Defensive Responding is a term to describe strategies used to control the perceptions others have of oneself. The attempt to
control information in an effort to influences another’s opinion can serve as a personal or social goal-directed behavior. This
behavior has implications for how others perceive, evaluate, and treat them. There is a wealth of research on parental character-
istics that can influence responding about children, and there is literature showing that certain motives, goals, and personality
characteristics, such as defensive responding, can affect caregiver’s self-report. However, research has yet to bridge these lines of
research and examine whether defensive responding impacts parents’ responding about their children. The current study explored
differences in responding between mothers who do and do not engage in defensive responding on a widely-used measure of child
psychopathology: the Child-Behavior Checklist, while controlling for maternal psychopathology, child race, age, and gender.
Results indicated that mothers who engaged in defensive responding responded more defensively about their children on the
Total score of the Child-Behavior Checklist. Specifically, mothers reported reduced internalizing, anxiety/depression, withdraw-
al/depression, externalizing, inattention, delinquency, and aggression symptoms. Exploratory analyses indicated that the rela-
tionship between maternal depressive symptoms and child psychopathology was mediated by maternal defensive responding.

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• Maternal reporting of child psychopathology: The effect of defensive responding