These data reveal several points. First, the environment at both one year (mater-
nal environment) and at six years (family conflict/cohesion) are related to the
child's status as measured by first attachment quality and later by psycho-
pathology. In the case of attachment at one year, maternal behavior both at three
months and at one year are related to children's attachment classification at one
year (see Lewis & Feiring, 1989). In the case of children's psychopathology at
six, environmental stress (family conflict vs. harmony) is related to psycho-
pathology. Thus, there is reason to suppose that the child's status in infancy and
childhood is related to the environment at each of these points. Moreover, when
the data from the longitudinal study of maternal behavior at three and 12 months
are compared to the family environment scale at six years, a moderate and
positive correlation is found (r = .21, p < .05). These results indicate that there
exists some stability within the environment of the child from infancy into the
early school years. Some caution is necessary: The two measures of the environ-
ment at one and six years are not comparable enough to assess stability across
age with confidence, because maternal behaviors were measured at one and
family variables at six years (see FIG. 1.5). These results suggest that the model
proposed in FIG. 1.2 may be a better way to conceptualize the developmental
paths, especially if included in the model is the cross-lag relations.

Figure 1.7 presents this complete model of influences. Analysis of the cross-lag
correlations are difficult to produce in part because of the type of statistic used to
study the phenomena. Rather than focusing on amount of psychopathology,
numbers of individual children with or without psychopathology have been
studied. Using this type of number of person analyses, it is not possible to obtain

Mt1 = Mother factors time 1
Ct1 = Child factors time 1
Mt2 = Mother factors time 2
Ct2 = Child factors time 2


FIG. 1.7. Model of mother and child influences across time.

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