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Direct and Interaction Effects of Sensitive Parenting and Toddlers’ Social Skills in Low-Income Two-Parent Families

Wed, April 7, 11:35am to 1:05pm EDT (11:35am to 1:05pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Introduction: The quality of parent-child interactions during early childhood is consistently related to the development of social skills necessary for later functioning and relationships (Rispoli et al., 2013). For instance, parents who are sensitive to their children’s needs and respond timely and appropriately have children who are socially adjusted and exhibit more social skills and fewer behavior problems (McElwain & Volling, 2004; Mintz et al., 2011). However, most of this work has been done with mothers, and, consequently, we know less about the ways in which fathers interact with their infants, and especially how mothers and fathers may complement each other to influence children’s social skills. We aim to test the main and interaction effects of the quality of mothers’ and fathers’ observed interactions with their toddlers to better understand how parents jointly contribute to children’s social competence.
Aims: Guided by the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), we ask (1) what are the associations between mothers’ and fathers’ sensitive (i.e., sensitivity, positive affect, animation, cognitive stimulation) and negative (i.e., intrusiveness, negative affect, detachment) parenting at 9 months and toddlers’ social competence and problem behaviors at 21 months?, and (2) what are the interaction effects between maternal and paternal sensitive and negative parenting and children’s social competence and behavioral problems? We expect that the quality of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting will be uniquely associated with more social competence and fewer behavior problems. We test three interaction hypotheses: the association between parenting and children’s social skills will be strengthened when both parents are high in sensitive parenting (accumulated advantage), buffered when one parent is high in sensitive and the other parent is high in negative or low in sensitive (compensatory hypothesis), and will be weakened when both parents are low in sensitive or high in negative parenting (double jeopardy) (Bradley et al., 2011; Watamura et al., 2011).
Method: Our sample includes n=150 low-income, ethnically-diverse co-resident families participating in a literacy intervention. When infants were 9 months old, mothers and fathers were interviewed in their homes and videotaped during a play interaction, which have been coded for mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity, positive affect, cognitive stimulation, animation, intrusiveness, negative affect, and detachment. When toddlers were 21 months old, mothers and fathers reported on their children’s social skills via the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment.
Results: Paired samples t-tests revealed that mothers were observed to be significantly more sensitive, displayed more positive affect, used more cognitive stimulation, and were more animated than fathers. Fathers were observed to be significantly more detached than mothers. We found a significant correlation between maternal positive affect at 9 months and toddler’s social competence at 21 months. We will run multiple regression analyses to tests for the main and interaction effects.
Conclusions: This study adds to the literature on parenting in early childhood by including observational data on how both mothers and fathers influence children’s social skills. Our findings have implications for policies and programs that aim to improve children’s outcomes by targeting parenting.

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