The Comparison and Interdependence of Maternal and Paternal Influences on Young Children's Behavior and Resilience

Abstract

We investigated how mothers’ and fathers’ depressed mood and father–child and mother–child relationship predicted preschool children's problem behavior. The sample was 11,286 continuously intact, two-parent biological families of the United Kingdom's Millennium Cohort Study. We found that mother–child relationship and maternal depressed mood had larger effects on children's problem behavior than father–child relationship and paternal depressed mood. The effect of paternal depressed mood was completely mediated by quality of father–child relationship. There were significant moderator effects but only on internalizing problems. There was little evidence to suggest that, among children of this developmental stage, quality of father–child relationship buffers the effect of contextual risk (i.e., promotes resilience). Quality of mother–child relationship, in contrast, buffered the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage but only on emotional symptoms.

Acknowledgments

This program of research was supported by a grant (RES-000–22-2558) from the Economic and Social Research Council. We are grateful to several members of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies for their support, and particularly to Jon Johnson and Heather Joshi for their help with the construction of the contextual risk variables.

Notes

Note: Ns = 8,132–11,286.

^a Total difficulties, that is, the average of conduct, hyperactivity, emotional and peer problems; all 20 Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire items were scaled 0–2 and averaged.

***p < .001.