TY - JOUR
T1 - Pathways from Father Engagement during Infancy to Child Aggression in Late Childhood
AU - Wang, Xiafei
AU - Wu, Qiong
AU - Yoon, Susan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - Child aggression and its dire consequences cause social problems. Informed by family systems theory and parenting stress theory, this study specifically examined the mediating pathways from father engagement to child aggression through maternal parenting stress, child resistant attachment, and maternal physical abuse. We conducted a secondary data analysis on 2016 mother–child dyads from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study by building structural equation models. We found indirect effects of father engagement on child aggression through influencing mothers’ parenting stress. Children’s attachment and mothers’ physical abuse mediated the effects of mothers’ stress on child behavior-based aggression and verbal- and mood-based aggression. Interventions should target fostering fathers’ engagement, alleviating mothers’ parenting stress and changing mothers’ abusive parenting, and improving mother–child attachment.
AB - Child aggression and its dire consequences cause social problems. Informed by family systems theory and parenting stress theory, this study specifically examined the mediating pathways from father engagement to child aggression through maternal parenting stress, child resistant attachment, and maternal physical abuse. We conducted a secondary data analysis on 2016 mother–child dyads from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study by building structural equation models. We found indirect effects of father engagement on child aggression through influencing mothers’ parenting stress. Children’s attachment and mothers’ physical abuse mediated the effects of mothers’ stress on child behavior-based aggression and verbal- and mood-based aggression. Interventions should target fostering fathers’ engagement, alleviating mothers’ parenting stress and changing mothers’ abusive parenting, and improving mother–child attachment.
KW - Child aggression
KW - Father engagement
KW - Maternal parenting stress
KW - Maternal physical abuse
KW - Resistant attachment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061203849&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10578-018-00866-1
DO - 10.1007/s10578-018-00866-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 30719602
AN - SCOPUS:85061203849
SN - 0009-398X
VL - 50
SP - 605
EP - 617
JO - Child Psychiatry and Human Development
JF - Child Psychiatry and Human Development
IS - 4
ER -