Bidirectional Effects Between Parenting and Temperament in the Context of a Children’s Self-Concept

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Although parenting and temperament have been investigated for many years, bidirectionality between them is a point of interest mostly in recent years (e.g. Shaffer, Lindhiem, Kolko, & Trentacosta, 2013). The current study aimed to investigate the cross-lag effects between temperament (i.e. behavioral inhibition) and parenting (i.e. maternal overprotectiveness and autonomy support) in the context of preschool children’s self-concepts within two time-points with 8-months interval.
In total, 180 children (93 of them were females [51.7%], and 87 of them were males [48.3%]; Mage = 61.15, SDage = 8.56) and their mothers participated in this study. Children’s perceived self-concepts were assessed with puppet interview method via Child Self-View Questionnaire (Eder, 1990) and Berkeley Puppet Interview (Ablow & Measelle, 1993; Eder, 1990). Mothers responded to Parental Overprotection Measure (Edwards, Rapee, & Kennedy, 2008) to assess maternal overprotectiveness, Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 2001) to assess maternal autonomy support, and Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (Putnam, Gartstein & Rothbart, 2006) to measure the behavioral inhibition of children in both two waves of data collection. Data were collected through home/kindergartner visits.
The longitudinal data was analyzed using two sets (for two different parenting styles each) of cross-lagged panel analyses. Results regarding autoregressive paths revealed that Time 1 (T1) assessments of children’s self-concept, behavioral inhibition, maternal overprotectiveness and autonomy support predicted their Time 2 (T2) assessments. Cross-lagged panel results indicated that T1 maternal overprotectiveness positively predicted T2 behavioral inhibition ( = .16, p < .01); also, both T1 behavioral inhibition ( = -.16, p < .05) and T1 self-concept ( = -.14, p < .05) negatively predicted T2 maternal autonomy support. Results were discussed in the light of literature regarding the nature of temperament-parenting bidirectionality and the effects of Turkish culture.

Authors

• Bahar Bahtiyar-Saygan, Atilim University
  Presenting Author

• Sibel KazakBerument, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author