Etude du lien entre les déterminants psychosociaux et cognitifs et les comportements de contrôle intrusifs des mères adolescentes envers leur enfant d'âge préscolaire

The main goal of the present doctoral thesis was to provide a predictive profile of adolescent mothers' intrusive control behaviors used toward their 16 months old toddlers. In addition, this research provided descriptive information on the frequency and contingency of adolescent mothers' intrusive and inductive control behaviors as well as information on these young mothers' psychosocial conditions and cognitive characteristics before and after child's birth.

One hundred and three mother-child dyads were recruited. Adolescent mothers had ages ranging between 14 and 19 years, came from diverse ethnic origins and disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Mothers' psychosocial conditions, such as their received and perceived social support and experienced stress were measured prenatally as well as nine months after children's birth. Their cognitive characteristics such as their knowledge of child development and their parental attitudes were assessed prenatally and 16 months after children's birth. Some of their developmental characteristics such as their ages at children's birth, their history of maltreatment and their verbal intelligence were also evaluated during pregnancy or very shortly after. Multiple regressions were conducted in order to measure the impact that these different determinants had on the frequency, ratio and contingency of adolescent mothers' intrusive control behaviors.

The present doctoral thesis includes two articles. The first article is a critical review of the empirical literature published during the last two decades on the determinants of adolescent mothers' intrusive control' behaviors. Despite the significant progress made in this research field, the article highlights many discrepancies and limitations in the conceptual and methodological characterises of the studies. Inspired by these limitations, the longitudinal study presented in the second article was designed and conducted. Results showed that adolescent mothers constitute a heterogeneous group both in terms of their characteristics and in terms of the frequency and ratio of inductive and intrusive control behaviors they used toward their children. Additionally, mothers' psychosocial and cognitive characteristics did not seem to deteriorate as a result of their children's birth and the increasing challenges and responsibilities of motherhood. On the other hand, adolescent mothers showed little warmth and consistency or contingency when interacting with their child. Further, young mothers who expressed a higher tendency to underestimate children's developmental abilities, as assessed prenatally, displayed significantly more intrusive control behaviors toward their child as compared to their more knowledgeable counterparts. As for the negative correlation between adolescent mothers' history of maltreatment and their intrusive control behaviors, it was contrary to our expectations and seemed to be the result of measurement error or of uncontrolled for intervening variables.

Finally, in light of the present longitudinal research's findings it is possible to conclude that intervention with adolescent mothers should start long before child's birth and focus on enhancing their knowledge of children's abilities as well as their capacity to respond in a warm and contingent manner to their child.