Longitudinal Relations Between Paternal Early Positive Involvement and Preschool-Age Children’s Self-Regulation

• In Event: New Directions in Paternal Caregiving of Young Children

Abstract

Caregivers’ positive involvement in early childhood may be characterized by high levels of sensitivity, warmth, stimulation, and engagement (Nordahl et al., 2016). Although both maternal and paternal positive involvement are likely to benefit children’s self-regulation development (Eisenberg et al., 1998), research on caregivers’ influences on children’s emerging self-regulation skills has focused primarily on the contributions of mothers (Karreman et al., 2006). However, in the relatively modest body of work on fathers, paternal positive involvement in early childhood has contributed independent variance to predict children’s subsequent self-regulation skills across the toddler and preschool period, over and above the effects of maternal caregiving (Neppl et al., 2020). Extant literature has two important limitations that are addressed in the present study. First, there is a dearth of longitudinal research testing associations between positive paternal involvement prior to age 2 in relation to children’s self-regulation skills. Second, extant studies have largely been conducted in American samples, thus limiting the generalizability of findings to fathers in other countries. The present study addressed these gaps by testing associations between observations of paternal positive involvement at both 12 and 36 months and children’s self-regulation skills in a large sample of Norwegian families while also accounting for observed maternal involvement at 24 months. In Norway, fathers tend to be highly involved in caregiving, especially in infancy through toddlerhood (Sullivan et al., 2009), and in in 2018, 71% of Norwegian fathers used their right to paid leave in connection with childbirth and stayed home with their infant (Gram, 2019). We hypothesized that positive paternal involvement at both 12 and 36 months would contribute independent variance to children’s self-regulation skills at 48 months after accounting for maternal parenting. Second, based on the emergence of children’s internalized forms of self-regulation around age 12 months and thus greater importance of caregiving quality at this time period (Calkins, 2007), we hypothesized that relations between positive paternal involvement and later child self-regulation would be stronger at age 12 months compared to 36 months.
Participants (n = 771; 48% female) were from the Behavior Outlook Norwegian Developmental Study (BONDS), a population-based longitudinal study of families from five municipalities in southeast Norway conducted by the Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development (Nærde et al., 2014). At 12, 24, and 36 months, parent-child dyads participated in a series of videotaped interaction tasks. Mothers were targeted for participation at 24 months, whereas fathers were targeted at 12 and 36 months. At 48 months, children participated in a battery of self-regulation tasks (Kochanska et al., 1996).
Using structural equation modeling to generate latent factors for hot and cool self-regulation and accounting for observed maternal and paternal positive involvement during the toddler period, observed paternal positive involvement with children at 12 months was independently associated with children’s hot (β = .11, p = .03) and cool (β = .12, p = .04) indices of self-regulation at 48 months (Figure 1). The present study has important implications for supporting greater paternal involvement during infancy to promote children’s emerging self-regulation skills.

Authors

• Julia Sarah Feldman, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin Berg Nordahl
  Non-Presenting Author

• Agathe Backer-Grøndahl, The Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ane Nærde, The Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development
  Non-Presenting Author