Treating twins as individuals: Maternal educative practices

Abstract

For twins' parents, the process of building up each child's individuality is more complex than for singleton's parents. The dyadic interaction becomes a triadic situation and the mother has to face the problem of distinguishing one twin from the other without comparing them.The analysis of mothers' twin carepatterns provides highly relevant information on the processes promoting twins' individualization and maternal adjustment to the triadic situation.An empirical study illustrates this point of view. It surveys forty parents of twins on their attitudes towards twin rearing and observes parental behaviour in the home to assessconsistency between statements of actual practices. Observation and correspondence analysis show that: I) Some types of child care are more conductive to implementing differentiation strategiesthan others (dress and choice of toys in contrast to bedtime and meals); 2) mothers of twins who are explicit about child rearing practices are generallycoherent about putting them into practice; mothers with less explicit views are less inclined to try to individualize their twins; 3) SES and degree of physical resemblance between twins both affect the type of differentiation strategies.This will be considered here as a suitable population for studying how mothers begin to conceptualize their developing infant as a person. A number of characteristics of the infant have been shown to play a role in building up the singleton individuality:

Pre- and Postnatal Determinants of Parenting Stress in Mothers of One-Year-Old Twins

“…The mother's level of education, the presence of older children in the family, physical resemblance among the twins and maternal fatigue were shown to affect the extent to which the mother treated the twins as individuals (Robin, Corroyer, & Casati, 1996;Robin, Josse, Casati, Kheroua, & Tourette, 1994;Tourette, Robin, & Josse, 1989). Less is known about the determinants of other operationalized aspects of the parent-child relationship when multiple births are involved.…”

Quality of bonding and behavioral differences in twins

“…Referring t o the possibility that mothers may treat the twins either as a unit or as being very different, Tourrette, Robin, and Josse (1989) state: "our results show that this balance may be successfully reached by missing differentiating behaviors in some concerns (dressing, toys) and twinning behaviors in others. This general process leads parents to emphasize or minimize the differences between the twins."…”

Childcare Patterns of Mothers of Twins During the First Year

“…We hypothesized that the more the twins resemble each other (MZ case), the more the mother will have difficulty treating them as separate individuals. This has already been shown for twin differentiation by means of 'outward signs of twinship' (choice of clothing, toys and physical environment) (Zazzo, 1960;Cohen, Dibble, Grawe & Pollin, 1975;Tourrette et al, 1989;Robin, Josse, Kheroua, Casati & Tourrette, 1994). Other studies have shown that monozygotic twins are treated in a more similar fashion than dizygotic twins (Loehlin & Nichols, 1976;Cohen, Dibble & Grawe, 1977).…”