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More than Just the Breadwinner: The
Effects of Fathers’Parenting Stress
on Children’s Language and
Cognitive Development
Tamesha Harewood*, Claire D. Vallotton and
Holly Brophy-Herb
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI USA
Despite numerous studies on parenting stress suggesting negative
influences on parent–child interactions and children’s develop-
ment, the majority of these studies focus on mothers’parenting
stress with little or no acknowledgement of fathers. Using data
from the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation
Project, this study examined (i) the effects of fathers’parenting
stress during toddlerhood on children’s language and cognitive
outcomes when children are 3 years old (ii) whether the effects of
fathers’parenting stress on children’s language and cognitive
development vary by child gender? Results from mixed linear
models showed fathers’parenting stress predicted children’s
lower cognitive scores, but there were no gender differences in
the effects of fathers’parenting stress on children’s cognitive
outcomes. In the language domain, boys, not girls, were found to
be more susceptible to the effects of fathers’parenting stress.
These findings indicated that fathers, in addition to mothers,
should be included in early parenting research and interventions.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Key words: parenting stress; fathers; father involvement; cognitive
development; language development; gender differences
The literature documenting the effects of parenting stress on children’s develop-
ment has focused mainly on associations between maternal parenting stress and
children’s social development or problem behaviour (Crnic & Low, 2002;
Deater-Deckard, 2004; Putnick et al., 2008). Changes in the family structure
and functioning, including increasing numbers of women in the workforce
and the changing roles of fathers in the family in Western cultures (American
*Correspondence to: Tamesha Harewood, Michigan State University, 552 W. Circle Dr.
Human Ecology, East Lansing MI 48824, USA. E-mail: harewoo1@msu.edu
Infant and Child Development
Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1984
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Psychological Association, 2011; Bianchi, 2000; Pancsofar & Vernon-Feagans,
2006), however, amplify the need to include fathers in child development re-
search (Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001). More specifically, the
change in fathers’roles to include more responsibilities traditionally borne by
mothers, and thus more time in caregiving activities and other interactions with
children, has raised questions about fathers’parenting-related stress, including
whether and how it may affect children’s outcomes (Mitchell & Cabrera,
2009). Because the early years of a child’s life are considered a sensitive period
for the development of skills which predict later development (Pancsofar &
Vernon-Feagans, 2006), it is important to examine how fathers’stress-related
interaction qualities with children during their early years affect development.
Emerging research on fathers’stress has focused on its effects on children’s
behavioural outcomes; to date, little is known about the effects of fathers’
stress-related interaction qualities with children on children’s cognitive and lan-
guage development. Further, because fathers are found to have more verbal and
physical interactions with their boys versus their girls during early childhood
(Parke, 1996; Frascarolo & Zaouche-Gaudron, 2003 cited in Rouyer, Frascarolo,
Zaouche-Gaudron, & Lavanchy, 2007; NICHD Early Child Care Research
Network, 2000; Manlove & Vernon-Feagans, 2002), there is a need to examine
the possibility of child gender differences in the effects of fathers’stress as well.
In particular, examining the moderating role of child gender in the effects of
fathers’stress on children’s, outcomes may elucidate whether the effects of
parenting stress are consistently strongest for boys regardless of parent gender.
Influence of Parenting Stress on Parenting Behaviour and Children’s Outcomes
Parenting stress is defined as a parentally perceived form of stress resulting from
the demands of being a parent (Abidin, 1995; Abidin, Jenkins, & McGaughey,
1992). Specifically, for this study, stress is defined as feelings of incompetence in
the parenting role as measured by the parent–child dysfunctional interaction scale
on the parenting stress index (PSI: Abidin, 1992). This type of stress may be
regulated by a number of factors including child temperament (Coplan, Bowker,
& Cooper, 2003; Lamb, 2004; Miller, 2000; Morales et al., 2000; Noel, Peterson, &
Jesso, 2008) and contextual factors such as poverty (Bendell, Stone, Field, &
Goldstein, 1989; McLoyd, 1998; Noel et al., 2008) and has been shown to influence
mothers’cognitions, parenting behaviour and affect (Gelfand, Teti, & Fox, 1992;
McBride, Shoppe, & Rane, 2002; Salley & Dixon, 2007).
Research with mothers suggests that higher levels of parental stress negatively
influence parents’responsiveness, warmth and view of their roles as parents,
which then lead to an inability to effectively and sensitively care for their children
(Abidin et al., 1992; Gelfand et al., 1992). For example, mothers parenting stress
scores were positively associated with intrusiveness, punitiveness and insensitiv-
ity, and negatively associated with responsiveness and cognitive stimulation
(Kang, 2006; Whiteside-Mansell et al., 2007). Further, parent–child interactions
are more often disrupted by influences external to the interaction when parenting
stress levels are high compared with low (Blankenhorn, 1995; Crnic, Greenberg,
Ragozin, Robinson, & Basham, 1983; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1997;
McCarty, Zimmerman, Digiuseppe, & Christakis, 2005; Molfese et al., 2010;
Whipple & Webster-Stratton, 1991), reducing opportunities for effective linguistic
and cognitive stimulation (Nievar & Luster, 2006). Farver and colleagues found
that mothers’higher levels of parenting stress predicted significantly lower
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language scores and poorer social functioning in their children (Farver, Xu, Eppe,
& Lonigan, 2006); these authors suggest that parenting stress dampens parents’
abilities to provide a supportive environment for children’s developing school
readiness skills. Overall, stress is shown to influence parents’feelings, perceptions
and responses to their children and to disrupt parent–child interactions, ultimately
affecting children’s developing skills (Costa, Weems, Pellerin, & Dalton, 2006;
Crnic et al., 1983). Because parenting stress can jeopardize the cognitive, social
and verbal processes necessary for language and cognitive development, low-
income children, who already face disadvantages in these domains (e.g. Ayoub
et al., 2009; Bradley, Corwyn, Burchinal, McAdoo, & García Coll, 2001; Hart &
Risley, 1992) may be further disadvantaged if their parents are stressed.
Influence of Parent–Child Interactions on Early Language and Cognitive
Development
Parenting stress may have a particularly detrimental influence on children’s devel-
opment during early childhood because of the primacy of caregiver–child interac-
tions in the development of early emotional, cognitive and language skills. During
infancy and toddlerhood, children’s language and cognitive skills develop rapidly
and continuously (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991) within con-
texts of social relationships and are heavily influenced by their environment –the
most relevant being adult–child interactions (Bates, 1976; Bruner, 1981; Locke,
2001; Tomasello, 1992; Vygotsky, 1962). Interaction theorists propose that children
need reciprocal interactions in order for language to develop (Bohannon &
Bonvillian, 2001). Hence, when parents are sensitive to children’s interest and thus
respond to children’s communication attempts by imitating, expanding on and
reinforcing those specific attempts, children are better able to associate verbal
symbols with their external referents (Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Baumwell, &
Damast, 1996, p.174). These early interactions foster children’s developing lan-
guage and cognitive skills, which provide a foundation for future learning and
academic success (Lucchese & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008). More specifically, it is the
quality of parent–child interactions that influences both language and cognitive
development. For example, Magill-Evans and Harrison (1999, 2001) found
mother–child interactions (e.g. more, rather than less, maternal responsiveness)
contributed to children’s higher cognitive and language scores at 12months of
age. Similarly, another study found children between 6 and 40 months old had
greater growth in language and cognitive skills when their mothers were more –
rather than less –approachable and flexible in their interactions (Landry, Smith,
Miller-Loncar, & Swank, 1997).
The limited research on children’s language development that has included fa-
thers has shown that fathers’quantity of talk, language complexity and diversity
of vocabulary did not differ from mothers, however, fathers used more language
that challenged children’s conversations (Rowe, Coker, & Pan, 2004) suggesting
that fathers may elicit more conversation and reasoning from children during in-
teractions. Although most parenting studies have focused mainly on mother–child
interactions, theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley,
& Roggman, 2007a) and emerging research (Cabrera, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda,
2007b; Duursma, Pan, & Raikes, 2008; Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000)
suggest that fathers play an important role in children’s language and cognitive
development. For instance, in a study by Pancsofar and Vernon-Feagans (2006),
fathers’language input significantly and uniquely contributed to children’s later
Paternal Stress Affects Boys’and Girls’Development 3
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expressive language development, while mothers’language contributed to chil-
dren’s receptive language in middle class Caucasian families. These findings
suggest that fathers may differentially influence children’s development, even
when accounting for mothers’influences on the same domains.
Unique influence of fathers on child development
Fathers are chronically understudied, leaving their roles in their children’s lives
little understood. The questions of how fathers’roles in their children’s lives, and
whether fathers’influences on children’s development, are similar to, unique from,
or even detectable in the light of mothers’influences are rarely addressed system-
atically. Particularly in Western cultures, where fathers’roles are less prescribed
than mothers’roles, and thus highly variable, it may be hard to detect consistent
effects of fathers on their children’s development (Cabrera et al., 2007a). However,
Cabrera et al. (2007a) provide a heuristic model for posing questions about the
changing roles of fathers in their children’s lives and the mechanisms and moder-
ators of their influences on children’s development, proposing that it may be easier
to detect effects for specific groups of children at specific child ages, where fathers’
roles may be more consistent. Thus, any study of fathers’involvement should
control or account for contextual features likely to influence both fathers’involve-
ment and children’s development, such as family demographics and mothers’
parenting or aspects of the parenting dyad relationship.
This model centres on father involvement, and the influences on children’s de-
velopment, taking into account family demographics, mothers’parenting and the
dyadic relationship. As proposed by Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine (1987),
father involvement can be considered in three dimensions: engagement, including
direct interactions with young children; availability, which is fathers’presence in
children’s lives and accessibility to the child; and responsibility, or the resources fa-
thers’provide in terms of both material and time and effort. The model suggests
that father involvement is influenced by fathers’own characteristics, children’s
characteristics (e.g. age, gender, temperament and abilities), mothers’characteris-
tics and family dynamics, and community context (Cabrera et al., 2007a). In the
current study, we examine the specific population of young children and fathers
in low-income families, examining the possibility that a fathers’characteristic
(parenting-related stress), as measured by fathers’perceptions of its manifestation
in father–child interactions (parent–child dysfunctional interaction), affects chil-
dren’s early cognitive and language skills, accounting for effects of mothers’
parenting-related stress. Further, we examine a child characteristic –gender –as
a moderator of the effect of fathers’parenting stress on children’s development.
Although research on fathers is sparse compared with research on mothers’
parenting stress and children’s development, there is some empirical support of
the expectation that fathers’parenting stress may exert an independent influence
once accounting for mothers’stress, and that these effects may vary by child
gender. In addition to the preponderance of research consistently indicating the
impacts of the quality of mother–child interaction on children’s language and
cognitive skills, an emerging body of literature provides evidence that the quality
of father–child interactions affects children’s development as well (Cabrera et al.,
2004; Tamis-LeMonda & Cabrera, 2002). In a study by Pancsofar and Vernon-
Feagans (2006), fathers’, but not mothers’, vocabulary measured during triadic free
play sessions when children were 24 months old significantly predicted children’s
later expressive language development at 36 months, beyond the effects of fathers’
and mothers’education and the quality of child care children experienced out of
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the home. Another study revealed positive relations between fathers’supportive-
ness during father–child interactions and children’s language and cognitive
outcomes at 24 and 36 months of age; further, findings indicated a negative
relationship between fathers’intrusiveness and children’s PPVT (language) scores
at 4 years old (Cabrera, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007b). Other studies have
also found direct relationships between fathers’engagement and children’s
linguistic, literacy and cognitive abilities (e.g. Conner, Knight, & Cross, 1997;
Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984; Perlmann & Gleason, 1993). Thus, focusing solely
on maternal influences on children’s development impedes a comprehensive
understanding of parental influences on children’s language and cognitive
development. It is of vital importance to also examine the influence of paternal
characteristics on children’s language and cognitive development, such as the
effects of fathers’parenting stress on children’s early development.
Moderating Role of Child Gender
Studies have found evidence for gender differences in how children respond to
disruptive events in the home, showing boys, compared with girls, to be less toler-
ant of stress and more vulnerable to its effects as early as conception (Davis &
Emory, 1995; Hansen, Moller, & Olsen, 1999; Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1979). Further,
infant boys have been found to be more emotionally reactive to aversive stimuli
than girls and often demand greater parental contact (Tronick & Weinberg,
1997). Because infant boys are seemingly more vulnerable than girls to the effects
of stress, it is likely that parenting will have a greater influence on boys’outcomes
than girls’. For example, a study examining the effects of mothers’parenting stress
on boys’and girls’language and cognitive outcomes found stronger effects of
mothers’stress on boys’language development than girls, but this was only true
using the Bayley MDI; other measures of cognitive development showed no
gender differences (Coon, 2007). Vallotton et al. (2012) also found negative effects
of mothers’parenting stress on both boys’and girls’language outcomes, but the
effects of an intervention aimed to prepare low-income children for school and
provide support to parents, showed children’s language outcomes varied by child
gender –the intervention protected boys’but not girls’language development
from the deleterious effects of maternal parenting stress. Further, studies
examining other types of stress, as well as depression –often highly correlated
with stress –have found differential associations with boys’and girls’outcomes.
For example, chronically depressed mothers were shown to have boys with lower
cognitive scores than boys of mothers with mild to no depression, while girls’cog-
nitive scores were not affected by mothers’depression (Kurstjens & Wolke, 2001).
Together, these studies provide evidence of the moderating effects of gender on
associations between parental influences and child outcomes; however, differences in
effects on boys’and girls’outcomes are often small and the results inconsistent, likely
due to the use of different methodological approaches.Further,onceagain,thisbody
of research has mainly focused on mothers’influences. More inclusive research could
offer direction to interventionists seeking to support fathers in their parenting roles.
Associations between Child Temperament and Parenting Stress
Associations between father–child interaction and children’s outcomes may also be
explained by children’s own contributions to their development (Tamis-LeMonda
& Cabrera, 1999), including temperament (Lamb, 2004; Power, 1981). Difficult child
Paternal Stress Affects Boys’and Girls’Development 5
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
temperament has been associated with higher levels of parenting stress (Coplan
et al., 2003; McBride et al., 2002) and is predictive of children’s cognitive and lan-
guage outcomes (Miller, 2000; Morales et al., 2000; Noel et al., 2008). For example,
Coplan et al. (2003) found that mothers reporting higher levels of parental stress
tended to have children with ‘difficult’temperament; further, higher levels of par-
enting stress affected children’s temperament, indicating a bidirectional relation-
ship between parenting stress and children’s temperament (Coplan et al., 2003).
Temperament has also been associated with children’s language and cognitive
outcomes. For instance, Morales and colleagues found dimensions of temperament
including soothability and sociability were related to children’s receptive vocabu-
lary. Salley and Dixon (2007) found that two qualities of children’s temperament
–negative affect and low executive control –were negatively associated with
their receptive vocabulary and joint attention around 2 years old. Thus, when
examining the relationship between parenting stress and child language and
cognitive outcomes, it is necessary to account for child temperament.
Current Study
The studies reviewed earlier show a consistent link between mothers’parenting
stress and children’s outcomes across domains. However, the ‘heuristic model of
dynamic influence of the dynamic of paternal behaviour and influence on children
over time’(Cabrera et al., 2007a) and a small set of empirical studies provide
support for the idea that as fathers’caregiving responsibilities become more
widespread, their own parenting-related stress may increase, which may disrupt
father–child interactions and ultimately affect children’s cognitive and language
development, independently of mothers or possibly through its effects on mothers’
stress. Further, because children’s own characteristics (e.g. gender) may influence
both fathers’involvement (Cabrera et al., 2007a), and children’s responses to
variation in fathers’involvement, it may be important to examine child gender
as a moderator of the influence of fathers’parenting stress.
Therefore, the current study examines the effects of fathers’parenting stress on
children’s language and cognitive outcomes in a low-income sample, controlling
for the effects of mothers’parenting stress and child temperament, and tests
whether child gender moderates these relationships. This study addresses the
following research questions:
1. Does fathers’parenting stress during toddlerhood negatively affect their
children’s language and cognitive outcomes when children are 3 years old?
2. Do the effects of fathers’parenting stress on children’s language and cogni-
tive development vary by child gender?
METHOD
Dataset
The current study uses data that were collected as part of the Early Head Start
Research and Evaluation (EHSRE) study and the supplemental father study. The
EHSRE is a longitudinal evaluation study of the Early Head Start (EHS) pro-
gramme involving 17 EHS sites across the USA that were among the first federally
funded EHS programmes serving low-income infants and toddlers and their
families (ACF, 2002; Love et al., 2005). Families who met income eligibility for
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EHS were randomly selected for the intervention group, which was offered EHS
services, or the comparison group not offered these services. In a supplemental
study focused on fathers, trained personnel interviewed fathers from 12 of the 17
EHS sites when target children were 24 and 36 months old. Father–child interac-
tions were also videotaped at seven of the 12 sites, during a separate visit from
the data collection with mothers.
Participants
Eight hundred and three fathers were interviewed when children were 24 months,
and 91% (n= 732) of these fathers completed the PSI at this wave. Fathers ’reported
a mean age of 26.8 (SD = 7.7) at the time of the child’s birth. Over 80% of fathers
were the biological fathers of the target child in the study
1
; 70.6% (n= 566) of
fathers completed 12 years or less of school. Mothers from these families reported
a mean age of 22.8 (SD) at the time of the child’s birth, and 69% had 12 years or less
of schooling.
2
Procedures
Data were collected from families over four waves including a baseline measure
when children were younger than 12 months, Wave 1 when children were around
14 months, Wave 2 at 24 months and Wave 3 at 36 months; data collectio n visits
took place in families’homes. Information on family background was collected
at the baseline wave; information about child characteristics (e.g. temperament
and gender) was collected at Wave 1. Mothers’stress, mother–child interaction
qualities and child development (language and cognition) were measured at
Waves 1 to 3; fathers’stress and father–child interaction qualities were measured
at Waves 2 and 3 during a separate visit for those fathers in the supplemental
father study.
Measures
Parenting stress
The parenting stress index-short form (Abidin, 1995) is a parent self-report
questionnaire consisting of 36 items developed to identify dysfunctions in the
parent–child relationship. It is composed of three subscales: parent–child dysfunc-
tional interactions (PCDI), parent distress (PD) and difficult child (DC). Each scale
consists of 12 questions mostly requiring answers on a scale of 1 (Strongly Agree)
to 5 (Strongly Disagree), and a midpoint of 3 (Not Sure). In the EHSRE, parenting
stress was measured using only the PCDI and the PD scales. The current study
uses the PCDI because this scale captures fathers’feelings about their children’s
qualities compared with other children, which may affect father–child interactions
–a central aspect of father engagement. The PCDI focuses on stress-related parent–
child interactions (sample items include: ‘My child rarely does things for me that
make me feel good’;‘When I do things for my child, I get the feeling that my
efforts are not appreciated very much’;‘Sometimes I feel my child doesn’t like
me and doesn’t want to be close to me’.), whereas the PD is more of an internal
parenting characteristic very akin to depression (sample items include: ‘I often
have feelings that I cannot handle things very well’;‘I feel trapped by my respon-
sibilities as a parent’;‘There are quite a few things about my life that bother me’).
The long form of the PSI was normed for mothers, not specifically for fathers
Paternal Stress Affects Boys’and Girls’Development 7
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
(Abidin, 1995). However, McKelvey et al. (2009) showed that the short form of the
PSI used in the current study has internal reliability for low-income fathers (the
current study sample), and that the items in the subscales load onto the expected
factors (McKelvey et al., 2009). The Cronbach’s alpha for the original sample of
parents with whom this scale was normed was .80 for this scale. In the current
sample, the alpha for the PCDI subscale is .71 (McKelvey et al., 2009). Descriptive
statistics for the PCDI are presented in Table 1.
Child cognitive development
The Bayley mental development index (MDI; BSID-II, Bayley, 1993) was used to
assess the cognitive functioning of participating children at each wave. The Bayley
MDI is a norm-referenced test in which scores of 100 are reflective of the average
child at each age, and deviations of 16 points represent either significantly delayed
or advanced development. The test is administered by a trained examiner and was
administered in the EHSRE when children were 14, 24 and 36 months on average.
Only the 24- and 36-months scores were used for this study. See Table 1 for
descriptive statistics for the Bayley MDI cognitive scores at each wave.
Child language development
The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition (PPVT-III, Dunn & Dunn,
1997) was used to test children’s receptive language at 36 months of age. The PPVT
is an orally administered test in which the examiner shows the participant four
numbered pictures and states a word. The participant then selects the picture that
the stated word best describes by pointing to the picture or saying the number that
corresponds with the picture. A participant’s ceiling, and end of the test, is
determined when the participant has made eight or more errors in a given set of
12 items. In the EHSRE sample, the Cronbach’s alpha for the PPVT-III was .93
for both forms, and test–retest correlation coefficients for ages 21/2 to 5 years were
.92 for both forms (Kisker et al., 2003).
Because the PPVT is only measured at 36months in the EHSRE, the McArthur
Communicative Development Inventory (CDI: Fenson et al., 1993) vocabulary
production subscale was used as the measure of 24-month language, which
we control in the current study. The McArthur CDI words and sentences short
form uses a 100-word checklist to assess the vocabulary production of children
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for independent and dependent variables
Variable nMin Max Mean SD
Risk 671 0 1 .349 .25
Income 616 0 85 000 10 633.27 8990.24
Temperament 685 1 5 2.89 .94
Gender 730 11.025 1.00
24-month cognitive score (Bayley MDI) 608 49 134 90.10 14.25
24-month language Score (MacArthur CDI) 696 0 100 54.84 23.67
24-month mother PCDI 713 12 51 17.02 5.48
24-month father PCDI 730 11 52 15.21 5.05
36-month cognitive score (Bayley MDI) 556 49 134 91.20 13.35
36-month language score (PPVT) 512 40 125 85.21 16.45
PCDI, parent–child dysfunctional interactions; MDI, mental development index; CDI, communicative
development inventory; PPVT, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.
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16–30 months old as reported by parents. The Cronbach’s alpha for Word/Sentences
Vocabulary Production was .99 (Kisker et al., 2003).
Gender
Child gender is effect coded as girl = 1, boy = 1; this way, we can interpret the
intercept of each analysis as the average across both boys and girls.
Control variables
Based on the heuristic model guiding formation of our hypotheses, we con-
trolled for two factors that could influence both fathers’stress and engagement,
and children’s outcomes: child temperament and family risk.
Temperament. Child temperament was measured using the emotionality, activity,
sociability, impulsivity (EASI; Buss & Plomin, 1975) temperament survey. EASI is a
parental report instrument, which assesses four categories of temperament. The
current study uses the emotionality scale, which measures traits of fear, anger and
general distress. Items on each scale range from 1 (not very typical of your child) to
5 (very typical of your child) with an average of five items for the subscale.
Cumulative parent risk. The cumulative risk variable reflects six dichotomously
scored indicators of risk, representing the presence/absence of each of the
following risk factors for mothers and for fathers: low education (less than high
school diploma), teen parent (younger than 20 years at birth of child) and
unemployment. These six risk variables were averaged to create a cumulative risk
variable that ranged from 0 (no risks) to 1 (all measured risks); this variable was
calculated for all families who had data on at least five of the indicators.
ANALYSES AND RESULTS
We used a series of mixed linear models in SPSS to test the effects of fathers’parent-
ing stress on each of the two outcomes, nesting children within EHS sites to
account for site-level variance. Using each child development outcome (language
or cognitive skills) at 36 months as the dependent variables, and the 24-month
equivalent variable as a control, we modelled residualized change in children’s
development from 24 to 36 months of age; that is, by controlling for children’s
24-month scores, we examine the effects of predictors on change between 24 and
36 months in children’s outcomes. We first fit a baseline model with child gender
and the control variables, including cumulative risk, temperament, income, prior
language or cognitive score and mothers’parenting stress (PCDI score). We then
added the predictor –fathers’stress (PCDI score) at 24 months –to test the main
effect of fathers’stress during toddlerhood on children’s developmental outcomes
at the transition to pre-Kindergarten (36 months). To determine whether effects of
parenting stress were moderated by gender, we added two-way interactions
between child gender and fathers’parenting stress.
Post Hoc Analysis
There were no significant differences in mean levels of PCDI at 24 months for fa-
thers of girls (m= 15.161, SD = 5.547) compared with fathers of boys (m= 15.257;
SD = 4.544).
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
Cognitive Skills
As seen in Model A of Table 2, fathers’parenting stress related to dysfunctional in-
teractions with their children (PCDI score) at 2 years old had a small negative effect
on children’s cognitive scores at 3 years (β=1.1423, p<.05; effect size = 0.09),
when accounting for children’s cognitive scores at 2 years old. There was no inter-
action between child gender and fathers’parenting stress (Model B), indicating
that fathers’parenting stress is similarly detrimental to the development of both
boys’and girls’cognitive skills throughout the third year of life. Also of interest
in Model A is the finding that there was no main effect of child gender on
children’s cognitive scores at 3 years old with all of the controls in the model. This
may be because any such gender difference existed already at 2 years old and was
thus accounted for in the 24-month cognitive score. Mothers’PCDI score at
24 months did not have a significant effect on children’s cognitive skills at
36 months in either model.
Language Skills
As seen in Model C of Table 2, girls scored significantly higher than boys on lan-
guage at 3 years (β= 2.146, p<.05; effect size = 0.26). There was no main effect of
fathers’PCDI score on children’s language outcomes at 3 years old. Further, as
seen in Model D, and depicted in Figure 1, there was a significant interaction be-
tween fathers’PCDI at 24 months and child gender, indicating that fathers’parent-
ing stress when children were 2 years negatively affected boys’, but not girls’,
language scores at 3 years old (β= 1.635, p<.05; effect size = 0.33).
DISCUSSION
The current study used a large dataset of low-income toddlers and their fathers
and mothers to identify effects of fathers’parenting-related stress –a father char-
acteristic which could affect engagement, one of three important aspects of father
involvement (Lamb et al., 1987) –on children’s cognitive and language develop-
ment. In order to account for the important aspects of fathers’context which
may influence both fathers’engagement and children’s development (Cabrera
et al., 2007a), we controlled for family demographic risks and mothers’parenting
stress. We found that fathers’parenting stress when children were 2 years old af-
fected children’s cognitive development at 3 years old, even after accounting for
earlier cognitive development at 2 years. Further, we found that fathers’parenting
stress at 2 years negatively affected boys’but not girls’language development at
3 years.
Effects of Fathers’Parenting Stress on Children’s Cognitive Skills
Fathers’parenting stress at 2 years affected boys’and girls’cognitive development
over the following year in the same way. Interestingly, fathers’, but not mothers’,
parenting stress at 2 years predicted 3-year old children’s cognitive skills. Results
from this study partially support and extend previous research indicating
mothers’parenting stress predicts the cognitive and language outcomes of very
young children (Coon, 2007) as well as adolescents (Nievar & Luster, 2006). Previ-
ous work by Coon examined only mothers’stress, finding associations with
children’s development, but did not include fathers’parenting-related stress;
10 T. Harewood et al.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
Table 2. Fathers’24-month parenting stress effects on children’s 36-month language and cognitive scores
Fixed effects
Cognition Language
Model A Model B Model C Model D
Constant 91.8545 (1.2261) 92.0518 (1.2316) 83.5775 (1.6768) 83.4915 (1.6847)
Risk composite 2.6099 (2.2952) 2.9482 (2.3011) 3.2310*** (0.7316) 3.1118*** (0.7300)
Income 0.0526 (0.5110) 0.0025 (0.5112) 0.5599 (0.6435) 0.6657 (0.6422)
Temperament 0.8466 (0.5593) 0.8404 (0.5582) 0.1674 (0.7704) 0.1996 (0.7666)
Prior outcome 7.1009** (0.5624) 7.1729*** (0.5632) 4.4936*** (0.7414) 4.5011*** (0.7377)
Gender (Girl = 1, Boy = 1) 0.0319 (0.5245) 0.0923 (0.5295) 2.1460** (0.6991) 2.2111** (0.6962)
Mom 24-month PCDI 0.4669 (0.5936) 0.5450 (0.5946) 2.8191*** (0.7674) 2.6598*** 0.7670
Dad 24-month PCDI 1.1423* (0.5659) 0.7515 (0.6181) 0.5777 (0.7797) 1.0871 (0.8112)
Dad PCDI × gender 0.9445 (0.6068) 1.6359* 0.7622
Variance components
Within-site 96.5602*** 96.1688*** 173.2751*** 171.4957***
Between-site 5.6486 5.6605 24.0307 24.3727
Model fit
-2LL 2713.4 2710.1 2988.2 2982.4
~p<.10. *p<.05. **p<.01. ***p<.001.
Paternal Stress Affects Boys’and Girls’Development 11
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
whereas the current study showed that fathers’, but not mothers’, stress influenced
their toddlers’cognitive development. This discrepancy may be attributed to
differences between studies regarding when parenting stress was measured, that
is, at 14 months in the Coon study versus 24 months in the current study. It could
be that mothers, who typically assume the responsibility of primary caregiving,
particularly in the first year of life, exert more influence within the first 2 years,
which in our study would have been accounted for when we controlled for the
children’s cognitive skills at 2 years. On the other hand, consistent with the idea
that father involvement is more variable and changes over the life course of the
father–child relationship (Cabrera et al., 2007a), fathers may become more in-
volved with child rearing as children develop through toddlerhood (Cabrera
et al., 2007b); thus fathers’parenting characteristics may have a greater impact
when children are in their third year of life compared with the first 1 or 2 years.
An alternate interpretation is that there is a strong positive association between
fathers’and mothers’parenting stress in the current study which acted to suppress
the effects of mothers’stress in the current analyses, whereas because fathers’
stress was not accounted for in Coon’s (2007) study, it may have appeared that
mothers’stress was driving the effect on children’s cognitive development.
Effects of Fathers’Parenting Stress on Children’s Language Skills
At 3 years, girls’language skills were higher than boys’, which is consistent with
previous literature on early language development, and with previous studies
with the larger EHSRE sample (e.g. Ayoub, Vallotton, & Mastergeorge, 2011;
Raikes, Robinson, Bradley, Raikes, & Ayoub, 2007). Most importantly, higher
levels of fathers’parenting stress when children were 2 years old negatively
affected boys’but not girls’language skills at 3 years old when accounting for
child language skills at 2 years. This is consistent with prior studies showing that
boys are more vulnerable to maternal parenting characteristics than are girls and
indicates that this is an effect of child gender, rather than an effect of the combina-
tion of child and parent gender. For example, Davis and Emory (1995) found that
boys were more vulnerable to stress in the family than were girls. Further, Coon
Figure 1. Effects of fathers’parenting stress when children are 2 years old on boys’and
girls’language at 3 years old.
12 T. Harewood et al.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
(2007) found that mothers’stress was more detrimental to boys’than to girls’
language development, and Kurstjens and Wolke (2001) found that maternal
depression had a bigger effect on boys’than on girls’cognitive scores. Future
studies should examine the effects of fathers’and mothers’parenting stress on
young children’s social-emotional development in early childhood to see whether
the vulnerability of boys’to their fathers’parenting stress persists across domains,
or whether in the social-emotional domain it is girls who are more vulnerable to
fathers’stress.
A likely mechanism by which fathers’parenting stress affects their children’s
language development is by eroding the quality of fathers’language use during
father–child interactions. One possibility for the differential effects of fathers’stress
on boys’and girls’language is that fathers interact more often, both verbally and
physically, with their boys than with their girls from early infancy (Frascarolo &
Zaouche-Gaudron, 2003 cited in Rouyer et al., 2007; Manlove & Vernon-Feagans,
2002; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000; Parke, 1996; Rouyer
et al., 2007), thus fathers’stress-ridden interactions with boys likely occur more
frequently and have a greater influence on boys’developing language than on that
of girls. Another possibility for the gender difference is that girls elicit more lan-
guage from their fathers despite fathers’stress. This may be because toddler girls
already have advanced language and social skills compared with toddler boys
(e.g. Vallotton & Ayoub, 2011), and these greater communication skills also help
them engage their parents more in interactions (Vallotton & Ayoub, 2011). An
alternate explanation for these findings is that children’s language skills are
influencing fathers’parenting stress related to their interactions with their chil-
dren. Thus, gender differences could be attributed to one of the following non-
mutually exclusive possibilities: (a) girls tend to have higher language skills and
thus do not evoke the same stress in their fathers, or (b) girls have other ways of
interacting with fathers to promote positive interactions despite lower language
skills. It would be informative to investigate these possible explanations, as well
as the mediating role of fathers’own language during interactions with children,
through a combination of micro-analytic analyses of the language qualities of
father–child interactions and interviews with fathers of children with more and
less advanced language skills.
Limitations and Future Direction
The current study contributes to the existing literature by providing evidence that
fathers’parenting stress related to their interactions with children affects young
children’s cognitive and language development, even when accounting for family
demographic risks and mothers’parenting-related stress. These results are partic-
ularly striking given that a portion of fathers in the current sample did not reside
with their children, and thus likely had variable involvement in their children’s
lives. The current study focused on the engagement dimension of father involve-
ment (quality of interactions with children), but it would be informative to
examine these and related findings in light of the availability dimension of father
involvement (Lamb et al., 1987). A related limitation of this study is that our
analysis is limited to fathers’perceptions of their stress related to interactions with
children, rather than objective observations of the qualities of these interactions.
Future studies should examine the qualities of father–child interactions using
observational methods to confirm these effects and to explore whether these
interaction qualities are mediators of the effects of fathers’parenting stress on
Paternal Stress Affects Boys’and Girls’Development 13
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
children’s development. In particular, because fathers’stress had bigger effects on
boys’language development than girls’, it would be useful to examine the ways
that fathers’stress is related to the qualities of their language during father–child
interactions, whether these qualities vary depending on child gender, and whether
the effects of father stress on father language differ for boys and girls or for those
children with higher and lower language skills.
Another limitation is related to the measurement of parenting stress used in the
current study. Although the short form of the PSI, originally designed for mothers,
is reliable for this group of fathers (McKelvey et al., 2009), McKelvey and
colleagues’results indicate that a five-factor model of the same short-form PSI
items is a better fit for the structure of fathers’parenting-related stress, including
factors for general distress (not related to parenting), parenting demands distress,
parent self-rating (i.e. self-efficacy), dyadic interaction and perception of child.
These results are generally consistent with, but slightly different than, the five
factors identified for mothers using this same collection of items (Whiteside-
Mansell et al., 2007). Thus, while these results indicate that fathers’stress can be
measured using the same tool as mothers’stress, it also indicates that there may
be more specific configurations of parents’stress for both mothers and fathers.
Future studies should more carefully examine the nature of fathers’parenting-
related stress to discover whether it is, in essence, comparable with mothers, or
structurally distinct.
Although mothers’parenting stress was included in our models primarily as
a control, it is interesting to note that mothers’stress when children were
24 months affected children’s language but not their cognitive scores. This could
be because of the differential timing of these skills as measured by the assess-
ments used in the current study. It could be that mothers’stress earlier in devel-
opment affects children’s cognitive skills by 24 months, an affect that stays
steady across the third year of life; thus controlling for children’s cognitive skills
at 24 months could also account for mothers’influence. On the other hand, the
rapid growth in language skills and high degree of individual variability
between 2 and 3 years may indicate a sensitive period in which mothers’stress
may have a new effect on children’s language skills. Future studies should
examine child age differences in the effects of mothers’time-varying parenting
stress on different domains of children’s development, possibly in relation
to the rapidity and variability (indicating a sensitive period) in that domain
over time.
CONCLUSION
The findings of the current study indicate small to moderate effects of fathers’
parenting-related stress on toddlers’cognitive and language development from
the second to third year of life, and specific detrimental effects on boys’language
development, over and above the effects of mothers’parenting stress and cumula-
tive risks on children’s outcomes. Despite that the majority of the fathers in the
current study were not identified as primary caregivers of their children, their
parenting-related stress still had significant and meaningful effects on their
children’s development. The strength of these findings, while accounting for
concurrent maternal parenting stress, indicate that fathers’effects on their chil-
dren’s development are not just those that are mediated by maternal parenting
qualities. Instead, fathers have direct effects on their children’s development. Early
interventions designed to address the effects of family risks such as poverty,
14 T. Harewood et al.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
unemployment and low education should include both fathers and mothers in
their efforts, and address both parents’stress related to parenting so that fathers
can better support their children’s healthy development.
Note
1. The majority of fathers (65%) were residential biological fathers; 16% were res-
ident non-biological fathers; 16% were biological non-resident fathers; and 3%
were ‘other’. Preliminary analyses revealed no differences between these father
categories in key predictor variables, nor in effects of father stress on children’s
development. Thus, all fathers were analyzed together regardless of status.
2. Mothers in this sample did not differ from the entire EHSRE sample of mothers
on education and PDCI scores at 24 months but reported significantly higher
household incomes than those in the entire EHRSE sample.
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