Young African-American multigenerational families in poverty: Quality of mothering and grandmothering.

by Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay; Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne; Zamsky, Elise S.

Child Development. Vol 65(2), Apr 1994, 373-393.  

Examined parenting practices (problem-solving and disciplinary styles) in 99 young, low-income, African-American multigenerational families, using home-based observations of grandmothers and young mothers interacting separately with 3-yr-old children. Mothers and grandmothers did not differ in the mean level of the quality of their parenting practices. No main effect of mothers' age at 1st birth on mothers' parenting was found. In contrast, families most likely to provide positive parenting were those in which older mothers did not reside with the grandmother. Yet, in families with very young mothers, coresiding grandmothers showed higher quality of parenting than did grandmothers who lived elsewhere.