Abstract
This experimental study aimed to advance our understanding of parental negative attributions of children’s misbehavior (parental interpretations of what causes children’s misbehavior) and how they relate to other parental characteristics. Specifically, we examined: (1) How different measures of parental negative attributions relate to cognitive and affective parental characteristics (e.g., stress, temperament, parental self-efficacy); and (2) How reducing negative parental attributions affects parenting. In all steps, we differentiated between two types of negative parental attributions: parent-causal attributions (identifying one’s parenting or parent characteristics as cause for the child’s behavior) and child-responsible attributions (identifying the child as responsible for the behavior). Data were collected from 78 parents and their 3 to 5-year-old children (M = 51.67 months, SD = 8.56) in a lab experiment. Parents were randomly assigned to conditions aimed to reduce negative attributions (parent-causal, child-responsible) or a control condition. Results suggest that different parental characteristics tap into complementary aspects of negative parental attributions. Global parental negative attributions were associated with parent negative affect, laxness and positive discipline, and these associations were stronger for parent-causal than child-responsible attributions. Experimental manipulation of parental negative attributions seemed to reduce situation-specific attributions (both parent-causal and child-responsible), but not global attributions, parental self-efficacy or parenting behavior. Our findings suggest parental negative attributions of child’s misbehavior may be a node in the complex parenting network of parental cognitions, affect, and behavior. Understanding the causal effects and malleability of negative parental attributions may advance parenting process theory and practice.
Highlights
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Parental negative attributions about children’s misbehavior are associated with parenting behavior (self-reported and observed) and parental characteristics (stress, temperament, self-efficacy).
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Parent-causal and child-responsible parental negative attributions relate to parent characteristics in different ways.
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Parental negative attributions specific to a context, but not global parental negative attributions, may be modifiable.
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Stimulating positive parental attributions may be a target for interventions, potentially increasing positive parenting and reducing negative parenting.
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Data Availability
All data is publicly available at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/vgbzc/).
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the Master students who contributed to the data collection and the families who participated in the lab experiment.
Funding
This work was supported for the first author by the Wallonie-Bruxelles International.be funding agency (grant Excellence WBI world Nos. SOR/2018/391751 and SOR/2019/440918) for post-doctoral research. The last author was supported with a grant from the Dutch National Science Council (Grant number 016.vici.185.063) during the preparation of this study.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by B.M. and J.W. The first draft of the manuscript was written by B.M. and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript and its revision.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Written informed consent was obtained from the parents for their children.
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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Amsterdam (No. 2018-CDE-9547).
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Mouton, B., Weeland, J., Leijten, P. et al. When Parents Wear Dark Glasses: An Experimental Study on Parental Negative Attributions and Parenting Behavior. J Child Fam Stud 31, 3468–3484 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02446-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02446-3