Coparenting, a multi-dimensional construct where parents raise their children as a parenting alliance, commonly includes supportive (positive) and undermining (negative) coparenting behaviors. The former is defined as the agreement and supportiveness in parenting goals and behaviors, whereas the latter is referred to the disagreement, conflict, and disparagement in parenting. The ecological context of the coparenting framework emphasizes coparenting as an important moderator in family interaction. The fathering vulnerability hypothesis suggests that paternal parenting behaviors are more vulnerable to risk factors than maternal behaviors. However, prior studies have been largely focused on negative factors and rated fathers' and mothers' coparenting relationships as a whole, or averaged their coparenting behaviors to provide a single overall index. Given that fathers and mothers have unique roles in the family, this study compares the moderating effect of the partner's positive and negative coparenting behaviors on the link between parenting stress and parental involvement between fathers and mothers.
Families (N = 1554) from different regions of China participated in the study, including both fathers (Mage = 44.21 ± 4.76 years old) and mothers (Mage = 42.17 ± 4.37 years old). Each family had at least one adolescent child aged between 10 and 19 years old (Mage = 14.15 ± 2.45 years old, 52.1% males). Fathers and mothers separately reported their parenting stress via the Chinese Version of Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, coparenting behaviors via the Chinese Version of Co-Parenting Scale, and parental involvement via the Father/Mother Involvement Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis in SPSS 21.0 and moderation analysis in Mplus 7.4. A simple-slope analysis was used to determine the moderating effects of coparenting behaviors on the association between parenting stress and parental involvement.
Results showed that fathers' subjective socioeconomic status was significantly related to their involvement, and mothers' education level was significantly related to their involvement. After controlling parental education level and subjective socioeconomic status, fathers' parenting stress was negatively associated with their own involvement (βfather = -.18, p < .001) but not with mothers' involvement. Similarly, mothers' parenting stress was negatively associated with their own involvement (βmother = -.20, p < .001) but not with fathers' involvement. Additionally, the relation between fathers' parenting stress and involvement was moderated by mothers' negative but not positive coparenting behaviors (β = .10, p < .001; β = -.04, p = .076). By contrast, the relation between mothers' parenting stress and involvement was moderated by fathers' positive but not negative coparenting behaviors (β = -.05, p < .05; β = -.01, p > .05). Specifically, compared with mothers' high-level negative coparenting behaviors, their low-level negative coparenting behaviors accelerated fathers' involvement; compared with fathers' low-level positive coparenting behaviors, their high-level positive coparenting behaviors accelerated mothers' involvement.
This study found that mothering was susceptible to paternal positive parenting behaviors, whereas fathering was susceptible to maternal negative parenting behaviors. These results extend the fathering vulnerability hypothesis to the parenting susceptibility model. Parenting susceptibility suggests an integrative model to include fathers and mothers, as well as their positive and negative factors to better understand the differences between fathering and mothering. Moreover, the differences and interactions between fathers and mothers indicate the importance of rating their parenting behaviors separately and investigating them in the same model. Furthermore, this study provides significant implications for intervention programs on enhancing parenting behaviors. Programs on improving paternal involvement should particularly consider maternal negative coparenting behaviors, and that on improving maternal involvement should particularly consider paternal positive coparenting behaviors.
Key words
parenting stress /
parental involvement /
coparenting /
adolescence /
parent gender difference
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