Executive Functioning, Affective Misappraisals and Parenting Risk: Pathways within Disadvantaged Mother-Child Dyads

Research examining cognitive models of parenting risk has linked poorer parental executive functioning capacities to increased risk for poor parenting outcomes including use of harsh discipline and problematic patterns of parent-child interaction. To better inform intervention and prevention efforts targeting parenting risk, there is a need to further articulate this association by identifying intermediaries between parents’ executive functioning capacities and parenting behavior. Social-cognitive models of parenting risk suggest that one such intervening factor is parents’ ability to form accurate appraisals during social situations, including accurate appraisals of others’ affect. We tested this assertion by examining the extent to which mothers’ accuracy for recognizing affect, presented in both auditory and visual modalities, explained associations between mothers’ executive functioning capacities and two indicators of parenting risk: maladaptive discipline responses and dyssynchronous patterns of parent-child interaction. Associations were tested among 95 mother-preschooler (48.4% female; average age 4.94 years) dyads, 31 of whom had histories of maternal perpetration of child neglect. Mothers exhibited high levels of social (92.6% non-White; average of 11.51 years of education; 65.3% single parents) and economic disadvantage (median family income of $19,000). Consistent with prior research, we found associations between lower maternal executive functioning capacities and higher levels of parenting risk. Using Hayes’ PROCESS Macro, we found that mothers’ affective misappraisals partially explained these associations although findings differed by sensory modality. Our findings suggest that poorer maternal executive functioning capacities contribute to inaccurate affect identification, which in turn may lead to maladaptive patterns of parent-child interaction and inappropriate discipline responses.