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Group and individual stability of three parenting dimensions
Tormod Rimehaug1, Jan Wallander, Turid Suzanne Berg-Nielsen
1Regional Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. tormod.rimehaug@ntnu.no.
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health
|May 26, 2011
Summary
Parenting dimensions like Warmth, Protectiveness, and Authoritarianism show varying stability over nine months. Warmth is most stable, but some parents exhibit significant change, impacting research and interventions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Family Studies
- Child Development
Background:
- The Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI-PCh) assesses current parenting dimensions: Warmth, Protectiveness, and Authoritarianism.
- Understanding the stability of these parenting dimensions is crucial for longitudinal research and interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the true and observed stability of parenting dimensions (Warmth, Protectiveness, Authoritarianism) in parents of older children.
- To explore individual-level changes in parenting over a nine-month period.
- To identify potential parental predictors of parenting instability.
Main Methods:
- Community-based sample of 150 parents (both genders) completed questionnaires twice, nine months apart.
- Measures included parenting dimensions, parental personality, and emotional symptoms.
- Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to estimate true stability.
Main Results:
- Warmth demonstrated relatively high stability, though less than personality traits.
- Protectiveness showed moderate stability.
- Authoritarianism was the least stable parenting dimension.
- Instability in Warmth was linked to parental personality and childhood experiences; Protectiveness instability correlated with higher scores.
Conclusions:
- Parenting dimensions exhibit varying degrees of true instability over nine months in parents of older children (7-15).
- Warmth was the most stable dimension, but a subset of parents showed significant decreases ('unstably cold').
- Parenting stability is a critical factor for interpreting longitudinal studies and designing effective parenting interventions.
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