DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ADOLESCENT AND ADULT MOTHERS ...

in that there was no evidence for mean change over time. The indication that levels of
warmth remained stable during the first 18 months of life contrasts with suggestions that
maternal sensitivity is likely to change during infancy (Lohaus et al., 2004). Thus,
warmth may operate differently than other aspects of parenting, perhaps because of its
trait-based nature (Schreiber, Breier, & Pickar, 1995).
Warmth was not the only parenting behavior in which differences between
adolescents and adults emerged. In the present study, adolescents had higher initial levels
of hostility than their adult counterparts and faster increases in hostility over time.
Although the fact that teens in the present study exhibited more hostility than adults at 4
months was not surprising (Whitman et al., 2001), it was interesting that both teens and
adults displayed increased levels of hostility as their children aged. It is possible that
increases in hostility from 4 to 18 months reflected normative changes in parenting
strategies from infancy to toddlerhood. Specifically, as children became mobile and
began to assert their own autonomy, mothers responded with more restrictive and
punitive parenting to manage their children’s exploratory behaviors. Teens in the present
sample were, however, increasing in their hostility at a faster rate than adults. These
findings are consistent the high rates of child abuse found in adolescent populations
(Bolton, 1990; Lee & George, 1999) by demonstrating that adolescents not only began
parenting in a hostile fashion, but also continued in a pattern of critical and restrictive
behaviors as their children developed. Furthermore, adolescents in the current study had
higher levels of hostility than mothers in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation
Project (Fuligni et al., 2004), suggesting that teens in the present study may be at a
particularly high-risk for maltreating their children.
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