Mothers’ Behaviors and Children’s Social Confidence and Ability: Correlations from the NLSY
The understanding of shyness and social withdrawal has been built over the past half century with research looking into factors that cause this in children. However, not many mention the natural phenomenon of if children mimic social confidence from their adult figure. This study used correlation analyses to investigate the relations between parents’ behaviors and attitudes and their children’s social confidence and ability. Data were from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1986 Child and Young Adult Survey Mother Supplement. Results showed weak correlation between social confidence and outings frequency, either with family and friends or not. However, children who were spanked more frequently positively correlated with their mothers rating them to be more high strung. Furthermore, all hypotheses showed results that follow the direction of the prediction, so further investigation into the topic may show more significant correlation or a causation relationship of the variables.