The responses to separation are derived from the woman's personality structure, shaped by experiences with her own parents and by the nature of caregiving relationships during childhood (BloomFeshbach & Bloom-Feshbach, 1987;Lutz & Hock, 1995). Theoretically, a woman's representation of self is believed to be an important determinant of her level of maternal separation anxiety (Hock & Schirtzinger, 1992).…”

“…Given that responses to separation are shaped by experiences with parents, that the representation of self is believed to be an important determinant of separation anxiety (e.g., Hock & Schirtzinger, 1992), and that there are connections between differentiation and several anxieties (e.g., Peleg, 2002Peleg, , 2005Skowron & Friedlander, 1998), Hypothesis 2 states that mothers' differentiation of self will be (a) inversely associated with children's levels of separation anxiety and (b) positively associated with their adjustment to kindergarten.…”

Do Individual Traits Associate with Ethical Judgment?

“…As gender identity is more cognitive process than biological phenomenon, measuring this issue needs an accurate and reliable measurement. The Male-Female Relations Questionnaire (MFRQ) (Spence, Helmreich, & Sawin, 1980) had been used in many social science (for example, Hock & Schirtzinger, 2008;McCabe, 2011;Shafiro, Himelein, & Best, 2003) and ethics studies (for example, McCabe et al, 2006). MFRQ Social Interactions sub-scale consists of 16 questions with five-Likert scale as 1 being strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree.…”