Parenting Behaviors and Preschooler’s Aggression: Authoritative vs. Authoritarian and Mother vs. Father?

• In Event: Parenting and children's mental health

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated aggression (i.e., behaviors that are intended to hurt, harm or injure other people) to be a common type of behavioral problem in peer relationships that increases in frequency and intensity during the early childhood period (Crick et al., 1997; Furniss et al., 2006). Family factors, such as parenting, are well-documented to be an important predictor of child aggression, with authoritative parental behaviors such as warmth and reasoning playing a positive role in preventing child aggression, and authoritarian parental behaviors, such as physical punishment, leading to aggression in children (Masud et al., 2019). Supported by the transactional systems model, child aggression has also been shown to evoke changes in parenting behavior, which in turn influence the later development of aggressive behaviors (Gershoff et al., 2012; Yan et al., 2020). While previous studies have yielded consistent results on the transactional relation between authoritarian parenting behaviors and child aggression (i.e., positive reciprocal reinforcement), conflicting results have been reported on the relations between authoritative parenting behaviors and child aggression (e.g., Altschul et al., 2016; Baydar & Akcinar, 2018), and few studies have examined such an association in fathers. Furthermore, the use of cross-lagged panel models to examine transactional relations has been criticized by psychometricians (Berry & Willoughby, 2017), and statistical analysis that distinguishes between- and within-person effects is warranted. In the current study we addressed these gaps and utilized a transactional parent-child framework to extend prior research regarding the relations between authoritative and authoritarian parenting behavior and child aggression, and the association of maternal and paternal parenting behavior with aggression in early childhood.

Using a stratified sampling strategy, 341 children (4-6 years old, Mage = 60.48 months, girl = 50.7%) and their parents (mother = 341, Mage = 33.64; father = 341, Mage = 35.69) were recruited from three kindergartens in Guangzhou, China. Data were collected in October 2019 (Time 1), February 2020 (Time 2), and in June 2020 (Time 3). At each time point, parents (mothers and fathers) of young children completed a survey reporting their parenting behavior and their child’s aggression.

Results from random-intercept cross-lagged panel model indicated that child aggression was positively correlated with authoritarian parenting behavior and negatively correlated to authoritative parenting behavior of both parents. The relations between child aggression and maternal parenting behaviors were not significantly differed from the relations between child aggression and paternal parenting behaviors. However, child aggression was more strongly associated with authoritarian parenting behavior than with authoritative parenting behavior of both parents.

The results of this study extend the previous literature on the negative correlation between authoritarian parenting and preschoolers’ aggression within a transactional model, provide empirical evidence that authoritarian parenting is more strongly related to child aggression than authoritative parenting in early childhood, and provide new evidence that paternal parenting behaviors in early childhood are equally influential on child aggression as maternal parenting behaviors.

Authors

• Sisi Tao, The University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Eva Y.H. Lau, The Education University of Hong Kong

• Jianbin Li, The Education University of Hong Kong

• JIN SUN, Education University of Hong Kong