CHILD REARING ACROSS GENERATIONS

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from Investigator's Abstract): This project will study the parenting of mothers and fathers of three year olds who have been part of a longitudinal study, since the age of 3, in Dunedin, New Zealand. It is proposed to test hypotheses regarding the conditions under which parenting is transmitted across generations. Studies that rely upon retrospective reports of childhood experience and/or that rely upon pre-selected samples of high-risk subjects (e.g., child abusers, teenage mothers, institutionally-reared girls) indicate that a supportive marital relationship protects a mother from repeating on her own child the mistreatment she experienced growing up. By studying approximately 500 parents from a complete cohort of approximately 1000 New Zealanders born in Dunedin two decades ago, the study will determine whether a supportive marriage functions as a buffer when prospective information on childhood experience is examined in a nonselected, representative sample. By drawing upon parenting and family climate data gathered when the adult subjects were of preschool age, in middle childhood and in early adolescence, and observing them with their own three year olds, the study will determine whether family influences during any of these developmental epochs are more predictive of parenting during adulthood; whether a good marriage disrupts the interdegenerational transmission of problematic parenting; and whether such processes operate similarly for mothers and for fathers. It is expected that insight into these issues afforded by this research will prove useful to those seeking to prevent problematic parenting from developing or promote competent parenting.