Beyond Caregiver Sensitivity: An Exploration of Parental Behaviors in Mothers and Fathers

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Developmental research has shown that caregiver sensitivity supports positive child development. This research has, however, mostly relied on parenting behaviors such as nurturance and care, due to a focus on mothers’ behaviors. Other parenting dimensions such as parental playfulness (i.e., use of creativity, imagination, and humor during parent-child interactions) and challenging parenting/activation behaviors (i.e., encouraging children to push their limits and exhibit risky behavior in a playful manner) have comparatively received little attention.
This symposium focuses on underexplored parenting dimensions, and presentations share the common goal of examining these dimensions in fathers and mothers (i.e., playfulness, activation, challenging parenting behaviors). This approach is critical to understand similarities and differences in the ways that mothers and fathers interact with their children, and their respective influence on child development.
The first paper validates a new self-report questionnaire (PPSQ) that assesses three domains of playfulness in mothers and fathers: (a) parental playfulness, (b) child playfulness, and (c) the reaction to the partner’s playfulness. The second paper explores associations between paternal activation parenting and children’s externalizing and internalizing problems in a sample of low-income, ethnically-diverse fathers. The third paper examines whether the use of mothers’ and fathers’ challenging behaviors changes across early childhood, and whether they are associated with children’s social and self-regulation skills at 24 months in low-income, Latinx and Black families. Our discussant, an eminent fathering researcher, will conclude this symposium by integrating the findings of these papers within the broader fathering literature and discuss paths forward for the field.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa

Discussant

• Brenda L Volling, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Individual Presentations

• Validating a Measure of Parental and Child Playfulness: Comparisons Between Mothers and Fathers of Preschoolers - Presenting Author: Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa; Khachadour Bandk; Harshita Seal, University of Ottawa; Audrey-Ann Deneault, University of Calgary (U of C)

• Longitudinal Relations Between Paternal Activation Parenting and Children’s Socioemotional Adjustment in the Preschool Years - Presenting Author: Julia Sarah Feldman, University of Pittsburgh; Melvin N Wilson, University of Virginia -Charlottesville; Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh

• Challenging Parenting Behavior and Toddlers’ Social Skills and Self-Regulation in Ethnic-Minority Families - Presenting Author: Rachel Ghosh, University of Maryland - College Park; Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park; Audrey-Ann Deneault, University of Calgary (U of C); Angelica Alonso, University of Maryland - College Park