Developmental and interpersonal antecedents of parenting orientations and behavior: A life history perspective

生活中很少有事情能与养育孩子的重要性相提并论。与大多数物种相比，人类在孩子身上投入了大量资金，但一些父母对孩子漠不关心，甚至怀有敌意。这个项目调查了为什么某些父母倾向于在孩子身上投入更多的时间、精力、注意力、支持和资源。目前人们对以下问题知之甚少：(A)什么样的早期生活事件/经历会导致个人在成年后成为更多的父母而不是更少的父母，以及(B)父母的投资如何受到与伴侣关系质量的影响。此外，父亲在育儿过程中扮演的角色一直没有得到充分的研究，人们对父母如何根据孩子的早年经历或他们的关系质量共同养育孩子的了解相对较少。这项研究致力于解决这些问题，旨在填补在对育儿实践和行为的知识和理解方面的这些严重差距。在研究1中，新的编码和分析将在一个独特的纵向样本上进行，该样本具有关于育儿结果的寿命数据(明尼苏达州风险和适应纵向研究；MLSRA)。这个样本中的参与者从出生前一直被跟踪到中年。MLSRA有很好的衡量标准，衡量个人是如何被当作儿童对待的，他们在整个发展过程中发生了什么，以及他们在多年后成年后是如何养育自己的孩子的。这项研究将考察某些早期生活经历(例如，生活压力的大小、虐待的发生)如何前瞻性地预测父母对在孩子身上投入时间、精力和资源的看法，以及他们在与孩子互动时的实际行为(基于视频记录)。研究2是一项新的关于父母养育行为的实验室研究，涉及母亲、父亲和他们的第一个孩子。这项研究涉及参与育儿任务的母亲、父亲和他们蹒跚学步的孩子，这项研究将：(A)检查某些类型的感知早期压力是否与家庭环境中的父母态度和行为有关，(B)调查伴侣的关系质量是否缓冲了早期压力的暴露，(C)确定某些类型的感知早期压力是否与父亲和母亲的内隐(或外显)育儿态度有关，以及(D)确定内隐育儿态度是否在早期压力与父母态度和行为之间的关系中起中介作用。

Few events in life rival the importance of raising children. Compared to most species, humans invest heavily in their children, but some parents are neglectful, indifferent, or even hostile toward their children. This project examines why certain parents tend to invest more versus less time, effort, attention, support, and resources in their children. Little is currently known about: (a) what kinds of early-life events/experiences lead individuals to become more versus less investing parents in adulthood and (b) how parental investment is affected by the quality of the relationship with one's partner. In addition, the role that fathers play in parenting has been under studied, and relatively little is known about how partners co-parent their children as a function of their early-life experiences or the quality of their relationship. This research addresses these issues and is aimed at filling these critical gaps in knowledge and understanding of parenting practices and behavior.Two studies will address these aims. In Study 1, new codings and analyses will be conducted on a unique longitudinal sample that has lifespan data on parenting outcomes (the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation; MLSRA). Participants in this sample have been continuously followed from before birth into middle adulthood. The MLSRA has excellent measures of how individuals were treated as children, what happened to them across development, and how they are parenting their own children years later in adulthood. This study will examine how certain early life experiences (e.g., the amount of life stress, the occurrence of maltreatment) prospectively predict parents' views about investing time, effort, and resources in their children and how they actually behave (based on video-recordings) when interacting with their children. Study 2 is a new laboratory study of parenting behavior involving mothers, fathers, and their first-born toddlers. This study, which involves video-recording mothers, fathers, and their toddler engaging in parenting tasks, will: (a) examine whether certain types of perceived early-life stress are associated with parenting attitudes and behavior in a family context, (b) investigate whether the quality of the partners' relationship buffers exposure to early-life stress, (c) identify whether certain types of perceived early-life stress are associated with fathers' and mothers' implicit (vs. explicit) parenting attitudes, and (d) determine whether implicit parenting attitudes mediate the relation between early-life stress and parenting attitudes and behavior.