Expectations for infant temperament, maternal emotion regulation, and infant social-emotional adjustment among unmarried, Black mothers.

Although prenatal expectations for parenting are important, relatively little research has examined expectations for infant temperament and its potential impact on post-birth maternal adjustment or early childhood development. This study investigated how prenatal expectations for temperamental difficulty were associated with maternal emotion dysregulation in early infancy and socio-emotional problems in toddlerhood among 216 unmarried, Black mothers in the southern United States. Mothers completed surveys assessing expectations for temperamental difficulty (prenatal), maternal emotion dysregulation (3-6 months), and socio-emotional problems (12-18 months). Path analyses indicated that mothers who expected more temperamental difficulty pre-birth showed greater emotion dysregulation postnatally, over and above pre-birth emotion dysregulation and post-birth temperament perceptions. Further, the indirect effect from expectations of temperamental difficulty to socio-emotional problems via maternal emotion dysregulation was significant. Findings speak to the possible role of pre-birth maternal temperament expectations for post-birth adjustment in mothers and infants.