Mothers' parenting self-appraisals: the contribution of perceived infant temperament.

To learn how a mother's perception of her infant's temperament contributes to her appraisal of her parenting and of her problem-solving competence during the first 3 months postpartum, we explored a conceptual model, including infant gender and maternal attributes (education and parity) and the personal and social context of the parenting experience (infant centrality and life change), in a sample of 117 mothers. The set of temperament variables contributed to the variance in both parenting evaluation and problem-solving competence at 1 and 3 months. The pattern of infant temperament variables contributing to maternal self-appraisal variables at 1 and at 3 months suggests change in the temperament variables that are salient to mothers as the infants grow older.