Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.
School of Education, University of California, Irvine.
Psychol Sci. 2021 May;32(5):721-734. doi: 10.1177/0956797620975775. Epub 2021 Apr 9.
Retrospective self-report assessments of adults' childhood experiences with their parents are widely employed in psychological science, but such assessments are rarely validated against actual parenting experiences measured during childhood. Here, we leveraged prospectively acquired data characterizing mother-child and father-child relationship quality using observations, parent reports, and child reports covering infancy through adolescence. At age 26 years, approximately 800 participants completed a retrospective measure of maternal and paternal emotional availability during childhood. Retrospective reports of childhood emotional availability demonstrated weak convergence with composites reflecting prospectively acquired observations (s = .01-.05) and parent reports (s = .02-.05) of parenting quality. Retrospective parental availability was more strongly associated with prospective assessments of child-reported parenting quality (s = .24-.25). However, potential sources of bias (i.e., depressive symptoms and family closeness and cohesiveness at age 26 years) accounted for more variance in retrospective reports (39%-40%) than did prospective measures (26%), suggesting caution when using retrospective reports of childhood caregiving quality as a proxy for prospective data.
回顾性自我报告评估成年人在童年时期与父母的经历在心理科学中被广泛应用，但这些评估很少与童年时期实际的育儿经历进行验证。在这里，我们利用前瞻性获得的数据，这些数据使用观察、父母报告和儿童报告来描述母婴和父子关系的质量，涵盖了从婴儿期到青春期。在 26 岁时，大约有 800 名参与者完成了一项关于儿童时期母亲和父亲情感可用性的回顾性测量。儿童时期情感可用性的回顾性报告与反映前瞻性获得的观察结果（s =.01-.05）和父母报告（s =.02-.05）的育儿质量综合指标的相关性较弱。回顾性的父母可用性与儿童报告的前瞻性育儿质量评估更为密切相关（s =.24-.25）。然而，潜在的偏见来源（即 26 岁时的抑郁症状以及家庭亲密性和凝聚力）解释了回顾性报告（39%-40%）比前瞻性测量（26%）更多的差异，这表明在使用儿童期养育质量的回顾性报告作为前瞻性数据的替代时应谨慎。
