On whose needs does mother focus? Mother- or child-centered care and the self-other differentiation of maternal needs.
This is an attempt to describe a model for conceptualizing the mother-child relationship, based on the categorization of mothers according to the social-cognitive perspective of their need-centeredness and the self-other differentiation of these needs. Home observations of 14 multiple infants and their mothers were carried out during the first few years of the children's lives; special attention was given to the mother's physical, emotional and verbal contact with each child and the justification of her behavior, thereby enabling the observers to see the nature of the mother's social thought and the logic of her actions. Three maternal patterns which emerged are depicted: 1) mother-centered, 2) child-centered, 3) intermediate. Four detailed descriptions of mothers' behavior and verbalizations to their children, and the children's reactions to these, exemplify maternal patterns.