Poster #149 - Impacts of Father Involvement on Maternal Marital Satisfaction and Children’s Anxiety/Depression and Aggressive Behaviors

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Earlier studies showed that father involvement and marital satisfaction affected children’s development. Specifically, greater father involvement was positively related to greater maternal marital satisfaction (Holmes & Huston, 2010), and to higher levels of children’s emotional security, self-control (Grossmann et al., 2002) and happiness (Flouri & Buchanan, 2003). In addition, higher levels of maternal marital satisfaction led to fewer children’s behavior problems (Woo, 2016). However, little research has examined how these aspects might influence maternal marital satisfaction or children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. To fill this gap, the present study evaluates the relations among father involvement, maternal marital satisfaction, and children’s behavior problems. Specifically, the study analyzes data from a longitudinal research project, The Panel Study on Korean Children, which was collected in 2012. A total of 1,666 families with four-year-old children (851 boys, 815 girls; M age = 4 years, 5 months, SD = 1 month) participated. Four questionnaires were used to measure father involvement (reported by fathers), maternal marital satisfaction, children’s anxiety/depression, and children’s aggressive behaviors. Path analysis within Structural Equation Modeling in Mplus was utilized to assess the relations among those four variables. First, there were significant direct effects (see Figure) from father involvement to maternal marital satisfaction, and from maternal marital satisfaction to children’s anxiety/depression, as well as to children’s aggressive behaviors. However, none of the direct effects from father involvement to children’s anxiety/depression or to aggressive behaviors were significant. Second, there were significant indirect effects (see Table) from father involvement to children’s anxiety/depression (fully mediated by maternal marital satisfaction) and from father involvement to children’s aggressive behaviors (fully mediated by maternal marital satisfaction). Last, there were gender differences between boys’ and girls’ models. Specifically, the direct effect from maternal marital satisfaction to children’s anxiety/depression and to aggressive behaviors were significant only for boys. Furthermore, the indirect effects from father involvement to children’s anxiety/depression via maternal marital satisfaction, and the effects from father involvement to children’s aggressive behaviors via maternal marital satisfaction, were also significant only for boys. However, the differences of the path coefficients between the two gender groups were only statistically significantly different in the path from maternal marital satisfaction to children’s aggressive behaviors. These main results imply that greater father involvement does not directly impact children’s behavior problems, but when maternal marital satisfaction plays a role as a mediator in this relationship, father involvement indirectly affects children’s anxiety/depression and aggressive behaviors via mothers’ marital satisfaction. This emphasizes the importance of maternal marital satisfaction in the relationship between fathering and child development. Regarding the gender differences in these results, boys tended to show more externalizing behavior problems than girls (Bandura, 1965), and mothers with depressive symptoms reported lower marital satisfaction and more children’s behavior problems (Henderson, Sayger, & Horne, 2003). Thus, mothers with lower marital satisfaction might have depressive symptoms and might perceive boys’ externalizing behavior problems more readily than girls’ behaviors. Investigating whether maternal depression mediates the relationship between marital satisfaction and children’s aggressive behaviors could improve future studies.

Authors

• Yookyung Lee, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kyongjoo Hong, The University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Sunyoung Park, California Lutheran University
  Non-Presenting Author