Bidirectional effects in maternal/paternal parent-child aggression: Role of social information processing and temperament

• In Event: 1-194 - The role of negative attributions of child behavior in at-risk parenting

Integrative Statement

Given considerable evidence of the adverse effects of harsh parenting and physical discipline, identifying the factors that predict parents’ use of parent-child aggression is an important step, particularly those factors that could be modified and addressed in interventions. Much of the literature in this area has also concentrated on maternal physical discipline, underscoring the need for additional inquiry into factors relevant to fathers’ physical parent-child aggression. The current presentation will focus on factors consistent with social information processing (SIP) theory as potential predictors of later physical parent-child aggression. The current investigation focused on SIP parental factors of negative child attributions, approval of physical discipline, and knowledge of nonphysical discipline options. These SIP factors were considered in conjunction with child factors to evaluate potential bidirectional effect. Infant temperament and parents’ SIP factors were utilized as predictors of parents’ later parent-child aggression use as well as children’s emerging behavior problems (Figure 1) in a cross-lagged design, which permitted an evaluation of child evocative effects.

Data are drawn from two waves of a prospective longitudinal study. Mothers (n = 186) and fathers independently reported on their knowledge of discipline options, negative child attributions, and attitudes approving of physical punishment as well as their children’s temperament (effortful control, negative affect, and surgency/extroversion) at age 6 months. Parents then reported on their use of physical discipline tactics as well as their toddlers’ emerging behavior problems one year later. Using multilevel modeling, results are presented in Table 1 (with age and socioeconomic status as time-varying covariates). For mothers, findings indicated that their use of parent-child aggression was predicted by their approval of discipline and negative child attributions. However, no evocative effects were observed for mothers, with no child temperament characteristics predicting maternal use of physical punishment tactics. Mothers’ lower knowledge of nonphysical discipline options did predict their subsequent report of more toddler behavior problems. For fathers, only limited knowledge of non-physical discipline strategies predicted their later use of physical parent-aggression tactics; further, fathers who considered their infants to be more active (surgency) engaged in greater physical parent-child aggression use one year later, suggestive of child evocative effects.

Findings are discussed in terms of the potential distinctions between mothers and fathers and the continuing need to investigate the factors contributing to fathers’ parent-child aggression use. Further, the presentation will end with a discussion of the apparent value of incorporating parents’ social information processing variables to inform prevention and early intervention efforts aimed at reducing parent-child aggression administered by either mothers or fathers.

Authors

• Christina M. Rodriguez, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  Presenting Author

• Shannon Michelle Oram Wittig, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author