| Maternal empathy is a construct with implications for child development. The purpose of this study was to examine empirically the relationship between maternal empathy and a child's self concept. The main hypothesis was that there would be a positive correlation between maternal empathic accuracy and the child's self concept, the assumption being that such a link rests on the contribution maternal empathy is likely to make to the establishment in the child of positive mental representations of caregiver and self. An existing measure of empathy between adults, developed by Ickes and his colleagues, was adapted for use with a mother and a child aged 9–11. The dyads were videotaped in conversation; the child, alone, was shown the tape and asked to record his or her thoughts or feelings at various moments on the tape. The mother, alone, then viewed the tape, which was stopped at the same moments, and was asked to record her inferences of what she thought the child was thinking or feeling in that moment. The paired statements were rated for similarity, and then summed to create a score for mothers' empathic accuracy with their own child. Mothers also made inferences about a child in a Standard videotape of another mother and child in conversation, thus establishing a second empathic accuracy score. The mothers completed a background information questionnaire and the Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis, 1993). The children completed 2 self concept self-report assessments: the Multidimensional Self Concept Scale (Bracken, 1992) and the Self Description Questionnaire-I (Marsh, 1990). To determine the strength of the relationship between 2 maternal empathic accuracy measures, and between the 2 self concept measures, correlation coefficients were calculated using the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation (r). Multiple regression analyses were performed first to address the hypotheses directly; then to examine the effect of mothers' empathy unique to their own child; and lastly to determine whether unique own child empathy would perform better than total own child empathy. The mothers' 2 empathic accuracy scores were significantly correlated, as were the child's self concept scores. Significant results were found in the relation between total own child empathy and Family and Parent Relations subscales of the self concept measures, and in the relation between unique own child empathy and Family subscale of the MSCS and the Total Self and Parent Relations of the SDQ-I. These findings are discussed with regard to the superior performance of the first empathic accuracy measure. Methodological difficulties in the adaptation of the adult procedure experienced by the children and, to a lesser extent, by the mothers are also discussed. The causal ambiguity of the relationship between maternal empathic accuracy and children's self concept is linked to the possibility that a positive feedback loop may operate between mother and child facilitating the child's expressiveness and the mother's empathic accuracy. Recommendations for further adaptations to the procedure and made. |
