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Mothers’ and fathers’ well-being, parenting styles, and their children’s cognitive and behavioural strategies at primary school

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Abstract

One-hundred and five 6- to 7-year-old children were given a test measuring their helplessness, failure expectations, task-irrelevant behaviour, lack of persistence and search for social support in a classroom setting in order to examine the impact of parental well-being and parenting styles on the children’s cognitive and behavioural strategies at school. Both parents were also asked to fill in scales measuring their depression, parenting stress and parenting styles. The results revealed that maternal depressive symptomatology was associated with their children’s use of maladaptive strategies, whereas paternal depression was not. Moreover, maternal authoritative parenting styles and authoritarian control, seemed to decrease their children’s use of maladaptive strategies. On the other hand, the more parenting stress reported by the fathers, the more their children showed the use of maladaptive strategies.

Résumé

Cent cinq enfants de 6 à 7 ans ont été soumis à un test mesurant leur sentiment d’impuissance, leur attente de l’échec, leurs comportements inappropriés dans les tâches, leur manque de persévérance et leur recherche de soutien social en situation scolaire. L’objectif était d’étudier l’influence du bien-être familial et des styles parentaux sur le fonctionnement cognitif et les comportements des enfants à l’école. Les parents avaient de leur côté à remplir des échelles de dépression, de stress parental et de style parental. Les résultats ont montré que la symptomatologie dépressive des mères était liée à l’utilisation par leurs enfants de stratégies mal adaptées, alors que la dépression paternelle ne l’était pas. Cependant, les styles parentaux d’autorité maternelle et le contrôle autoritaire semblent favoriser la baisse d’utilisation par les enfants de stratégies mal adaptées. Par ailleurs, plus les pères font preuve de stress parental, plus leurs enfants font preuve de stratégies mal adaptées.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 13, SF-00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Tiina Onatsu-Arvilommi & Kaisa Aunola

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40351, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Jari-Erik Nurmi & Kaisa Aunola

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  1. Tiina Onatsu-Arvilommi
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  2. Jari-Erik Nurmi
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  3. Kaisa Aunola
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Onatsu-Arvilommi, T., Nurmi, JE. & Aunola, K. Mothers’ and fathers’ well-being, parenting styles, and their children’s cognitive and behavioural strategies at primary school. Eur J Psychol Educ 13, 543–556 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173104

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