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

生活中很少有事情能与抚养孩子的重要性相比。与大多数物种相比，人类在孩子身上投入了大量资金，但有些父母却忽视、冷漠，甚至对孩子怀有敌意。这个项目研究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。目前对以下方面知之甚少：(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或更少投资的父母；(b)父母投资是如何受到与伴侣关系质量的影响的。此外，父亲在养育子女中所扮演的角色也一直在研究中，相对而言，人们对伴侣如何共同抚养孩子作为他们早期生活经历的功能或他们关系的质量知之甚少。这项研究解决了这些问题，旨在填补这些关键的空白，在知识和理解父母的做法和行为。两项研究将涉及这些目标。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，该样本具有养育结果的终身数据（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成年中期。MLSRA很好地衡量了个人在童年时期是如何被对待的，他们在发展过程中发生了什么，以及他们在成年后如何养育自己的孩子。本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。这项研究包括对母亲、父亲和他们的孩子进行育儿任务的录像，将：(a)检查某些类型的感知早期生活压力是否与家庭背景下的养育态度和行为有关，(b)调查伴侣关系的质量是否缓冲了早期生活压力的暴露，(c)确定某些类型的感知早期生活压力是否与父亲和母亲的内隐（与外显）养育态度有关。(d)确定内隐父母态度是否介导早期生活压力与父母态度和行为之间的关系。

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.