Negative parental attributions mediate associations between risk factors and dysfunctional parenting: A replication and extension
Introduction
Worldwide, millions of children are victims of child abuse and neglect (Stoltenborgh, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Alink, & Van IJzendoorn, 2015). As a result, many of these children experience serious consequences in the short term as well as in the longer term, with an increased risk for physical, psychological, and behavioral problems (e.g., Alink, Cicchetti, Kim, & Rogosch, 2012; Jonson-Reid, Kohl, & Drake, 2012). To prevent such problems later in life it is important to investigate the etiology of child maltreatment. According to the Social Information Processing (SIP) model negative parental attributions are important predictors of subsequent disciplinary actions and potentially, harsh or abusive parenting (Milner, 2003, 1993). Parents who attribute responsibility and hostile intent to the child and evaluate the behavior as more serious and wrong, are at risk for child abuse. Furthermore, disproportionately high child-related expectations, positive attitudes towards physical discipline, high stress levels, and the experience of childhood maltreatment by their own parents, are potential risk factors for negative attributions (Milner, 2003, 1993). The two latter factors were investigated in our previous study in relation to parental attributions and harsh and abusive parenting (Beckerman, Van Berkel, Mesman, & Alink, 2017). We found that the association between current experience of parenting stress and harsh and abusive discipline was mediated by negative parental attributions. No such associations were found for the other stress factors or for past childhood maltreatment. The objective of the current study was to replicate the previous study using a larger sample, and to further extend the findings by also including fathers, an additional risk factor (i.e., general child abuse risk), and observed parenting in addition to questionnaire data.
Parental attributions are defined as the parent’s interpretation and evaluation of child behavior (Milner, 2003, 1993). The SIP model argues that judgments concerning child behaviors of parents at risk for child abuse differ, both quantitatively and qualitatively, from judgments of parents without such risk. Not only do parents at risk report more negative child behavior in daily situations, they also show differences in evaluations and attributing intentionality of child behavior compared to other parents. Parents who are at risk for child abuse may associate children’s naughty or clumsy behaviors more often with internal and stable child characteristics and hostile intentions (e.g., “he spilled the milk because he wants to get back at me”). These parents are also expected to be less able to think of alternative explanations for the child’s behavior (e.g., “he spilled the milk, because he is too young to hold the cup straight”). As a consequence, parents at risk for child abuse will attribute more responsibility to the child, and evaluate the child’s behavior as more serious, wrong, and blameworthy compared to other parents which in turn elevates the risk for dysfunctional parenting strategies to follow (i.e., power assertive and harsh discipline; Milner, 2003, 1993).
The current experience of stress and the past experience of childhood maltreatment are important risk factors for parental attributions to become biased (Milner, 2003, 1993). Stress is thought to influence an individual’s coping skills which results in automatic and rigid rather than controlled and flexible information processing. During automatic processing parents are less likely to take situational information into account. As a consequence, parents are less able to understand the child’s behavior in context and will attribute more responsibility to the child, and evaluate the child’s behavior as more wrong (Milner, 2003, 1993). Empirical evidence shows that people who are (chronically) stressed show cognitive impairments, such as problems in learning and memory (Kuhlmann, Piel, & Wolf, 2005; Lupien, Maheu, Tu, Fiocco, & Schramek, 2007), and are indeed more likely to process information automatically and habitually instead of in a controlled and flexible manner (Hermans, Henckens, Joëls, & Fernández, 2014; Vogel et al., 2015).
The experience of childhood maltreatment is thought to influence parental attributions through the effect it has on parents’ pre-existing cognitions (i.e., general beliefs about children and childrearing (Milner, 2003, 1993). The model theorizes that these general beliefs are a result of prior experiences with children, but that they are mainly formed by experiences parents had in their own childhood with their own caregivers. It has been proposed that parents are particularly influenced by their pre-existing cognitions when they evaluate ambiguous child behavior (i.e., challenging but age-appropriate child behavior; Milner, 2003, 1993).The idea that parenting is guided by pre-existing schemata, is similar to the assumption of the attachment theory that internal working models provide a basis for parenting (Milner, 2003). According to attachment theory, mental representations of the self and others (i.e., internal working models) are formed in the context of child-caregiver relationship (i.e. attachment), and guide future thought, feelings, and behavior (Bowlby, 1969, 1973). There is indeed evidence that such intergenerational transmission of parenting occurs (Van IJzendoorn, 1992; Verhage et al., 2016).
A large number of studies have confirmed the hypothesized differences in parental attributions of parents at risk for abuse or parents who are abusing, versus low-risk and non-abusing parents (e.g., Ateah & Durrant, 2005; Burchinal, Skinner, & Reznick, 2010; Chilamkurti & Milner, 1993; De Paul, Asla, Perez-Albeniz, & De Cadiz, 2006; Irwin, Skowronski, Crouch, Milner, & Zengel, 2014; Larrance & Twentyman, 1983; Slep & O’Leary, 1998). Far less research has examined parental attributions in relation to current stress and childhood maltreatment, and its potential mediating role between risk factors and harsh and abusive parenting. Some empirical evidence is available. For example, parenting stress and socioeconomic strain were found to be associated with negative parental attributions (e.g., Berlin, Dodge, & Reznick, 2013; Haskett, Scott, Willoughby, Ahern, & Nears, 2006), and negative parental attributions were found to mediate the relation between parental abuse history and their use of harsh and abusive parenting (Dixon, Browne, & Hamilton-Giachritsis, 2005). However, most research demonstrates the direct association between current stressors or past experiences of childhood maltreatment and harsh and abusive parenting, without testing mediational pathways that include parental cognitions as suggested by the SIP-model (Stith et al., 2009).
We conducted one of the first studies exploring parental attributions as a potential mediating mechanism between daily stressors (i.e., low SES, partner-related stress, and parenting stress), parent’s own history of childhood maltreatment, and harsh and abusive parenting in a general population sample (Beckerman et al., 2017). Fifty-three Dutch mothers of 2- to 6-year-old children reported on daily stressors and their experiences of childhood maltreatment and completed the Parental Attributions of Child behavior Task (PACT) a computerized attribution task (Beckerman et al., 2017). Negative parental attributions mediated the association between current experience of parenting stress and harsh and abusive discipline. This suggests that the type of stress that affects parental attribution may be quite specific to stressors that are directly related to the child or to parenting. However, several limitations of this study raise questions about the robustness of these results.
First, the sample size of the Beckerman et al. (2017) study was quite small, making it difficult to identify small effects. Second, the study only included mothers. We cannot simply apply models found for mothers to fathers, because it has been suggested that fathers are different from mothers in their parenting (mother: secure base, talk vs. father: play, exploration, discipline), in their biological makeup (different stress responses), and in the amount of time they spend with their children (although paternal involvement increased significantly since the second half of the twentieth century, on average mothers still spend more time with their children) (Kudielka & Kirschbaum, 2005; Lamb, 2010; Ramchandani & Psychogiou, 2009). Moreover, several studies suggest that attributions concerning child behavior are not only different for mothers and fathers (Chen, Seipp, & Johnston, 2008; Lansford et al., 2011), but also predict child and parenting outcomes differently (Werner, 2012; Williamson & Johnston, 2015). So, with these important notions in mind, the current study examined negative maternal as well as paternal attributions.
In addition to the limitations of small sample size and not studying fathers, only self-report questionnaires were used to measure harsh and abusive parenting. There is evidence that self-reported parenting may be subject to social desirability and is not, or only moderately, correlated to observations of parenting (Bennett, Sullivan, & Lewis, 2006; Sessa, Avenevoli, Steinberg, & Morris, 2001). It has been suggested that observations of parenting in more stressful tasks are needed to discriminate maltreating parents from non-maltreating parents (Bennett et al., 2006). Thus, the use of observational measures that elicit challenging parenting situations is needed to reduce the limitation of social desirability to a minimum. In conclusion, a replication study addressing these issues is needed to validate and extend the initial findings and to shed more light on their robustness.
The objective of the current study was to replicate the previous study using a larger sample, and to extend the findings by also including fathers, using an additional risk factor (i.e., a general child abuse risk), and including observed parenting in addition to questionnaire data. Because many studies found general abuse risk to be associated with parental attribution (e.g., Chilamkurti & Milner, 1993; De Paul et al., 2006; Irwin et al., 2014; Rodriguez, Cook, & Jedrziewski, 2012; Rodriguez & Tucker, 2015), we added this risk factor to our study. Finally, the separate mediation effects were tested in a multiple mediation model for mothers and fathers separately.
In sum, in this study we expect to replicate our finding of the previous study: negative maternal attributions mediate the relation between parenting stress and self-reported harsh and abusive parenting. We also expect this association to be significant when we use an observational measure of parenting. In addition, we hypothesize that maternal negative attributions mediate the association of other current risk factors (e.g., low SES and partner-related stress) and past childhood maltreatment, with parenting. Finally, we study the exact same mediation models for fathers and explore if the mediation models differ for fathers and mothers.
Section snippets
Sample
We were interested in studying variance in stressors and harsh and abusive discipline within the general population, and thus recruited a non-risk sample. Convenience sampling was used. Participants were recruited in different ways in order to include families with various socio-economic backgrounds. Families were recruited through health care services, door-to-door flyer distribution and Facebook advertisements. Information about the study was provided by brochures, an internet page, and
Preliminary-analysis
Correlations and descriptive statistics of the study variables and relevant background variables are displayed in Table 1. For both mothers and fathers more negative attributions were related to more parenting stress and more harsh and abusive discipline. Mothers who reported more partner-related stress and scored higher on child abuse risk, also expressed more negative attributions. Parenting stress was positively associated with harsh and abusive parenting for both mothers and fathers. For
Discussion
We replicated the finding of our previous study, showing that the association between parenting stress and self-reported maternal harsh and abusive discipline was partially mediated by maternal negative attributions. The same partial mediation was found for fathers’ harsh and abusive parenting. In addition, partner-related stress and abuse risk showed a similar effect on harsh and abusive parenting through negative attributions for mothers. Furthermore, the indirect effects on maternal
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dr. Renske Huffmeijer for her help with programming the PACT.
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