Mothers' and fathers' observed interaction with preschoolers: Similarities and differences in parenting behavior in a well-resourced sample

Abstract

Parenting behavior is a key factor in children’s socio-emotional development. However, little is known about similarities and differences in maternal and paternal parenting behavior, as most studies have focused on mothers. The present study investigated similarities and differences in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behavior during observed free play with their preschool children, in a Danish well-resourced sample. We examined differences in mean scores and associations between mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting assessed with the Coding Interactive Behavior instrument. Additionally, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to test the model-fit between the measurement model and parental data. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate if maternal and paternal factor structures replicated the three parenting constructs, and to explore if certain parenting behaviors seemed specifically related to either mothering or fathering. Participants included 52 mothers, 41 fathers and their 5-year old children. Similar mean scores were found for mothers and fathers on all parenting constructs. Maternal and paternal parenting behavior were not correlated. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a poor model-fit. For both mothers and fathers, latent factors related to sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting emerged, which indicated that the Coding Interactive Behavior instrument was suitable for assessment of both maternal and paternal sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting. However, item loadings suggested that the instrument assessed maternal sensitivity more accurately than paternal sensitivity in our sample. Two additional factors were retrieved for fathers, i.e. paternal performance and challenging behavior, and paternal teaching behavior. This finding may suggest that additional parenting constructs need to be developed for researchers to be able to thoroughly investigate similarities and differences in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behavior. Despite difference in factor structure, we did not identify behaviors solely related to mothering or to fathering.

Parenting behaviors of mothers and fathers of young children with intellectual disability evaluated in a natural context

“…The coincidence of high scores on the same parenting domain scores in mothers and fathers suggest that their patterns of parenting are similar. Previous studies of mothers and fathers of children with normative development suggests that their parenting behaviors are conceptually very similar [100][101][102][103][104]; equally, our data from mothers and fathers with young children with ID suggest that there are no separate dimensions of fathering and mothering. Those results are similar to those recorded in the studies carried out with mothers and fathers of children with ID mentioned in the introduction section [28,43,64,85].…”

Child-parent interactions in American and Turkish families: Examining measurement invariance analysis of child-parent relationship scale

“…In terms of the assessment of parent-child relationships, robust measures could provide insight into the parent-child relationship and the factors affecting this relationship [31,32]. In the US, Pianta [33] developed an instrument to measure child-parent relationships.…”

Gender and parental involvement in parent‐child reminiscing in a Scandinavian sample

“…First, although highly involved parents could be expected to be more sensitive in parent-child interactions overall (e.g., Feldman, 2000;Steenhoff et al, 2019), some studies have not been able to link high parental involvement to more positive parenting behavior (Brown et al, 2007(Brown et al, , 2012. In fact, higher father involvement has sometimes been related to lower father sensitivity, whereas sensitive fathers have been shown to engage in high quality parent-child interactions irrespective of their level of involvement (Brown et al, 2012).…”

“…In fact, higher parental involvement has been linked to parental sensitivity in parent‐child interactions overall (Feldman, 2000; Steenhoff, Tharner & Vaever, 2019), and in verbal interactions in particular (Abkarian, Dworkin & Abkarian, 2003; Leaper, Anderson & Sanders, 1998). Moreover, high parental sensitivity has been associated with secure parent‐child attachment relations (Brown, Mangelsdorf & Neff, 2012; de Wolff & Ijzendoorn, 1997).…”