Perry, David G.

Participants were 199 children (105 females) in grades three through eight (mean age = 11.03 years). Five attachment coping strategies were assessed (preoccupied, avoidant, indecisive, coercive, and caregiving), and four aspects of perceived maternal behavior were assessed (reliable support, harassment, overprotection, and fear induction). Numerous meaningful associations were found between the attachment measures and the perceived parenting measures. For instance, perceived maternal overprotectiveness was significantly related to preoccupied and indecisive coping strategies, whereas perceived maternal harassment, fear induction, and reliable support were related in various ways to avoidant, indecisive, coercive, and caregiving attachment coping strategies. In general, the associations found between the perceived parenting measures and the attachment measures support the construct validity of the self-report measures of attachment and confirm that self-report measures are a fruitful way to assess attachment style in middle childhood.

This longitudinal study examined the likely direction of influence between perceived parenting and attachment style in middle childhood. In each of two successive years, measures of perceived parenting behaviors and of attachment style were administered to 164 children (mean age 10.2 in Year 1). Avoidant (but not preoccupied) attachment predicted change in perceived parenting over time, in that avoidant children perceived their mothers as increasingly overprotective, as less monitoring, as less affectionate, and as providing less reliable support over time. There was little evidence that perceived parenting led to change in attachment style over time, although low perceived maternal support in Year 1 predicted increases in preoccupied attachment. Results provide new insights into the direction of effects between attachment and perceived parenting during middle childhood.

This study examined influences of perceived parental behaviors and attachment styles on change over time in preadolescents' feelings of self-worth. In each of two successive years, four measures of perceived parental behavior (harassment, over-protectiveness, monitoring, and affectionate contact), two measures of attachment style (preoccupied coping and avoidant coping), and one measure of global self-worth were collected from a sample of 106 children ( M age = 11.1 years in Year 1). Results support the idea that children's perceptions of their parents and attachment styles influence, both individually and jointly, their subsequent feelings of self-worth. Perceived parental monitoring and perceived affectionate contact predicted increases in self-esteem, whereas perceived parental harassment predicted decreases in feelings of self-worth over time. Children's attachment styles also predicted change in global self-worth and in fact mediated the relations between perceived parenting practices and subsequent feelings of self worth.

Victimized children display debilitating thoughts, feelings and behaviors that may originate in family interactions and generalize to the peer group, causing children to be victimized by aggressive peers. This study tested the hypothesis that children's mental representations of their family experiences cause them to have reactions during peer interactions that lead to their victimization by peers. It was suggested that a perception of the self as helpless and a perception of the parent as controlling or threatening causes children to exhibit debilitated behavior among peers that contributes to their victimization. Also, certain perceptions of self and parent may contribute to aggression toward peers. Results for boys were in accord with hypotheses, in that both victimization and aggression were predicted by interactions of perceptions-of-self with perceptions-of-parent. Results for girls were less predictable from the formulation.

This study tested Bem's (1996) "Exotic Becomes Erotic" theory of sexual orientation. Participants were 182 4th- through 8 th-graders. In accord with Bem's theory, sex-typing (i.e., sex-typed traits, interests, and playmate preferences) and goodness-of-fit with one's gender predicted heterosexual identity. However, goodness-of-fit did not mediate relations of sex-typing to heterosexual identity; instead, sex-typing mediated the relation of felt similarity to heterosexual identity. Implications for alternative models are discussed.

The present dissertation introduces three new measures of gender identity and examines their relations to psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-concept and peer acceptance) in preadolescence. The sample consisted of 182 4th- through 8th-grade children. The three measures assessed (a) feelings of overall similarity to and compatibility with one's gender (goodness-of-fit), (b) feelings of pressure to conform to sex-role stereotypes (felt pressure), and (c) belief that one's sex is superior to the other sex (intergroup bias). Both concurrent and short-term longitudinal analyses indicated that goodness-of-fit was beneficial to psychosocial adjustment, whereas both felt pressure and intergroup bias undermined psychosocial adjustment. Furthermore, goodness-of-fit mediated many of the relations of domain-specific sex-typing measures (e.g., traits) to adjustment. The present dissertation helps identify some of the inherent limitations in previous work on gender identity, provides new insight into the relation of children's gender identity and psychosocial development, and raises suggestions for future inquiry.

Mother-child interactions that might predict peer victimization for children during middle childhood were examined. 184 middle class boys and girls in the 4th through 7th grades participated in the study. Child report measures of 6 dimensions of maternal parenting style and 7 types of child coping during mother-child conflict were developed. These family variables were reduced to a smaller set of variables and related to peer reports of children's victimization by peers, internalizing problems with peers, and externalizing problems with peers. Results indicate that, for boys, maternal overprotectiveness is associated with peer victimization for boys who use fearful or submissive coping during mother-child conflicts. Maternal overprotectiveness also predicts boys' internalizing problems with peers. Moreover, boys' internalizing problems with peers mediate the relation between maternal overprotectiveness and peer victimization. For girls, maternal hostility is associated with peer victimization for girls who are physically weak, and maternal hostility predicts internalizing problems with peers. As is the case with boys, internalizing problems with peers mediate the link between maternal hostility and victimization by peers. For both boys and girls, maternal hostility predicted externalizing problems with peers. A theory that explains gender differences in relations between maternal behaviors and peer victimization was advanced.

This concurrent correlational study examined the relations among perceived parenting, child coping/attachment style, and adjustment outcomes in middle childhood. Instruments measuring children's perceptions of their parents, their style of coping, and their adjustment were administered to 199 children in the third through eighth grades (mean age 11 years). This study tested newly developed self-report scales measuring aspects of disorganized attachment in middle childhood, identified perceived parenting correlates of five child coping styles, investigated how the five coping styles relate to adjustment outcomes, and explored the possibility of indecision interacting with other child coping styles to influence adjustment outcomes. The new measures of indecision, caregiving, and coercive coping styles proved to be reliable and related to perceived parenting and adjustment in meaningful ways. Perceptions of parents as being harassing and low in reliable support were linked with avoidant behaviors in children, whereas perceptions of parents as low in harassment and high in overprotectiveness were linked with preoccupied behaviors. Low reliable support and high levels of fear induction were associated with high levels of indecision, whereas high reliable support was correlated with caregiving behaviors and low reliable support was correlated with coercion. In regards to children's adjustment being affected by their coping style, evidence was found linking externalizing behaviors to coercive coping style and internalizing behaviors to caregiving coping style. When investigating interactions among coping styles predicting adjustment, indecision was found to interact with low levels of preoccupied coping in girls to predict externalizing behaviors, whereas indecision interacted with avoidant coping for both boys and girls to predict greater externalizing behaviors. Caregiving was found to weaken the link between indecision and externalizing and indecision was found to magnify the effects of coercion on externalizing behaviors. Finally, girls who were high in caregiving and low in indecision were found to exhibit increased internalizing behaviors.