Father and Adolescents' Reports of Fathers' Parenting and Youth Maladjustment

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Fathers’ Reports Fathers’ Reports Adolescents’ Reports Adolescents’ Reports Fathers’ Reports Fathers’ Reports Adolescents’ Reports Adolescents’ Reports Support Support Support Support .33* .35* .09* -.13* -.14* -.16* -.11* -.06* .50* .50* .64* .63* .09* -.14* Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Verbal Hostility Depression -.20* -.15* .21* -.11* -.07* -.07* -.01 .03* -.04* .07* -.05* .07 .21* -.08* .10* .19* Psychological Control Psychological Control .04 Psychological Control Psychological Control -.01* .37* .36* Depressive Symptoms Delinquent Behaviors Verbal Hostility Support Support Support Support + - .34* + Monitoring Monitoring Maladjustment - -.14* -.06* - + -.10* .50* .63* - + Psychological Control Psychological Control .09* Father and Adolescents' Reports of Fathers' Parenting and Youth Maladjustment Monitoring Monitoring Delinquent Behavior + -.20* .21* -.07 * -.04* -.09* .09* Psychological Control Psychological Control .37* Alexander ReidUndergraduate Student Psychology Federico LeguizamoUndergraduate Student Psychology JacoboPicardoUndergraduate Student Psychology Scott W. PlunkettProfessor Psychology Background Methods Discussion • Studies have shown a link between parent-child relationships, parental qualities, and adolescents’ adjustment (Peterson, 2005). • Scholarly research on parenting has traditionally identified three types of parenting styles (Amato & Fowler, 2002; Barber, Maughan, & Olsen, 2005; Schaefer, 1965; Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992). • Support refers to behaviors such as warmth, general support, affection, and praise (Peterson, 2005) • Psychological control refers to intrusions into the offspring’s sense of self, thoughts, or feelings by using strategies such as guilt, shame, and love withdrawal (Barber, Maughan, & Olsen, 2005) • Monitoringrefers to knowledge of the child’s friends, locations, and activities (Stattin & Kerr, 2000) • Most studies have focused on maternal behaviors (Plunkett, Ainsworth, Henry, & Behnke, 2011). • Also, most studies have used adolescents' reports of parental behaviors without consideration of parents’ actual reports. • Recently there has been an increase in recognition of fathers' contributions to child adjustment (Pleck, 2010). • As hypothesized, fathers’ actual behaviors were significantly related to adolescents’ reports of their fathers’ behaviors; with the strongest relationships between corresponding behaviors (e.g., support to support). Yet, the correlations were not very large. • Thus, youth reports of fathers’ parenting behaviors directed toward the adolescent do represent, to some extent, what fathers believe they do. • It would be interesting to see if youth reports of mothers behaviors are more or less strongly correlated with mothers’ reports of their own behaviors. • Youth reports of their fathers’ parenting behaviors were directly related, while fathers’ reports of their own behaviors were indirectly related, to all three indicators of adolescent maladjustment. • Thus, fathers play an important role in these adolescents’ lives. • When fathers are more supportive and engage in more monitoring, youth are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors. • When fathers engage in more psychological control, they are more likely to be involved in these maladaptive behaviors. It is possible that youth externalize in response to fathers’ use of guilt, shame, love withdrawal, etc. Sample Procedures Measures • 626 adolescents living in California (16.8%), North Carolina (81.9%), and Oklahoma (1.3%) • 49.5% boys, 50.5% girls • Mean age is 15.0 years (range 12-18) • Ethnicity • 49% Latino • 28% African American • 15% Caucasian • 8% other • Family Form • 51.4% two-parent intact families • 18.0% stepfather families • 14.5% single mother families • 16.6% other • Father Figure • 66.0% biological fathers • 15.2% stepfathers • 7.2% grandfather • 11.6% other father figures • Schools in Oklahoma, California, North Carolina • Written permission from school administrators obtained. • Letters to parents and parental consent forms were in English and Spanish • Students who returned signed parental consent and youth assent forms completed self-administered surveys, which were available only in English. • Self-report surveys collected in classrooms by trained (mostly bilingual) research assistants (RAs). • Data were coded, entered, and verified by trained RAs. • Parental Behavior Measure (Bush, Peterson, Cobas, & Supple, 2002) used to measure fathers' and adolescents' reports of paternal support (4 items), psychological control (7 items), and monitoring (6 items). • 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. • 10-item depression (Kohout, Berkman, Evans, & Cornoni-Huntley, 1993; Radloff, 1977) • 0 = rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day), 1 = some of the time (1-2 days), 2 = occasionally (3-4 days), and 3 = mostly or almost all the time (5-7 days). • 17-item delinquent behaviors • 0 = never, 1 = once, 2 = a few times, and 3 = many times (last 6 months) • 5-item verbal hostility • 0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = frequently, 4 = veryfrequently, 5 = always Results Implications Model Questions • Do fathers' reports of their own behaviors relate to adolescents’ reports of fathers' behaviors? • Do fathers' reports of their parenting relate to adolescent maladjustment (depression, verbal hostility, delinquent behaviors) directly, or indirectly through adolescents’ perceptions of their fathers' parenting behaviors? • When developing programs to prevent or intervene in youth maladjustment, practitioners can target fathers' parenting behaviors as well as how youth perceive their fathers. • It is important to assess the fathers’ own perceptions of their behaviors separately from how their children view the behaviors of their fathers. • Fathers should be encouraged to keep track of their youth’s activities, engage in supportive behaviors, and minimize use of intrusive parenting. • Also, it is important to help youth recognize fathers' supportive gestures and possibly to learn to reframe psychologically controlling behaviors by fathers as possible signs of support. • Future studies should examine other parenting variables and indicators of youth adjustment. • Also, longitudinal studies should be conducted to examine whether fathers' behaviors at time 1 relate to adolescents’ perceptions of fathers' behaviors at time 2. • Larger and more representative samples are encouraged. Chi square = 10.15, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .03 Chi square = 3.162, CFI = 1 , RMSEA = 0.00 Chi square = 2.86 , CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = 0.00