Poster #142 - Maternal Attribution and Chinese American Children’s Social Skills: The Mediating Role of Authoritative Parenting Practices

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Despite their large and growing numbers in the U. S. (Hooper & Batalova, 2015), there is still limited research of the development of Chinese American children’s social skills and potential contributors to these skills (Cheah & Leung, 2011). Parent-referent attributions, parents’ causal interpretations for their own parenting behaviors, can influence parental attitudes and emotional and behavioral reactions towards their children, which in turn can affect children’s development of social skills (Dix, 1993). Parents who utilized authoritative practices engage in warm, regulatory, and autonomy-promoting child-rearing (Baumrind, 1989), which also lead to competent social skills in children (Larzelere, Morris, & Harrist, 2013). Further, previous research has linked parental attributions with parents’ engagement in authoritative parenting practices (Coplan et al., 2002). Chinese American parents tend to make attributions regarding their parenting successes and failures based on the controllability of the situation (Ren et al., in press). Although parental attributions and authoritative parenting practices have both been found to be associated with children’s social skills (Sigel et al., 2014), mediating processes have not been examined in Chinese American families. The present study aimed to examine the mediating role of authoritative parenting in the associations between Chinese American mothers’ parenting attributions of parenting successes and failures to controllable/uncontrollable causes and their children’s social skills.

Participants included Chinese American mothers (N = 209, Mage = 37.36 years, SD = 4.27) from Maryland, who reported their attributions regarding successes and failures in their daily caregiving experiences, authoritative parenting practices, maintenance of Asian values, and demographic information. Teachers rated their preschool children’s (Mage = 4.51 years, SD = 1.09) positive social skills in school. The measures utilized in the study were reliable in the Chinese American sample, with all Cronbach’s alpha higher than .70.

Maternal controllable attributions for parenting failure and uncontrollable attributions for parenting success were associated with more authoritative parenting. In turn, authoritative parenting was associated with children’s more competent social skills. In contrast, maternal uncontrollable attributions for parenting failure and controllable attributions for parenting success were associated with less authoritative parenting, which in turn was associated with children’s poorer social skills (see Figure 1).

Mothers who feel efficacious and confident in fulfilling their parenting responsibilities are more likely to engage in authoritative parenting (Su et al., 2017). Chinese American mothers with controllable attributions for parenting failure and uncontrollable attributions for parenting success likely possess greater self-efficacy, and thus have greater capacity to be warm, responsive, and autonomy-promotive (Leerkes & Crockenberg, 2002). Such parenting, in turn, supports children’s development of positive social skills. However, mothers who attribute parenting success to controllable causes and parenting failure to uncontrollable causes may have less confidence and efficacy in fulfilling their parenting responsibilities, and thus display less warm, regulatory, and autonomy-supportive parenting practices (Simons et al., 2005), which in turn, is associated with poorer social skills in children. Our findings suggest that promoting Chinese American mothers’ sense-of-efficacy through parental attributions of daily parenting tasks may enhance their engagement in positive parenting that can facilitate their children’s social skills.

Authors

• Huiguang Ren, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Charissa S. L. Cheah, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author