MATERNAL REPORTS OF CHILD-BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS AND PERSONAL DISTRESS AS PREDICTORS OF DYSFUNCTIONAL PARENTING

A community sample of 96 mother-child dyads participated in a study ev aluating the extent to which directly observed differences in maternal parenting behavior could be predicted on the basis of both global and proximal maternal reports of child behavior problems and personal dis tress. To allow for simultaneous testing of a set of relations and mak e tentative causal inferences, a structural equation modeling approach was used. When the analysis was conducted on the entire sample, resul ts indicated that global and to a lesser extent proximal measures of c hild behavior problems and personal distress made modest contributions to dysfunctional parenting, with neither child behavior problems or p ersonal distress playing a more important role than the other. When th e sample was divided into low (n = 54) and high (n = 42) socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) families, a different picture emerged. In low disa dvantage families, parenting was most strongly predicted by mothers' p roximal reports of their children's behavior; whereas in high disadvan tage families, parenting was best predicted by mothers' proximal repor ts of their own personal distress. Results are interpreted in light of Wahler and Dumas' (1989) attentional hypothesis. It suggests that mot hers who do not experience chronic sources of distress (such as SED) a ttend and respond to their children's behavior in a fairly accurate an d consistent manner, but that mothers who experience chronic distress are unable to attend effectively to their children, responding to them often in light of the many stressors to which they are exposed, rathe r than in light of the children's actual behavior.