| Description |
Internalizing behavior, symptoms of excess anxiety and stress, poses destructive consequences for children's cognitive and emotional development. The present study examined several dimensions of mothers' and fathers' parenting behaviors as predictors of children's internalizing behaviors, in order to examine which dimension of parenting behavior was most predictive of child internalizing symptoms. The study also examined whether father's parenting behaviors made a unique contribution to child internalizing behaviors above and beyond mothers' parenting behaviors in middle childhood. The NICHD (SECCY) longitudinal data set (Phase III) was used for the present study. Parenting behaviors were assessed through observations of mother-child interactions and father-child interactions when children were in fifth grade. Parents completed the Child Behavior Check List as a measure of child-internalizing behavior at fifth grade. A series of OLS Regression and Hierarchical Regression analyses were employed, controlling for child gender, child race, socioeconomic status, mother education, father education, and family structure. Results from data analyses indicated that mothers' supportive presence was most predictive of child internalizing behavior, and fathers' parenting behaviors did not make unique contributions to child internalizing behavior above and beyond mothers' parenting behaviors. In addition, parenting behavior in general was not as predictive of child internalizing behavior as expected. |
