Presenter: Kirstin Tanner, College of Behavioral Sciences, Psychology
Authors: Kirstin Tanner
Faculty Advisor: Lee Raby, University of Utah, Psychology
Institution: University of Utah
Maternal sensitivity has been identified as one of the most important predictors in child development. Parents with a lower SES (socioeconomic status), are more likely to value conformity and experience higher stress(Luster et al 1989) which may lead to less sensitive parenting. While SES certainly predicts parental stress, more specific indices of SES--such as occupational prestige--may be especially useful. Indeed, the term parental burn-out, which is closely related to parental stress, was derived from the concept of professional burnout (Lebert-Charron et al. (2018). This study directly examines the effects of occupational prestige on mother’s everyday stress levels and parental sensitivity. Our hypothesis states that occupational prestige will predict maternal sensitivity. Everyday stress may mediate the association between occupational prestige and maternal sensitivity. This study type was an observational study of 106 mother-infant dyads at 7 months of age. This model allowed us to interpret the unique effects of occupational prestige on maternal sensitivity beyond the covariates. The predictor variable was occupational prestige (M = 47.79, SD = 17.84, range = 0-80). The scale used was a 0-100 scale. The average American prestige score is 44 (Hout et al., 2016). The outcome variable was maternal sensitivity. (M = 3.01, SD = .891) Mothers with high occupational prestige were found to have higher levels of sensitivity, b = (.014) , t = (2.161), p = 0.003. These findings remained consistent when accounting for covariates: R2 = (0.432), F(5,66) = 3.022, p = 0.016. This supports the idea that mothers with low occupational prestige may experience less flexible work environments, value conformity, and experience burnout both as an employee and as a parent which may coalesce into less sensitive parenting. Conversely, we could infer that mothers with high occupational prestige benefit from more flexible environments, etc., resulting in carryover effects increasing maternal sensitivity.