Rearing Difficult Children: Parents' Personality and Children's Proneness to Anger as Predictors of Future Parenting

SYNOPSIS

Objective . This multimethod study of 102 mothers, fathers, and children examined children's difficult temperament as a moderator of the links between parental personality and future parenting. Design . Parents described themselves on the Big Five traits and on optimism. Children's difficult temperament was observed at 25 and 38 months in paradigms that assessed proneness to anger. Each parent's responsive, affectively positive parenting was observed in lengthy naturalistic interactions at 67 months. Results . Regardless of child temperament, for mothers, low neuroticism, and for fathers, high extraversion, predicted more positive parenting. For difficult, anger-prone children, mothers' low and high optimism and fathers' low and high openness were associated, respectively, with less or more positive parenting. Conclusions . Challenges resulting from children's difficult temperaments appear to amplify links between parental personality traits and parenting.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was sponsored by grants from NIMH, RO1 MH63096 and KO2 MH01446, and by Stuit Professorship to Grazyna Kochanska. The authors greatly appreciate the contributions of many individuals to data collection and coding, including Nazan Aksan, Lea Boldt, Amanda Hollatz, Sara Penney, Natasha Jimenez, Jessica O'Bleness, and Jarilyn Woodard. The authors also thank the participants in the Family Study for their enthusiastic commitment to this research.