Linking Maternal Perceptions to Behavior: Nurturing Attitudes and Facial Expressions of Affect

Objective. A longitudinal study examined maternal attitudes relevant to nurturing within a latent variable structure including other maternal attitudes (confidence, insouciance, salience of difficulty of caregiving, and worry) and compared these attitudes to mothers' affective behavior with their infants. (Insouciance refers to the perception of the infant as self-reliant.) Design. One hundred and seventy-seven mothers were assessed for attitudes toward their infants from the third trimester of pregnancy to the second month postbirth. Attitudes were then compared to maternal expression of emotion during interaction with 4-week-old infants as the dyads were videotaped in the home (n = 60). The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) was used to identify mothers' social smiling, Duchenne smiling, overall negative facial expressions, and left-sided facial asymmetry during engagement with the newborn. Results. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified 5 hypothesized latent attitude variables which, in turn, produced 2 second-order factors, a Positive Perception factor and a Negative Perception factor. Maternal attitudes were significantly different from prebirth to postbirth, indicating both elevated negative perceptions and increased nurturing after birth. Levels of maternal facial expression of negative affect during interaction were associated with mothers' negative attitudes, and fewer negative displays to the infant were posed during en face interaction by mothers with higher nurturing factor scores both before and after birth. Post hoc analyses showed that nurturing moderates relations between negative attitudes and negative facial actions. Conclusion. Feelings of nurturing may act as a buffer against negative affect because mothers with elevated negative perceptions and high levels of nurturing display less negativity than do mothers with highly negative attitudes and low nurturing. Nurturing may be an important protective factor during a time of net increase in negative emotion.