The Role of Maternal Psychological Well-being and Child Difficult Behaviors in Chinese American Mothers? Parenting Attributions and Practices

Abstract

This study assessed whether: (a) the link between mothers? attributions and parenting practices was mediated by mothers? psychological well-being; and (b) the relation between mothers? attributions and psychological well-being was moderated by their children?s difficult behaviors. Chinese American mothers (N = 270; Mage = 37.8 years old, SDage = 4.5 years) of young children (Mage = 4.6 years old, SDage = 1.1 years) reported on their causal attributions for daily caregiving failures, psychological well-being, warm parenting, and psychologically controlling parenting. Their children?s teachers reported on children?s difficult behaviors. Results revealed that mothers? attributions of their caregiving failures to uncontrollable causes (e.g., poor parenting skills, high task difficulty) were associated with their poorer psychological well-being, which in turn was related to lower levels of warm parenting and greater use of psychological control. Further, this mediation was only significant when children displayed low and moderate levels of difficult behaviors.