Journal Article

Supportive Maternal and Paternal Caregiving and the Children’s Emerging Effortful Control Abilities

Olson, Sheryl L., Feldman, Julia S.

2021

Overview

Supportive maternal and paternal caregiving have been found to be associated with children’s effortful control abilities. However, many studies did not assess both maternal and paternal parenting in the same analytic model, making it difficult to parse out the unique contributions of mothers versus fathers. Thus, we aimed to simultaneously assess the role of parent gender in associations between observations of supportive caregiving in the preschool years and observations of children’s effortful control abilities in the early school-age years. At approximately age 3 years, children ( N  = 113) participated in videotaped father–child and mother–child interactions, as well as a battery of effortful control tasks. At approximately age 6 years, children participated in another battery of effortful control tasks. Covariates included parental education, child age, child preschool-age effortful control, and child gender. Structural equation modeling revealed that maternal and paternal supportive caregiving behaviors in the preschool years were independently associated with children’s school-age effortful control abilities. In sum, we found that supportive caregiving in the preschool years was associated with children’s early school-age effortful control abilities, regardless of parent gender. Findings have implications for the development of interventions aimed at improving children’s effortful control abilities through improvements in both paternal and maternal parenting. Highlights Mothers and fathers engaged in similar types of supportive caregiving behaviors in early childhood. Observed supportive caregiving was associated with children’s effortful control skills 3 years later. Associations between supportive caregiving and children’s effortful control were significant for both mothers and fathers.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Ability / Age / Analysis / Batteries / Behavior / Behavioral Science and Psychology / Caregiving / Child and School Psychology / Child Rearing / Childhood / Children / Children & youth / Early childhood education / Fathers / Gender / Mothers / Original Paper / Parent Role / Parent-child relations / Parental control / Parenting / Parents & parenting / Preschool children / Preschool education / Psychology / Schools / Self regulation / Social Sciences / Sociology / Structural equation modeling / Structural Equation Models / Temperament / Young Children