Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Department of Clinical Child and Family Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2019 Aug 22;14(8):e0221661. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221661. eCollection 2019.
Parenting behavior is a key factor in children's socio-emotional development. However, little is known about similarities and differences in maternal and paternal parenting behavior, as most studies have focused on mothers. The present study investigated similarities and differences in mothers' and fathers' parenting behavior during observed free play with their preschool children, in a Danish well-resourced sample. We examined differences in mean scores and associations between mothers' and fathers' sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting assessed with the Coding Interactive Behavior instrument. Additionally, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to test the model-fit between the measurement model and parental data. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate if maternal and paternal factor structures replicated the three parenting constructs, and to explore if certain parenting behaviors seemed specifically related to either mothering or fathering. Participants included 52 mothers, 41 fathers and their 5-year old children. Similar mean scores were found for mothers and fathers on all parenting constructs. Maternal and paternal parenting behavior were not correlated. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a poor model-fit. For both mothers and fathers, latent factors related to sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting emerged, which indicated that the Coding Interactive Behavior instrument was suitable for assessment of both maternal and paternal sensitivity, intrusiveness and limit-setting. However, item loadings suggested that the instrument assessed maternal sensitivity more accurately than paternal sensitivity in our sample. Two additional factors were retrieved for fathers, i.e. paternal performance and challenging behavior, and paternal teaching behavior. This finding may suggest that additional parenting constructs need to be developed for researchers to be able to thoroughly investigate similarities and differences in mothers' and fathers' parenting behavior. Despite difference in factor structure, we did not identify behaviors solely related to mothering or to fathering.
父母行为是儿童社会情感发展的关键因素。然而，由于大多数研究都集中在母亲身上，因此对于父母行为的相似性和差异性知之甚少。本研究在丹麦资源丰富的样本中，调查了母亲和父亲在与学龄前儿童自由玩耍期间的育儿行为的相似性和差异性。我们用“编码互动行为”工具评估了母亲和父亲的敏感性、侵入性和限制设定的平均分数和关联。此外，我们还进行了验证性因子分析，以检验测量模型和父母数据之间的模型拟合度。进行探索性因子分析是为了研究母亲和父亲的因素结构是否复制了这三个教养结构，并探讨某些教养行为是否与母亲或父亲有特定的关系。参与者包括 52 名母亲、41 名父亲及其 5 岁的孩子。在所有教养结构上，母亲和父亲的平均分数相似。母亲和父亲的育儿行为没有相关性。验证性因子分析显示模型拟合度较差。对于母亲和父亲来说，与敏感性、侵入性和限制设定相关的潜在因素都出现了，这表明“编码互动行为”工具适合评估母亲和父亲的敏感性、侵入性和限制设定。然而，项目负荷表明，在我们的样本中，该工具评估母亲的敏感性比评估父亲的敏感性更准确。还为父亲提取了两个额外的因素，即父亲的表现和挑战性行为，以及父亲的教学行为。这一发现可能表明，需要开发更多的教养结构，以便研究人员能够彻底研究母亲和父亲的教养行为的相似性和差异性。尽管因素结构不同，但我们没有发现仅与母亲或父亲有关的行为。
