Contributors to Self-Perceived Competence, Satisfaction, Investment, and Role Balance in Maternal Parenting: A Multivariate Ecological Analysis

Objective. This study employed an ecological framework to examine the roles of multiple contributors to variations in key maternal perceptions of their own parenting. Design. Maternal socioeconomic status (SES), employment, and parenting support; child gender, language, social competence, and temperament; and maternal intelligence, personality, and parenting knowledge and style were explored in separate predictions of self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in 234 European American mothers of firstborn, 20-month-old children. Results. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated highly differentiated patterns of unique predictive relations to each domain of self-perceived parenting. Nonetheless, some predictors consistently contributed to individual parenting self-perceptions, most prominently, parenting knowledge and dissonance between actual and ideal maternal and paternal parenting styles. SES, maternal employment, community support, and maternal personality also contributed to self-perceptions, as did child temperament. Conclusions. Although the potential contributors to parenting self-perceptions may be many, prominent contributors to any one self-perception are few, and constellations of contributors differ for different parenting self-perceptions, conclusions that articulate with the modular view of parenting.