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Mothers' and Fathers' Personality, Infants' Anger Proneness, and Responsive Parenting
Grazyna Kochanska1, Lilly C Bendel-Stenzel1, Danming An2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA USA.
Journal of Child and Family Studies
|December 15, 2025
Summary
Fathers' personality traits, like Agreeableness, influence parenting responsiveness, especially with challenging infants. Maternal distress also impacts responsiveness, particularly with more difficult infants.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Parenting quality is crucial for infant development.
- Parent personality links to parenting are studied, but child characteristics' moderating roles, especially in father-infant dyads, are less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine how parents' Big Five personality traits and distress relate to parenting behaviors.
- To investigate the moderating role of infant anger proneness in these personality-parenting associations, particularly for fathers.
Main Methods:
- Study of 200 families (infants, mothers, fathers).
- Parents reported Big Five traits and distress/psychopathology.
- Observed parenting (responsiveness, positive affect, negative affect) during home interactions.
- Infant anger proneness assessed via temperament episodes.
Main Results:
- Mothers exhibited higher responsiveness and positive affect than fathers.
- Fathers' Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion correlated with higher responsiveness.
- Fathers' Agreeableness moderated parenting: more agreeable fathers were more responsive to high-anger-prone infants.
- Maternal personality unrelated to parenting, but maternal distress linked to lower responsiveness, especially with high-anger-prone infants.
Conclusions:
- Father personality, particularly Agreeableness, significantly shapes parenting responsiveness, with child temperament as a key moderator.
- Maternal distress, not personality, negatively impacts responsiveness toward challenging infants.
- Findings highlight the importance of considering both parent and child characteristics in understanding parenting dynamics.
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