Reciprocity in Undesirable Parent–Child Behavior? Verbal Aggression, Corporal Punishment, and Girls’ Oppositional Defiant Symptoms

• In Event: 2-133 - Child Effects on Parenting from Infancy to Adolescence

Integrative Statement

Objective:
Parents of children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) report high levels of caregiving strain (Bussing et al., 2003) and family dysfunction (Greene et al., 2002). Symptoms of ODD may be particularly difficult for parents to manage and thus may exacerbate children’s risk of experiencing harsh discipline. Research indicates that harsh parenting behaviors, including verbal aggression and corporal punishment, are associated with children’s worsening conduct problems and ODD (Evans, Simons, & Simons, 2012; Hipwell et al., 2008; Tung, Li, & Lee, 2012). However, the strength of bidirectional relationships among specific parent behaviors has been inconsistent across gender, and the direction of influence between parental aggression and girls’ ODD symptoms is particularly understudied. As evidence points to differing trajectories for children associated with the distinct symptom dimensions of ODD (Burke, Hipwell, & Loeber, 2010), it is critical to evaluate whether parent-child bidirectional influence differs across these behavior domains. This study tests reciprocal effects between parental verbal aggression and corporal punishment and girls’ ODD dimensions of oppositionality, antagonism, and irritability.

Methods:
Data from the original child cohorts of the Pittsburgh Girls Study (N = 2,450) were used, including annual measures of child and parent-reported aggressive discipline via the Conflict Tactics Scale, and girls’ ODD symptoms between ages 5 to 16 via the Child/Adolescent Symptom Inventory, 4th edition. Separate clustered Poisson and Gaussian regression models examined change in parent or child behavior outcomes using predictors and autoregressive variables lagged by one timepoint. A more conservative alpha threshold was used given the large sample size and multiple comparisons.

Results:
After controlling for demographic factors, behavior stability, and other disruptive behaviors, parent-reported corporal punishment predicted girls’ increasing antagonism and irritability, whereas child-reported corporal punishment was unrelated to change in ODD symptoms. Parental verbal aggression predicted increases across ODD dimensions for both parent and child report. Regarding child effects, girls’ oppositionality and antagonism predicted parent self-reported increasing use of verbal aggression over time, but only oppositionality was significantly related to child-reported verbal aggression. While ODD symptoms were unrelated to change in both parent and child-reported corporal punishment, ADHD predicted increasing parental aggression of both types across respondents.

Conclusions:
Bidirectional associations emerged indicating that parental verbal aggression escalates reciprocally with girls’ behavioral ODD symptoms, while it also contributes unidirectionally to increasing irritability symptoms. Irritability did not influence parenting behavior. The robustness of findings related to verbal aggression is supported across multiple reporters of parent behavior and after controlling for corporal punishment and behavior stability. Although effects of corporal punishment on ODD symptoms were dependent on reporter, the contribution of children’s ADHD symptoms to increasing corporal punishment held across parent and child report. These findings highlight the importance of examining specific parent and child behaviors to isolate independent effects, emphasize the risks associated with verbal aggression, and suggest that girls’ behavioral symptoms of ODD and ADHD contribute the most salient “child effects” on parental aggression.

Authors

• Olivia Juliette Derella, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Jeffrey Burke, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie D. Stepp, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alison Hipwell, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author