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PARENTS’ EXPLANATIONS OF THEIR CHILDREN’S BEHAVIORS AND THEIR RELATION TO PARENTING BEHAVIORS

Catherine Bums and Lynne Bond

Department of Psychology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405-0134

Parents’ attributions regarding their children’s behavior influence parenting behaviors (e.g. responsivity, contingencies, etc.) that relate to children’s subsequent social and cognitive developmental outcomes. While subject to bias and error, parents’ attributions of causality about child behaviors are formed from estimations regarding the stability of the child’s behavior, the child’s control over the behavior, and the degree to which factors internal and external to the child influence the behavior. These estimations are affected by variables including age of the child, social desirability of the behavior, whether a childhood disability or medical diagnosis would account for the behavior, and parent demographic factors such as socioeconomic variables.

Previous research in this area has focused primarily on mothers’ explanations of socially undesirable behaviors of their children aged 3 years and older. Our study expands upon previous research by focusing upon: (a) children 6 months to 5 years, (b) socially desirable and undesirable child behaviors, (c) parental attributions for their own children vs. children in general, (c) perceptions of multiple parental caregivers for each child, (e) parent and family demographics, and (fl with respect to child behaviors, the relationships between parents’ feelings of control, their affective and behavioral responses, and their attributions of causality about children’s behaviors.

Families were recruited from health and day care sites across an entire New England state, drawing an economically and educationally diverse population. Both parents of approximately 150 children ages 6 months to 5 years completed a written survey rating their attributions of causality for specified typical socially desirable and undesirable behaviors demonstrated by their own child and by children in general (the same age as their child). Parents also rated their own affective responses to the behavior, their influence over their children’s development, and indicated their own parenting response to the target behavior. Child developmental histories and personal and family demographic data were also provided by each parent.

Multivariate Analyses of Variance, Multiple Regressions, and correlational analyses are being used to examine the following hypotheses: (1) With increasing child age and desirability of the behavior, parents will increasingly attribute the

behavior to factors that are controllable, stable, and internal to the child. (2) With increasing child age and undesirability of the behavior, parents will report having less control and

influence over their children’s development. (3) Parents’ feelings of control and influence will be related to their patterns of attributions about their

children’s behavior. (4) With increasing child age and undesirability of the behavior, the parents will report having a more

intense affective response. (5) The type of parenting strategy reported in reaction to the target child behavior will vary with parents’

feelings of influence and control and the attributions of causality developed to explain children’s behavior.

(6) As children increase in age, patterns of attributions of causality for parents’ own children will become increasingly dissimilar to those formed by the parents about children in general.

An understanding of the variables that relate to and influence the ways parents explain and respond to their children’s behaviors can inform prevention and intervention efforts developed to support adaptive parenting behaviors.