The Impact of Prenatal Parental Locus of Control on Children's Psychological Outcomes in Infancy and Early Childhood: A Prospective 5 Year Study

Abstract

Locus of control is one of the most widely studied concepts in the history of personality psychology. In spite of its popularity and its associations with numerous relevant outcomes, the ability of locus of control to predict future behaviors involving parenting effectiveness has been under researched. The few parent locus of control children's outcome studies are characterized by cross-sectional methodologies that focus on mothers. The present study uses a prospective methodology to compare data on mothers' and fathers' locus of control with their child's behavior outcomes from a large scale research project, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Based on Rotter's Social Learning Theory published in 1954 and past empirical research, it was predicted and found that parent internality was associated with more positive child outcomes than parent externality. More specifically, when both parents were internal, their children had more positive outcomes in sleeping, eating, and tantrum behavior as compared to any other parent locus of control combination. However external parents had a less restrictive attitude which appeared to have a more beneficial effect on picky eating. Results confirmed how important parent locus of control is in the lives of children. Based on the findings, researchers are urged to develop interventions to change advice to parents and promote more internal locus of control among parents.

Early parental positive personality and stress: Longitudinal associations with children's sleep

“…Positive parent personality was associated with longer sleep durations and better sleep quality/daytime functioning. These findings are in line with prior research that has connected positive parent personality traits, such as internal locus of control, with positive health behaviours among children (Nowicki et al ., ). Sleep extension studies have found that even small extensions in sleep (e.g., ~30 min) are associated with better neurobehavioural functioning and improvements on cognitive tasks and working memory among children and adolescents (de Bruin, van Run, Staaks, & Meijer, ; Dewald‐Kaufmann, Oort, & Meijer, ; Sadeh, Gruber, & Raviv, ).…”

“…Parent attributes such as internal locus of control, hardiness, and optimism have been associated with positive child outcomes (Johnson & McMahon, 2008;McDonald, Kehler, & Tough, 2016;Nowicki, Iles-Caven, Gregory, Ellis, & Golding, 2017). For example, for toddlers with mothers with mental health problems, maternal optimism was a protective factor in the development of behavioural problems (McDonald et al, 2016).…”

Locus of control as a modifiable risk factor for cognitive function in midlife

“…Although there is a large body of evidence showing LoC to be associated with many psychological [2,3,5,6,33] and physical [7,8] health outcomes and health behaviours such as smoking [9–12] and alcohol consumption [9,17], studies examining whether LoC is related to cognitive function are scarce [22]. Several studies to date have assessed whether cognitive training is associated with short-term [18] and long-term [16] changes in LoC (i.e.…”

Effect of parental attributes on the locus of control of secondary school students

“…Parents' LoC is also important in the lives of children (Nowicki et al, 2017). LoC of parents and their children are significantly related with each other (Nowicki et al, 2018d).…”

“…Locus of control (LoC) is an important concept of personality (Nowicki et al, 2017). It is a person's perceived control on his or her life events.…”