Parents' emotional availability and infant emotional competence: Predictors of parent-infant attachment and emerging self-regulation

One-year-old infants (N = 62) and their mothers and fathers were observed in free play and teaching sessions in order to examine parents' emotional availability and the infant's emotional competence. Mothers were more emotionally available than fathers, and infants exhibited more effortful attention with mothers than with fathers. Similar relations between parental emotional availability and infant emotional competence were found for mother-infant and father-infant dyads. Change in parental emotional availability covaried with change in infant emotional competence. Individual differences in parental emotional availability and infant emotional competence were more consistent across contexts than across parents. Infant effortful attention at 12 months was a mediator between maternal emotional availability at 12 months and toddler situational compliance at 16 months.