Poster #133 - Fathers' perceptions of control, hostility, and children's emotion regulation

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Children’s early emotion regulation (ER) skills relate to later academic success and lower risk for psychopathology (Graziano et al., 2007; Southam-Gerow & Kendall, 2002). Family context contributes to children’s ability to regulate their emotions; children adopt ER skills from family members through observation, social referencing, and modeling (Morris et al., 2007). One way that parents model ER is through their responses to stressful child-rearing situations. In particular, parents with low perceived control over caregiving failure (PCF) are more likely to use coercive disciplinary tactics and respond to children with negative affect and defensiveness (Bugental et al., 1993). This may in turn provide a maladaptive model of ER for children. However, little is known about the influence of parents’ PCF on child ER, especially in father-child dyads. In this study, we investigated the relation between fathers’ PCF, hostile parenting, and children’s ER.
Participants included (N = 87) fathers and their children as part of a larger community sample. When children were three years old, fathers self-reported on their PCF and hostile parenting style. The Parent Attribution Test assessed fathers’ PCF as a balance between adult- and child-related causes for parenting outcomes (Bugental et al., 1989). The Parenting Scale measured fathers’ hostility with items such as, “When my child misbehaves, I almost always use bad language” (Arnold et al., 1993). When children were four years old, fathers reported on their children’s ER skills with the Emotion Regulation Checklist, agreeing or disagreeing with items such as, “My child can say when (s)he is feeling sad, angry, or mad, fearful or afraid” (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997).
We conducted a linear regression analysis to test whether children’s ER was related to fathers’ PCF and hostility. Our overall model was significant, R2 = .25, F(3, 63) = 7.00, p < .001. An interaction between fathers’ PCF and hostility accounted for significant variance in children’s ER, b = 0.14, t(63) = 2.22, p = .03. A simple slopes post-hoc analysis revealed a moderation effect: lower PCF did not significantly relate to children’s lower ER when fathers scored low on hostility (one SD below the mean, b = 0.0516, t(63) = 0.89, p = .38), but was significantly positively associated at mean-level hostility, b = .16, t(63) = 3.29, p = .002, and strengthened with higher hostility (one SD above the mean, b = .27, t(63) = 3.43, p = .001).
Findings suggest that hostility moderates the relation between father’s PCF and children’s ER. Low perceived control over caregiving failure in fathers appears to be a risk factor for children’s poorer ER skills, particularly when fathers also show higher hostility towards children. This finding contributes new knowledge to the literature on maladaptive parenting in fathers and suggests that interventions targeting the reduction of hostility in fathers who display low PCF could buffer children’s ER.

Authors

• Kriss-Ann Gayle, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Catherine Hamby, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kayla M. Brown, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erika Lunkenheimer, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author