Impact of parental internal attributions on negative disciplinary choices, and the moderation of child gender.

Abstract

Background. There is ample evidence that parents react differently to misbehavior of sons and daughters. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying this different treatment. Goal. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between parental internal attributions about disobedient behavior and the negative discipline of children, and whether this association was different for boys and girls. Method. Data was retrieved from 241 American parents with a child between the ages of 5 and 7. For this study, participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Parents completed an online survey in Qualtrics. Parents reported their internal attributions and negative discipline in five misbehavior scenarios, where parents had to depicture their own child. Results. Results from the regression analysis suggested that parental internal attributions for disobedient behavior of their child is related to more negative discipline by parents when their child is disobedient. In addition, the interaction term was added to see if the relationship between internal parental attributions of disobedient behavior and negative discipline was different for boys and girls. The sex of the child as a moderator did not appear to significantly influence this relationship. Conclusion. In sum, internal parental attributions play an important role in negative discipline. Thus, these internal attributions seem to underlie the way parents respond to disobedient behavior by their children. This signals key features to explore different types and underlying emotions to further explain how and why parents describe their child´s disobedient behavior to different causes. One may conclude that it is important to make parents aware of this attribution process to guide more similar treatment of children.