Beyond parenting behaviors: Considering parent and child attributions in parenting processes and child social-emotional development

Abstract

Guided by the social information processing model and parenting frameworks, the objective of the present dissertation was to contribute to the literature by contextualizing attribution processes within the dynamic and interdependent nature of parent-child interactions. Across three papers, this dissertation revealed how parental and child attribution patterns influenced parenting processes and child socialemotional development in families of Chinese heritage across developmental stages. The first paper examined how Chinese American parents’ attributions of parenting challenges to causes beyond their control were related to their parenting practices with their preschool-aged children. When Chinese American mothers ascribed parenting failures to sources outside their control, they experienced poor psychological well-being, which led them to be less warm and more psychologically controlling towards their children. Importantly, children’s behavioral difficulties contemporaneously disrupted the link between Chinese American mothers’ attributions and well-being. The second paper investigated the reciprocal associations among Chinese American parents’ attributions of parenting failures to their children, power-assertive parenting, and children’s reactive aggression using a three-wave longitudinal design, each six months apart. Mothers’ attributions to child causes and power-assertive parenting were reciprocally related across three waves. Further, child reactive aggression positively predicted maternal hostile attributions six months later, which in turn, led to more power-assertive parenting one year later. Finally, the third paper explored the age-varying associations between psychologically controlling parenting and mainland Chinese children’s depressive symptoms from childhood to early adolescence and the moderating effects of children’s attributions and gender. Parents increased their use of psychological control from late childhood, putting children at risk of developing depressive symptoms. While children were less likely to make positive interpretations of parents’ psychological control with increasing age, high levels of positive attributions protected children against depressive symptoms during the transition to early adolescence. Further, parents of boys engaged in higher levels of psychological control than parents of girls. Boys and girls were differentially impacted by such parenting across ages. Together, this dissertation emphasized the critical role of parents’ and children’s attributions in shaping parenting processes and children’s adjustment within families of Chinese heritage. Further, this dissertation revealed the dynamic interplay between parenting and children’s characteristics.