parental sensitive

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child Dev. 12: 27–51 (2003)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

DOI: 10.1002/icd.335

The Effects of Early RelationalAntecedents and Other Factors onthe Parental Sensitivity of Mothersand Fathers

Diane Pelchata,*, Jocelyn Bissona, Caroline Boisa

and Jean-Fran-cois SaucierbaUniversit!ee de Montr!eeal, Facult!ee des Sciences Infirmi"eeres, C.P. 6128, Succ.Centre-Ville, QC, Canada, H3C-3J7bUniversit!ee de Montr!eeal, Facult!ee de M!eedecine, D!eepartement de Psychiatrie,C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montr!eeal, QC, Canada, H3C-3J7

This study examines the effect of early relational antecedents(ERA, i.e. the quality of parenting parents recalled receiving aschildren), parenting stress, marital stress, socio-economic factorsand children’s characteristics (gender and disability condition) onthe parental sensitivity of mothers and fathers. The sampleconsisted of 116 mothers and 84 fathers of 117 eighteen month oldchildren drawn from a larger longitudinal study on the adapta-tion of parents to a child with a disability. Thirty-four childrenwere diagnosed with Down syndrome (DS), 51 with a cleft lipand/or palate (CLP), and 32 were non-disabled children. Multipleregression analyses reveal that mothers’ sensitivity is bestpredicted by her level of education and family income, whereasfathers’ sensitivity is best predicted by their ERA, marital stress,family income and the child’s disability condition. Mothers withmore education and a greater family income displayed a greatersensitivity to their children, as did fathers who perceive lessmarital stress, those with a greater family income and those whoperceived their parents as less controlling. Also, fathers ofchildren with DS displayed less sensitivity for their childrenthan fathers of children with CLP or fathers of non-disabledchildren. These results concord with many studies about theimportance of socio-economic factors, ERA, marital stress,parent’s gender and children’s factors in the understanding ofparental sensitivity. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: parental sensitivity; early relational antecedents; dis-ability; down syndrome; cleft lip and palate; children; marital stress

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Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

*Correspondence to: Universite de Montreal, Faculte des Sciences Infirmieres, C.P. 6128,Succ. Centre-Ville, QC, Canada, H3C-3J7

Parental sensitivity is broadly defined as the parent’s ability to perceive,to interpret accurately and to respond promptly and appropriately to hischild’s signals (Nicholls and Kirkland, 1996). Although the definition may varysomewhat, there is a large consensus about the great importance of parentalsensitivity in the establishment and quality of the parent-child relationship(Smith and Pederson, 1988; Vereijken et al., 1997). In particular, Ainsworth andcolleagues (Ainsworth et al., 1978) found that maternal sensitivity during theinfant’s first year of life strongly predicted a secure attachment relationshipbetween the infant and the mother. Many studies have shown a link betweenparental sensitivity and children’s cognitive development (Bee et al., 1982; Blascoet al., 1990), temperament (Seifer et al., 1996), and socio-affective development(Ainsworth et al., 1978). Parental sensitivity also influences early child–parentrelationships which are believed in most theories of child development to be thefoundation that will guide the evolving adult in his relationships with others(Biringen, 1990; Waters et al., 1979), including those with his or her own children(Fish, 1993; Main et al., 1985; Eichberg, 1986).

These observations underscore the importance of gaining a better under-standing of the factors related to parental sensitivity. In the last two decades,many studies have examined the antecedents of parenting, and to some extent,the antecedents of parental sensitivity. Although a number of factors of parentalsensitivity have been identified, much remains to be known with respect to thedynamics and antecedents of parental sensitivity. Some ambiguity remainsconcerning the role of some alleged factors of parental sensitivity, and much workneeds to be done regarding the understanding of their relative importance andthe ways in which these factors interact to influence parental sensitivity. Also, asmost studies have been concerned with mothers, further research is needed tounderstand the proper dynamics mothers’ and fathers’ parental sensitivity.

The main objective of this study is to examine the role of a number of factors onthe sensitivity of mothers and fathers of 18-month old infants with or without adisability. A multivariate modelling approach was taken for that purpose in orderto account for the intricate relationships between the various potential factors ofsensitivity. Following Belsky’s (1984) theoretical model of parenting, we haveexamined three types of factors: parent-related factors, child-related factors andcontextual sources of stress and support. The parent-related factors that areincluded in the analyses are parent’s early relational antecedents (ERA),parenting stress, depression, marital stress and gender. Child-related factorsinclude gender and the disability condition of the child. Contextual factorsinclude parents’ family income, the level of education and the status of singleparent, which, in the present situation, might be more accurately termed socio-economic factors. The empirical support for each of these factors and thehypotheses are presented next. As the studies on the factors of parentalsensitivity specifically are still relatively scarce, we have considered the mainfactors that were shown to play a significant role in parental sensitivity or inrelated constructs, such as the quality of parenting and parental involvement.

PARENT-RELATED FACTORS

Parents’ Early Relational Antecedents

The hypothesis of the influence of parents’ ERA on their parenting, or more simplyof an intergenerational transmission of parenting practices, was elaborated to its

D. Pelchat et al.28

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 12: 27–51 (2003)

fullest degree in the theory of attachment (Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991). In thistheory, it is conceived that during the child’s early interactions with his parents,the child elaborates ‘internal working models’ that enable him to interpret andanticipate the behaviours of his social partners and to guide his attitudes andbehaviours towards them. Parental sensitivity is believed to be the maindeterminant of these internal models (Bretherton, 1987). In turn, these modelsare also hypothesised to eventually guide the individual’s interactions with hisown children (Main et al., 1985). Thus, continuity is hypothesised between the ERAof parents and their parenting behaviours, including their parental sensitivity.

The well-documented association between abusive parenting practices andparents’ own personal experience of abuse as children indirectly supports thehypothesis (for a review, see Belsky and Vondra, 1989; Whipple and Richey, 1997;Emery and Laumann-Billings, 1998). But, accumulating evidence seems toconfirm the same kind of intergenerational transmission with respect to lessextreme parenting practices. For instance, Main and Goldwyn (1984) showed,among a sample of normal mother–infant dyads, a strong association betweenmothers’ perception of rejection by their own mother in childhood and therejection of their own infant. Also, studies based on the attachment paradigmhave generally shown a significant concordance between mothers’ type ofattachment to their own and that of their children to them (for a review seeBretherton, 1990). Mothers identified as autonomous on the basis of theirattachment to their parents were generally more sensitive towards their child thanthose identified as non-autonomous (Crowell and Feldman, 1988; Haft and Slade,1989; Fish, 1993). Similar findings have also been found for fathers indicating alink between fathers’ ERA and their parenting practices (Van Ijzendoorn et al.,1991; Cohn et al., 1992; see Volling and Belsky, 1992 for negative findings).

Studies that were not directly based on attachment theory using slightlydifferent measures of ERA have also found evidence of an intergenerationaltransmission of parenting practices. In one study conducted by Biringen (1990),mothers’ recollections of acceptance, overprotection and encouragement of auto-nomy by their parents were shown to be highly and positively related to theirmaternal sensitivity and the dyadic harmony with their 11–18 month old infants.Similarly, Simons et al. (1993) have given evidence of a link between mothers’ andfathers’ parenting practices (supportive parenting or harsh discipline) and theirown parents’ parenting practices. Considering the sum of these results, we expectthat fathers’ and mothers’ ERA will be predictive of their parental sensitivity.

Parenting Stress

Parenting stress is frequently addressed in studies on parent–child interactions.In the large majority, these studies have demonstrated that parenting stress is adisrupter of parenting practices (Webster-Stratton, 1990). This was shown bothwith samples of families in the general population (McKay et al., 1996) and withsamples of parents of disabled children of various ages (e.g. Darke and Goldberg,1994; Girolametto and Tannock, 1994; Onufrak et al., 1995). In these studies, thestress related to infant’s adaptability, the parents’ acceptance of the child, theirsense of parental competence and perception of role restriction were particularlypredictive of their response to their disabled child. Although some studies havereported negative findings (Denham and Moser, 1994; Harrison and Magill-Evans, 1996), the bulk seem to support the hypothesis of a negative associationbetween parenting stress and parental sensitivity. Therefore, we expect to findsuch a relation both for fathers and mothers.

Factors of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Sensitivity 29


Depression

Psychological depression in mothers and fathers has been shown to be relatedto the quality of parenting (Grossman et al., 1988; Gelfand and Teti, 1990; Simonset al., 1992, 1993) and more specifically to parental sensitivity (Cohn et al. 1986;Wilfong et al., 1991; Jameson et al., 1997). In Jameson et al.0s study, depressedmothers displayed less interactive co-ordination with their infant thannon-depressed mothers, and were less likely to repair interrupted interactionswith their infant. In Cohn et al.0s study, depressed mothers were more likelyto behave insensitively with their infants, in a hostile and intrusive manner,or with detached withdrawal. Evidence from other studies suggests thatother dimensions of parents0 mental health are also related to parental sensitivity,such as parents’ psychological well-being (Grossman et al., 1980; Broom, 1994),anxiety (Nover et al., 1984), and affective distress (Atkinson et al., 1995).Such results are of particular concern for children who already are atdevelopmental risk from biological conditions, especially when one considersthat the chronic stresses of living with a disabled child have been linked tothe presence of depressive affect in mothers of handicapped children (Breslauand Prabucki, 1987). From these findings, we expect to find a negativerelation between mothers’ and fathers’ scores on depression and their parentalsensitivity.

Marital Stress

Marital stress has been shown in many studies to be a significant deterioratingfactor of the quality of parenting, of parental involvement and of parentalsensitivity (for a review, see Cummings and O0Reilly, 1997; Coiro and Emery,1998). For instance, Cox and colleagues (1999) found that both the sensitivity ofparents and their reported involvement to their infants suffered when marriageswere more conflicting and parents’ perceptions of their marriage were lesspositive. Alternatively, other studies have demonstrated a positive relationbetween harmonious marriages or the quality of instrumental and emotionalsupport among spouses and the quality of parenting or the parental sensitivity(Dickie, 1987; Graham, 1987; Cox et al., 1989).

In contrast, some authors have not found the expected relation between maritalstress and parental sensitivity. In Broom’s (1994) study, mothers who indicatedless interaction with their spouse and who perceived that their husbandparticipated less in family life were more sensitive to their infants. In the studyof Goldberg and Easterbrooks (1984), fathers’ harmonious marital interactionwas positively related with parental sensitivity; but for mothers, better maritaladjustment was significantly correlated with less maternal sensitivity. Not-withstanding these results, the bulk of the findings lead us to expect anegative association between mothers’ and fathers’ marital stress and parentalsensitivity.

Parent’s Gender

In the large majority of studies on parental involvement and sensitivity, motherswere the object of concern much more often than fathers. However, the last twodecades have witnessed a sustained effort to fill this gap and gain a betterunderstanding of fathers’ role in children’s development (for a review, see Lamb,1997, Pleck, 1997, and NICHD, 2000). In general, the findings of the few studiesthat compared fathers and mothers on sensitivity-related dimensions seem to

D. Pelchat et al.30


indicate that mothers are more sensitive, responsive and involved with theirchild than fathers (i.e., Power and Parke, 1983; Belsky et al., 1984; Power, 1985;Heerman et al., 1994; Pleck, 1997). For instance, the interaction style of fathershas been reported to be faster-paced, with less verbalisations and moreinterference with the child’s ongoing activities and, more generally, lessfinely tuned to the child’s cues and level of understanding than that of mothers(Rondal, 1980; Power, 1985; McCollum, 1988). Yet, contrasting with these results,some well-conducted studies found no difference in parental sensitivity betweenmothers and fathers (Brachfeld-Child, 1986; Broom, 1994), or found relativelyfew differences against a background of much similarity (McConachie andMichell, 1985). From the sum of these findings, we expect, with some degree ofreserve, that mothers will show a greater sensitivity towards their child thanfathers.

To our knowledge, no study has considered the issue of the differential impactof the various factors on mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity. However, Doherty et al.(1998) contend that fathering is influenced, to a greater extent than mothering, byvarious factors in the family and the community. This was shown for instancewith regards to the impact of unemployment (Elder et al., 1985), and the qualityof the marital relationship (Belsky and Volling, 1987). It remains to be seen,however, if these types of factors also have a greater impact on fathers’ sensitivitythan that of mothers. It also remains to be seen if other types of factors, such aschildren’s characteristics, including children’s disabilities, also differentiallyaffect mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity.

CHILD-RELATED FACTORS

A disability in the child is generally considered to have a considerable impact onthe parent-child relationship (Hanzlik, 1989; Pelchat, 1993; Lamb and Lauman-Billings, 1997). Mothers of disabled children are reported to be physically moredistant (Richard, 1986), to engage less often in interactions (Wasserman andAllen, 1985) and to display lower quality interactions with their child (Eheart,1982; Berger and Cunningham, 1983). They also issue more directives andcontrolling behaviours (Huntington et al., 1987) and take more initiatives in theinteractions (Eheart, 1982; Petersen and Sherrod, 1982; Stoneman et al., 1983;Brooks-Gunn and Lewis, 1984). Although some authors (e.g. Becker et al., 1997;McConnachie, 1989) have rightly questioned the assumption that greaterdirectiveness in parents of infants with a disability should be taken as a sign oflower sensitivity, the bulk of accumulated findings, especially those concerningother aspects of parental sensitivity, still lead us to expect lower levels ofsensitivity among parents of disabled children compared to parents of non-disabled children.

The association between child’s gender and parental sensitivity-relatedconstructs have also been examined in many studies. Most find an interactionbetween child’s gender and parent’s gender on parenting behaviours. Forinstance, fathers have been reported to be more involved with sons than withdaughters (Barnett and Baruch, 1987; Harris and Morgan, 1991; Blair et al., 1994).However, more recent studies have shown that such gender differences weregreater with older children and were generally not significant with youngerchildren (Biringen et al., 1994; Broom, 1994; Tulananda et al., 1994). From theseresults, we do not expect to find any difference in parental sensitivity accordingto the gender of young children.



SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS

Socio-economic (SE) factors have been recognised by several authors to play animportant role on parental behaviours (e.g. Gecas, 1979; Floyd and Saitzyk, 1992;Gerson, 1993). In his literature review, Gecas identified several empiricalassociations between SE status and parenting practices, supporting Kohn’sargument (1977) that higher social positions are more likely to value self-direction, self-control and responsibility in their children. In the same vein,Simons et al. (1993) found that mothers’ and fathers’ education was positivelyrelated to supportive parenting and negatively related to harsh discipline.Various studies have shown a positive correlation between the mother’s level ofeducation and her sensitivity towards her child with or without a disability (e.g.Blasco et al., 1990; Hyche et al., 1992; McConnachie, 1989). In Onufrak et al.’s study(1995), SE status was identified as the single most predictive factor of mothers’quality of involvement. These findings lead us to expect a positive associationbetween SE indicators and parental sensitivity.

METHOD

Sample

The sample consisted of 116 mothers and 84 fathers of 117 eighteen month oldchildren. Thirty-four children were diagnosed with Down syndrome (DS), 51with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) and 32 were non-disabled children (ND). Theparticipants were recruited at the birth of the infant by nurses throughout 14urban and semi-urban hospitals in the Montreal and Qu!eebec city areas (Qu!eebec,Canada) from September 1993 to April 1995. The inclusion criteria required thatthe infant was living with both parents and was not adopted, that the parentscould communicate in French and were living within 90min driving distancefrom the recruitment area. This sample came from a larger longitudinal study onthe adaptation of parents to an infant with a physical disability (Pelchat et al.,1998). In total, 272 respondents from 143 families participated in the larger study.Data were collected at three points in time: when the children were 6, 12 and 18months old. The present sample is constituted of the parents who responded tothe third wave of data collection}the only stage where the measures of ERAwere collected. From the 272 respondents of the initial study, 240 responded tothe third wave, of which 200 (116 mothers and 84 fathers) completed themeasures of parental involvement and ERA.

An analysis of the factors associated with attrition was conducted. Variablesthat were examined included children’s gender and disability, parents’ age,gender, education, income and number of children, parents’ sensitivity andparenting stress at T1 and T2 (i.e. when children were 6 and 12 months of age).Chi-square and independent samples T-tests were used for that purpose and allanalyses, except the one pertaining to parents’ gender, were conducted separatelyfor mothers and fathers. Among all considered variables, only two weresignificantly associated with attrition: parents’ gender and mothers’ education.From the 143 mothers included in the larger study at T1, 81% (i.e. 116) respondedat T3 and were included in the final sample, compared to 65% (n= 84) of the 129fathers included in the study at T1 (w2(1, N = 200) = 8.9, p50.01). Among allmothers in the larger study, 66% of those who had not completed high schoolwere included in the final sample, compared to 87% of those who had completed

D. Pelchat et al.32


high school and 85% of those with a college degree or more (w2(2, N = 200) = 7.2,p50.05).

The age of mothers in the final sample ranged from 17 to 40 years (M = 29.4,S.D. = 5.2) and that of fathers, from 20 to 52 years (M = 31.7, S.D. = 6.2). The levelof education was relatively high for both mothers and fathers, with 54% ofmothers and 51% of fathers reporting post-high school education. Families hadon average two children (S.D. = 0.9) and 39% of them had only one. The annualfamily income was under $30,000 (Can.) for 37% of the families, between $30,000and $60,000 for 33% of them, and over $ 60,000 for 30% of them. Among the 112mothers participating in the study, 12 (10.3%) were single mothers.

None of the children involved in the study was premature but some had amedical condition secondary to their primary diagnosis. Among the 34 childrenwith DS, 15 also had a congenital heart disease. In all cases, the medical recordsestablished that DS was the primary diagnosis of the child. This proportion ofchildren with both disabilities was expected since children with DS have a40–60% incidence of heart disease (Rogers and Roizen, 1991). Among the 51babies with CLP in our sample, 11 were born with a cleft lip, 29 had a cleft palateand 11 had both a cleft lip and a cleft palate. At the age of three to four months, allbabies with a cleft lip had corrective surgery of the lips, and at 12–13 months allbabies with a cleft palate had corrective surgery of the palate. Overall, ahospitalisation during the last previous six months, when the child was between12 and 18 months old, was required for 12 children with DS, 11 children with CLPand one non-disabled child.

Procedure

Ethical standards of the participating hospitals were followed. Parents wereencountered at home by a trained nurse or a trained psychologist when theirbaby was eighteen months old. Each parent was asked to filled out the self-administered questionnaire individually, and clarification or assistance wasprovided when needed. The questionnaire was in French, and included validatedscales for the most part. In addition, a procedure involving the videotaperecording of each parent in interaction with his or her child during a playsequence was conducted for the proper assessment of parental sensitivity.

Measures

Parental SensitivityReflecting the complexity of the concept of parental sensitivity and the variety

of studies that examined that construct, the measurement of parental sensitivityhas greatly varied across studies (for a review, see Nicholls and Kirkland, 1996;Seifer et al., 1996). In the present study, parental sensitivity was measured withthe Parent /Caregiver Involvement Scale (P/CIS, Farran et al., 1986). Contrary toother sensitivity scales, such as those developed by Ainsworth et al. (1978) andIsabella (1993) which used variants of a single scale that required a singlejudgement on a Likert scale regarding the degree of sensitivity over an extendedperiod of time, the P/CIS has the advantage of measuring various components ofsensitivity and of being administered and scored in a relatively short period oftime. These advantages of the P/CIS also lead other authors (Seifer et al., 1996) tomeasure sensitivity with this instrument. The P/CIS assesses a parent’sinteractive behaviours towards his or her child during a 10–20min videotaped



play sequence. Eleven types of parental behaviours are assessed: physicalinvolvement, verbal involvement, responsiveness, play interaction, teaching,structuring of child’ activity, structuring of specific behaviours, sequencing ofactivities, reinforcements, expression of negative emotion, and goal setting. Eachbehaviour is assessed with respect to three dimensions: (1) Quantity, how oftenthe parent displays the behaviour; (2) Quality, how much warmth and sensitivityis expressed by the behaviour; (3) Appropriateness, how well matched thebehaviour is to the child’s developmental level, interest and motor abilities. Eachdimension for each behaviour is scored on a 1–5 scale with specific behaviouralanchors on odd numbers.

The P/CIS was administered at the parents’ home by a trained nurse or atrained psychologist. Each parent was asked in turn to play with his child for aperiod of 10min, where parent–child interactions were videotaped. No standardset of toys was provided; each parent was instructed to play with his child as henormally does. The scale was scored later from the videotape by eachinterviewer. For purpose of reliability assessment, 20% of the material wasscored twice by each interviewer and 25% of all material was scored by the twointerviewers. The intraclass correlation coefficients for the inter-rater and intra-rater agreement were over 0.90 both for the scale overall and for each type ofbehaviour.

In most studies where the scale has been used, the authors’ recommendation tocalculate a mean score for each dimension was followed. Many studies havereported strong indices of reliability, either in the form of internal consistencycoefficients, inter-rater reliabilities or test-retest reliabilities (Blasco et al. 1990;Wilfong et al., 1991; Onufrak et al., 1995). To our knowledge, no study hasexamined the factorial structure of the scale or has demonstrated thediscriminant validity of the three subscales. Our own factor analyses revealeda structure comprising only two factors: the first, which explained 49% of thetotal variance, included all ratings of quality and appropriateness; the second,which explained 14% of the total variance, was exclusively composed of quantityratings. Such two-factor structure supports the observations of some authors whoused the P/CIS (e.g., Blasco et al., 1990; Tendland, 1996) and who decided tocombine the two scales of quality and appropriateness because of their strongcorrelation. As the quality and appropriateness of the behaviour are more centralto the notion of parental sensitivity than is the frequency of the behaviour (Farranet al., 1986; Barnard and Kelly, 1990; Seifer et al., 1996) especially when the later isestimated from a ten-minutes play sequence, only one measure of parentalsensitivity was calculated from the P/CIS: the one composed of all ratings ofquality and appropriateness. The scores were calculated as the average of theitems involved, with higher scores indicating a greater sensitivity. The alphacoefficient of the scale (with our data) was 0.92.

Early Relational AntecedentsEarly relational antecedents were measured with the Parental Bonding

Instrument (PBI, Parker et al., 1979). For the purpose of the study, we havetranslated the scale using a backward translation procedure. The PBI comprisestwo sets of 25 Likert-type items pertaining to the childhood (0–16 years)experience of the respondent with his parents, one regarding his mother and theother, his father. The scale was initially designed to measure care andoverprotection, and also the degree to which respondents had experiencedwarmth in their relationship with their parents, or had feelings of having been

D. Pelchat et al.34


overprotected. In their initial study, the authors reported evidence of a two-factorstructure corresponding to such measures. Similar findings were reported byother authors (i.e. Arrindell and van der Ende, 1984). However, more recentfindings give good evidence for a factorial structure comprised of three factors:care, denial of psychological autonomy (control) and encouragement ofbehavioural freedom (Murphy et al., 1997).

Our own analyses strongly support a similar three-factor solution. Yet, thatstructure remains closely similar to that of Parker et al. (1979), with the first factorcorresponding to the same care dimension as that of Parker et al. and the twoother factors representing more or less the two poles of the overprotection factordescribed by Parker et al., autonomy and control. The Care factor included itemssuch as ‘[My mother/father]. . .appeared to understand my problems andworries’, ‘Was affectionate to me’, ‘Enjoyed talking things over with me’.Autonomy included items such as ‘Let me decide things for myself’’, ‘Gave me asmuch freedom as I wanted’. and Control included items such as ‘Tried to controleverything I did’, and ‘Invaded my privacy’. This factor solution was very stableacross different subsamples (males, females, parents of children with DS, parentsof children with CLP or parents of non-disabled children) and with respect toboth respondents’ mothers and fathers. The solution explained from 53% to 59%of the total variance, which was around 10% more than the two-factor solution.Alpha coefficients were quite high for each construct: respectively 0.92, 0.82 and0.81 for respondents’ perceptions of care, autonomy and control by their mothers,and 0.92, 0.83 and 0.76 for respondents’ perceptions of their fathers. Combinedmeasures were also created by aggregating, for each dimension, the items for thetwo parents. The alphas for the same three dimensions were 0.95, 0.87 and 0.83.

Parenting StressThe Parenting Stress Index (PSI) (Abidin, 1990) is a screening and diagnostic

instrument evaluating the intensity of stress in various dimensions of the parent–child system. The PSI has been validated in many studies and with variouspopulations including French ones (for a review, see Lacharit!ee et al., 1992). Fromthe 13 subscales of the PSI, five were administered to parents for reasons of theirapplicability to parents of children between 6 and 18 months of age, and four ofthose five were retained for analyses because of their adequate internalconsistency: (1) Acceptance (7 items, e.g. ‘My child does a few things whichbother me a great deal.’); (2) Adaptability (11 items, e.g. ‘Compared to the averagechild, my child has a great deal of difficulty in getting used to changes inschedules or changes around the house.’); (3) Competence (13 items, e.g. ‘I feel thatI am successful most of the times when I try to get my child to do or not dosomething.’); (4) Role restriction (7 items, e.g. ‘I feel trapped by my responsibilitiesas a parent.’). Each measure was calculated by taking the mean of the constitutingitems (with scores for positive items previously reversed). Scores could vary from1 to 5, with greater scores indicating a greater level of parenting stress. In thepresent sample, the alphas for the four subscales varied from 0.70 to 0.81.

DepressionDepression was measured with the Depression subscale of the IDESPQ14

(Pr!eeville et al., 1992), a French translated and validated short form of thePsychiatric Symptom Index (Ilfeld, 1976). This consists of 5 items describingdifferent feelings or psychological states for which the parents were to indicatethe frequency of occurrence in the last seven days: (1) Did you feel desperate



thinking about the future ? (2) Did you feel lonely ? (3) Did you feel discouragedor have the blues ? (4) Did you feel bored or not interested in anything ? (5) Didyou cry easily or did you feel on the verge of crying ? Response options were: (1)Never ; (2) From time to time ; (3) Quite often ; (4) Very often. In the current study,the alpha coefficient for depression was 0.84.

Marital StressMarital stress was measured using a four-item unvalidated scale: (1) In the last

six months, I had difficulties to accept that my spouse expresses anger towardsour family situation. (2) In the last six months, I had difficulties to accept that myspouse expresses sadness towards our family situation. (3) In the last six months,fights are more frequent between my spouse and me. (4) In the last six months,we do not have any more activities together. Responses were given on a four-point Likert scale that ranged from Totally disagree to Totally agree. The alphacoefficient of the scale with our data was 0.70.

Socio-Economic VariablesTwo questions in the self-administered questionnaire were used to assess

family income and education. Both variables were used as ordinal andcategorical predictors. Family income includes eight levels: (1) less than $10000 (CAN); (2) $10 000 to $19 999 ; (3) $20 000 to $29 999 ; (4) $30 000 to $39 999 ;(5) $40 000 to $49 999 ; (6) $50 000 to $59 999 ; (7) $60 000 to $70 000 ; (8) more than$70 000. Responses were also regrouped in three categories: (1) low income: lessthan $30 000 ; (2) medium level income: from $30 000 to $59 999 ; (3) high income:$60 000 or more. Education also includes 8 levels: (1) uncompleted primaryeducation; (2) completed primary education; (3) uncompleted secondaryeducation; (4) completed secondary education; (5); uncompleted collegeeducation (6); college degree (7); uncompleted university degree (8) universitydegree. Responses were also combined in three categories: (1) low educa-tion: uncompleted secondary education or less; (2) medium level education:completed secondary education; (3) higher education: a college degree or more.

RESULTS

Descriptive Analyses

Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations of the sensitivity measureand the continuous predictors of parental sensitivity by gender with theircorresponding independent and paired-T statistics. Both approaches to T-testwere presented in order to compare mothers and fathers, first on a global andinclusive basis (i.e. including single-parent mothers), second, on a familywise basis taking into account the correlation between spouses’ responses.Overall, mothers’ and fathers’ responses were quite similar. When comparedon a familywise basis, the only significant difference related to depression, andshowed that mothers had higher depression scores than fathers. When comparedas groups (including single-parent mothers), a few significant differencesemerged between mothers and fathers: compared to fathers, mothers reportedless perceived care from their own mothers, less autonomy from their mothers ortheir two parents, and reported higher depression scores. As evidenced by theiraverage scores (3.9–4.0 on a 1–5 scale), both mothers and fathers were in general

D. Pelchat et al.36


quite sensitive to their child. Nevertheless, parental sensitivity was also fairlywell distributed, with scores ranging from 1.9 to 5.

In general, mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of their own parents were that of‘moderately’ caring parents, who moderately encouraged their autonomy andwere not highly controlling. In that respect, parents’ perceptions of their ownmother and father were quite similar. Yet, as shown on the diagonal of thecorrelation matrix, presented in Table 2, mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of theirown parents were generally not correlated. Mothers’ and fathers’ responses werepositively and significantly correlated on all measures of parenting stress,depression and marital stress. And, as indicated by the average scores, parentsgenerally had low levels of parenting stress, depression and marital stress.

Bivariate Analyses

Table 2 presents the correlations between parental sensitivity and all continuouspredictors, and Table 3 presents the means and standard deviations by groupwith corresponding test statistics (T or F) for the nominal predictors. Amongst allconsidered predictors, four were significantly associated with mothers’ sensitiv-ity: role restriction, family income, education and single parenthood. Thecorrelations show that mothers who feel more restricted in their parental role,those with a higher family income and those with more education have greatersensitivity for their children than mothers who feel less restricted in their parentalrole, have a lower income or less education. Also, single mothers displayed lower

Table 1. Mean and standard deviations on sensitivity and continuous predictors bygender, with independant and paired T tests and Pearson correlation coefficients

Mothers Fathers(n=116) (n=84)

M S.D. M S.D. T T(ind.) (paired)

Parental sensitivity 3.91 0.72 3.97 0.59 �0.7 0.5Early relational antecedents

Perc. care from the mother 3.00 0.82 3.25 0.56 �2.4* �1.5Perc. care from the father 2.79 0.80 2.71 0.65 0.7 1.2Perc. care from both parents 2.90 0.66 2.98 0.50 �1.0 0.2Perc. autonomy from the mother 2.68 0.74 2.93 0.56 �2.5* �1.6Perc. autonomy from the father 2.71 0.73 2.88 0.69 �1.5 �1.0Perc. autonomy from both parents 2.70 0.62 2.89 0.57 �2.1* �1.0Perc. control from the mother 1.94 0.66 1.94 0.59 0.0 0.2Perc. control from the father 2.00 0.61 1.86 0.57 1.6 1.4Perc. control from both parents 1.97 0.54 1.90 0.51 0.8 0.9

Parenting stressChild’s acceptance related stress 1.67 0.73 1.62 0.69 0.5 0.0Childs’ adaptability related stress 2.13 0.58 2.14 0.63 �0.1 �1.3Sense of competence related stress 2.00 0.64 1.85 0.49 1.9 0.8Role restriction related stress 2.33 0.92 2.20 0.71 1.1 0.4Depression 1.65 0.64 1.34 0.41 4.3*** 3.7***Marital stress 1.61 0.61 1.59 0.65 0.2 0.1

*p50.05; ***p50.001.



Tab

le2.

Correlationsbetweenparen

talsensitivity,

paren

t-related,ch

ild-related

andsocioeconomic

factors

ofparen

talsensitivity

Mothers

aFathers

12

34

56

78

910

1112

1314

1516

1718

1920

1Sen

sitivity

0.41**�0.05

�0.19

�0.14

0.02

0.02

0.01

�0.26*�0.33**�0.33**�0.27**�0.33**�0.02

�0.05

�0.16

�0.22*�0.28**�0.01

0.34**

0.31**

2Care:mother

0.06

0.10

0.40**

0.81**�0.02

0.09

0.04

�0.38**�0.23

�0.34*

0.11

�0.01

0.02

0.12

0.09

0.13

0.18

�0.02

0.00

0.16

3Care:

father

�0.07

0.24*

0.19

0.87**

0.05

0.10

0.06

�0.18

�0.06

�0.14

�0.10

�0.23

�0.15

�0.09

0.10

0.17

0.11

�0.06

0.01

0.15

4Care:

2paren

ts0.02

0.81**

0.79**

0.27*

0.01

0.10

0.04

�0.33**�0.16

�0.27*

0.00

�0.15

�0.10

0.00

0.10

0.18

0.16

�0.07

0.01

0.18

5Autonomy:mo.

0.05

0.49**�0.04

0.33**�0.16

0.56**

0.87**�0.21

�0.08

�0.16

�0.09

�0.11

0.07

�0.10

�0.08

�0.14

�0.10

�0.02

0.05

0.06

6Autonomy:fa.

�0.07

0.11

0.48**

0.37**

0.33**

0.06

0.91**�0.08

�0.28*�0.20

0.05

0.10

0.13

0.15

�0.08

�0.21

�0.03

0.17

0.16

0.25*

7Autonomy:2p.

0.01

0.40**

0.27**

0.45**

0.83**

0.82**�0.08

�0.15

�0.20

�0.20

0.00

0.02

0.12

0.03

�0.07

�0.19

�0.05

0.12

0.08

0.15

8Control:mother�0.02

�0.44**

0.01

�0.31**�0.49**�0.18

�0.42**

0.25*

0.58**

0.89**

0.16

0.35**

0.18

�0.10

�0.11

�0.10

0.05

0.11

�0.20

�0.23*

9Control:father

�0.07

�0.21*�0.10

�0.20*�0.24*�0.35**�0.36**

0.42**�0.01

0.88**

0.14

0.29**

0.07

�0.29**�0.12

�0.07

0.03

�0.03

�0.26*�0.40**

10Control:2par.

�0.07

�0.42**�0.05

�0.34**�0.46**�0.31**�0.48**

0.86**

0.83**

0.19

0.16

0.36**

0.14

�0.22*�0.13

�0.10

0.04

0.05

�0.26*�0.36**

11Accep

tance

�0.04

�0.09

�0.24*�0.20*�0.10

�0.36**�0.27**

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.53**

0.44**

0.35**

0.32**

0.16

0.11

0.61**

0.11

0.06

0.06

12Adap

tability

�0.08

�0.21*�0.10

�0.23*�0.05

�0.18

�0.17

0.17

0.19

0.23*

0.21*

0.57**

0.34**

0.26*

0.03

0.05

0.22*

0.06

�0.14

�0.07

13Competen

ce0.03

�0.23*�0.05

�0.21*�0.11

�0.05

�0.12

0.14

0.04

0.13

0.40**

0.36**

0.28**

0.48**

0.02

0.04

0.13

0.22*

0.07

0.10

14Role

restriction

0.19*�0.21*�0.12

�0.23*

0.00

�0.11

�0.09

0.14

0.08

0.15

0.29**

0.45**

0.62**

0.43**

0.26*

0.19

0.20

0.05

0.08

0.23*

15Dep

ression

�0.14

�0.18

�0.13

�0.22*�0.21*�0.24*�0.29**

0.33**

0.15

0.31**

0.27**

0.23*

0.35**

0.36**

0.24*

0.35**

0.25*�0.02

�0.07

0.07

16Marital

stress

�0.07

0.08

0.03

0.05

0.01

�0.01

�0.01

0.32**

0.11

0.27**

0.07

0.22*

0.09

0.15

0.32**

0.45**

0.06

�0.11

�0.12

0.12

17Downsynd.

�0.13

�0.08

�0.23*�0.17

�0.19

�0.25**�0.26**�0.02

�0.10

�0.07

0.62**�0.05

0.14

0.08

0.20*

0.01

}0.04

0.01

0.01

18Bab

y’s

gen

der

�0.18

�0.09

�0.04

�0.11

�0.27*�0.07

�0.23*

0.11

�0.07

0.05

0.05

0.11

0.03

�0.06

�0.08

�0.06

0.05

}�0.03

0.00

19Fam

ilyincome

0.38**

0.05

0.06

0.08

0.06

�0.01

0.06

�0.06

�0.02

�0.05

0.12

�0.12

�0.08

0.07

�0.21*

0.00

0.00

�0.11

}0.54**

20Education

0.45**

0.16

�0.02

0.11

0.14

0.01

0.11

�0.12

�0.05

�0.11

0.16

�0.14

0.01

0.17

�0.16

�0.03

0.14

�0.18*

0.62**

0.45**

21Single

paren

t�0.29**�0.04

�0.11

�0.13

�0.07

�0.11

�0.14

�0.02

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.19*

0.10

0.01

0.01

}�0.03

0.12

�0.43**�0.23*

aLower

and

upper

triangle

matricespresenting

resp

ectively

mothers’

and

fathers’

resp

onses,

and

diagonal

presenting

correlationsbetween

mothers’

and

fathers’

resp

onses.

*p50.05;**p5

0.01.

D. Pelchat et al.38


levels of sensitivity than mothers in dual-parent families. Multiple comparisontests using a Bonferroni correction established that mothers with a low familyincome or a low level of education were significantly less sensitive respectivelythan mothers with a medium or high family income, and those having a mediumor high level of education. No measure of ERA, depression, or marital stress wassignificantly related to mothers’ sensitivity.

The sensitivity of fathers was significantly associated with their perceptions ofcontrol by their mother, their father or their two parents, with the stress related tothe acceptance of their child and his adaptability, with their marital stress, theirlevel of education and family income and with their child’s disability. Fatherswho perceived less control from their parents, who felt less stress with respect totheir child’s adaptability or the acceptance of their child, fathers with lower levelsof marital stress and fathers with a greater family income or education were moresensitive to their child than fathers with opposite scores on these variables.Fathers of children with DS had lower sensitivity scores than fathers of non-disabled children. No significant difference emerged between these two groupsof men and fathers of children with CLP.

Multivariate Analyses

Two model-selection methods were used to derive the most predictive andparsimonious models of mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity: all possible subsetsregression, and forward entry regression, both using SAS Proc Reg (SAS for Unix,version 7). All possible subsets regression was used in a first step to identify thebest sets of predictors of parental sensitivity. With this method, all combinationsof predictors are estimated and models are examined and compared on the basisof their R-square and predictors’ significance. The retained models were those

Table 3. Bivariate relations between parental sensitivity and nominal predictors: Means,standard deviations and test statistics (T or F)

Mothers Fathers(n= 116) (n= 84)

M S.D. Test M S.D. Test

Child related factorsGender Girls 4.06 0.71 T(11 4) = 3.98 0.61 T(82) =

Boys 3.80 0.71 1.9 � 3.97 0.57 0.1Disability DS 3.76 0.73 F(2, 113) = 3.73 0.64 F(2, 81) =

CLP 3.94 0.71 1.2 3.99 0.59 4.6**ND 4.03 0.74 4.22 0.42

Socio-economic factorsFamily income Low 3.53 0.72 F(2, 113) = 3.79 0.61 F(2, 81) =

Medium 4.21 0.62 16.0*** 3.93 0.59 4.6**High 4.21 0.51 4.24 0.46

Education Low 3.32 0.74 F(2, 113) = 3.66 0.62 F(2, 81) =Medium 3.93 0.63 16.6*** 3.93 0.52 4.0*High 4.21 0.60 4.16 0.60

Single parents Yes 3.30 0.69 T(11 4) = } } }No 3.98 0.69 3.2**

*p50.05; **p50.01; ***p50.001.



whose predictors all significantly contributed to parental sensitivity and whichcollectively accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in parentalsensitivity. All analyses were conducted separately for mothers and fathers,with nominal variables previously recoded as series of dummy variables. In asecond step, forward entry regressions were conducted to test, one by one, eachtwo-way interaction among pairs of predictors retained in the candidate models.Interactions that could significantly add to the models were retained. The finalmodels are presented in Table 4. The model for mothers includes two three-leveldummy coded variables}mothers’ level of education and family income}andexplains 30% of the variance in mothers’ sensitivity. No other variable nor anyinteraction term could significantly contribute to that model and all statisticalassumptions of regression models (i.e. linearity, non-collinearity, and homo-scedasticity) were shown to be fully respected. The only model that approachedthis one in terms of explained variance included the same dimensions measuredon an ordinal scale, and explained only 25% of the variance in mothers’sensitivity. As shown with the standardised regression coefficients (b), motherswith a medium family income had significantly higher sensitivity scores thanmothers with a low family income. The difference between mothers of highincome and mothers of low income was in the same direction but marginallysignificant (i.e. p50.10). Similarly, mothers with a medium or high level ofeducation had significantly higher sensitivity scores than mothers with a lowlevel of education. Such a model closely matches the results found with thebivariate analyses; the only exception being the absence of Role restriction andSingle parenthood as significant predictors of mothers’ sensitivity. As will bediscussed below, the associations between these variables and the predictorsretained in the model explains why these variables were not included in themodel.

For fathers, the final model includes four predictors}perception of control byboth parents, child’s disability, marital stress and family income (continuous).The model explains 30% of the variance in fathers’ sensitivity. Again, no othervariable nor any interaction term could significantly contribute to that model andall statistical assumptions of regression models were shown to be fully respected.The standardised regression coefficients show that fathers with higher familyincome, with lower levels of marital stress and those who perceived less control

Table 4. Multiple linear regression models of mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity

Variables B se B b Partial Model Model Model Modelr d.f. F R2 Adj. R2

Mothers (N = 116) 4, 111 11.9*** 0.300 0.274Fam. Income: Med. vs Low 0.49 0.15 0.32*** 0.31

High vs Low 0.34 0.18 0.20� 0.18Education: Med. vs Low 0.39 0.17 0.26* 0.22

High vs Low 0.64 0.18 0.44*** 0.32

Fathers (N = 84) 5, 78 60.6*** 0.299 0.254Family income 0.06 0.03 0.23* 0.26Disability : DS vs ND �0.39 0.15 �0.31** �0.29

CLS vs ND �0.11 0.14 �0.10 �0.09Marital stress �0.19 0.09 �0.21* �0.24Per. control fr. both parents �0.31 0.12 �0.27** �0.29

�p50.10; *p50.05; **p50.01;***p50.001.

D. Pelchat et al.40


from their own parents were significantly more sensitive to their children. Alsofathers of children with DS had significantly lower sensitivity scores than fathersof children with CLP and fathers of non-disabled children. Again, this modelclosely matches the results of the bivariate analyses. All predictors retained in themodel were significant correlates of fathers’ sensitivity in the bivariate analyses,and among the latter, those that were not retained were strongly correlated withsome of those that were retained.

DISCUSSION

This study examined the effects of a number of factors on the parental sensitivityof mothers and fathers of 18-month old infants with or without a disability. Asexpected, factors from each of the three dimensions of parenting identified byBelsky (1984) were found to be significantly associated to parental sensitivity:namely parents’ perceptions regarding their early relational antecedents,parenting stress and marital stress among parent-related factors, child’s disabilityamong child-related factors, and family income, level of education and singleparenthood among contextual sources of stress and support. However, theseassociations as well as the resulting regression models derived separately formothers and fathers revealed markedly different results for mothers and fathers.For fathers, the resulting model includes four significant predictors of sensitivity:fathers’ early relational antecedents, marital stress, Down syndrome in the child,and family income. For mothers, the model includes only two socio-economicfactors: family income and mothers’ level of education. These results as well astheir implications for research are discussed next.

Parent-Related Factors

Parent’s GenderThe first thing to note regarding the effect of parents’ gender on their

sensitivity is the absence of a difference in parental sensitivity between mothersand fathers. This contrasts with the results reported in some studies (e.g. Powerand Parke, 1983; Heerman et al., 1994). Yet, the results concord with those ofsome well-conducted studies (Dickie, 1987; Broom, 1994). In Dickie’s study,mothers and fathers did not differ in parenting competence under conditionsof high marital support; but under conditions of low support, fatherswere significantly less competent than mothers. The fact that most of theparents in the current study reported relatively low levels of marital stress mightexplain this absence of a difference in parental sensitivity between mothersand fathers. Also, McConnachie and Michell (1985) suggest it is likely thatdifferences between mothers and fathers are often reported in a context of manysimilarities.

But more importantly, our results attest to a large gap between mothers andfathers in the factors that affect their sensitivity. Such a gap was expected to acertain degree from Doherty et al.’s (1998) review which showed that fathering isinfluenced to a greater extent than mothering by various factors in the family,including the quality of marital relationship, and factors in the community, suchas the rate of unemployment. A number of reasons have been suggested in theliterature to explain such difference between mothers and fathers: for instancethat standards and expectations for fathering are more variable than those for



mothering (Doherty et al., 1998), that there is more negotiation in families overwhat fathers will do than over what mothers will do (Backett, 1987), or that menhave a less clear ‘job description’ as fathers than women as mothers (Lewis andO’Brien, 1987). Still, as we will see in the rest of this discussion, other potentialreasons can be considered on a general level, and more specifically with respectto the factors and results considered here.

Early Relational AntecedentsThe hypothesis of an intergenerational transmission of parenting practices

is only partially supported in this study. The parents’ perception of theirown relationships with their parents, or early relational antecedents aresignificantly related to the parental sensitivity of fathers only, and only withregards to the dimension of control. Fathers who perceived more control fromtheir parents during their childhood were less sensitive to their children thanfathers who perceived less control from their own parents. These results aresurprising as most studies that found an association between ERA and parenting,or parental sensitivity, were conducted on samples of mothers (Main andGolwyn, 1984; Crowell and Feldman, 1988; Haft and Slade, 1989; Van Ijzendoornet al., 1991). One likely explanation for these diverging results resides in themeasure of ERA that was used here. Whereas we used the PBI, a measuredeveloped to assess respondents’ conscious perceptions of their parents’ pastbehaviours, most of these studies used a measure of ERA based on the type ofattachment mothers still had with their own parents at the time of measurement.Such measures are usually assessed by the coherence of the mothers’ discourseregarding their childhood experiences. Some authors have argued that suchcoherence is a better reflection of the true impact of parents’ developmentalhistory on their attachment than is the content of the discourse itself (for a fulldiscussion on the issue, see Main, 1991). This observation led us to questionwhether a subtler measure of ERA, such as a coherence-based measure, mighthave been more apt to reveal the expected relation between mothers’ ERA andtheir sensitivity. In turn, this would raise the question as to why a content-basedmeasure such as the PBI is predictive of the sensitivity of fathers and not that ofmothers ?

An interesting line of thought is suggested with one study on therepresentations of children in family photo albums (Belleau, 1996) in whichmothers stood out quite differently than fathers in the way they describe theirphotos and represent their relationships with their parents. Whereas fathers werequite descriptive and factual, mothers were much more inclined to continuouslyreassess and reconstruct their relationships with their parents on the basis of theirrelationships with their own children. This is not surprising when one considersthe central place children have in mothers’ lives and their concern with the waythey educate them and transmit to them the result of their own experience. Thesedifferent ways of mothers and fathers to represent their own parents and possiblyto integrate their ERA could well explain why a coherence-based measure of ERAmight be more predictive of mothers’ sensitivity, whereas a measure like the PBIcan still be a good predictor of fathers’ sensitivity. If this were indeed the case,and our results seem to suggest that, then fathers would be the main transmittersof the previous generation’s parenting practices. Mothers’ would certainlytransmit their parenting practices, but these would be more the fruit of their owndeliberate efforts at integrating their past experiences. Further research wouldcertainly be needed to test such a hypothesis.

D. Pelchat et al.42


Parenting Stress and DepressionAs expected, parenting stress measures were significantly associated

with mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity. For instance, fathers’ sensitivity wasnegatively related to their stress about the acceptance of their child and theirchild’s adaptability and mothers’ sensitivity was positively related to theirsense of role restriction. Interestingly, the orientation of this latter associationruns counter to our expectations. It is likely that the association between mothers’sense of role restriction and mothers’ education level is at stake here.In that sense, mothers with a greater sense of role restriction would bemore sensitive, not so much because of their sense of restriction, but becauseof their higher education level. Nevertheless, none of these associationsbetween parenting stress and parental sensitivity remained significant in thefinal models of parental sensitivity when the other predictors were controlled for.The strong associations between these parenting stress measures and the retainedpredictors can explain these results. For instance, fathers of children with DSwere found to have significantly greater difficulties than other fathers to accepttheir children and find them well adapted. The same is true concerningthe reported association between mothers’ education level and role restriction.The fact that parenting stress measures did not remain in the models whereas thetype of disabilities or the level of education did can attest to the greater predictivepower of these factors. It could be conceived that the type of disability and thelevel of education had an effect on sensitivity in part from their association withparenting stress.

Contrary to our expectation and to findings of other authors (e.g. Wilfong et al.,1991; Jameson et al., 1997), depression scores were not significantly related tomothers’ or fathers’ sensitivity. The observed correlations of �0.14 and �0.16 formothers and fathers respectively were not significant, although they still were inthe expected direction. As evidenced by the correlations between depressionscores and the other predictors considered in this study, the construct validity ofour measure of depression does not appear to be at stake here. In our view, theweakness of the association might best be explained by the relatively low levelsof depression scores in our sample.

Marital StressAs was the case with ERA, marital stress stood out as a significant predictor of

fathers’, but not mothers’, sensitivity. Again, these results confirm our hypothesiswith respect to fathers, but disconfirms it with respect to mothers. As notedearlier, a number of studies have given evidence of a negative impact of maritalstress or related construct}and, alternatively, of the positive impact ofharmonious marital relationships and marriages}on both maternal and paternalsensitivity (i.e. Dickie, 1987; Cox et al., 1999). These findings were at the source ofour hypothesis, although as was also noted, some studies reported contradictoryor opposite findings (e.g. Goldberg and Easterbrooks, 1984; Broom, 1994). Ourresults seem to add to the controversy. It should be noted however, that both ofthese latter studies had opposite findings with regards to mothers, but not forfathers. Moreover, a number of studies have reported findings showing that thequality of father–child interaction is more highly correlated with the quality ofthe coparental relationship than is true for the mother–child relationship(Feldman et al., 1983; Dickie, 1987; Belsky and Volling, 1987; Levy-Shiff andIsraelashvili, 1988; Cox et al., 1989). Our results seem to support this claimspecifically with respect to parental sensitivity.



Child-Related Factors

Child’s DisabilityOur results partially confirm the hypothesis of the effect of children’s disability

on parental sensitivity. Of the two disabilities that were examined, DS and CLP,only DS had an impact on parental sensitivity, and this applied only to fathers.Fathers of children with DS are less sensitive to their child than fathers ofchildren with CLP or fathers of non-disabled children. This indicates that achild’s disability does not in itself necessarily lead to a lower parental sensitivity.Such effect seems to depend on the specific disability being considered as well asthe parent.

It has been shown in a number of studies (i.e. Breslau et al., 1982; Bristol et al.,1988; Pelchat, et al., 1999) that the severity of a disability can contribute greatly tothe lower adaptation of parents with disabled children. Children with moresevere disabilities are for the parents a greater source of stress and worries; theircare involves a greater burden for them and their efforts are not as readilyrewarded by the child’s progress. Such added toll on parents is likely to result inmore parenting stress, more frustrations, and a lower level of adaptation andwell-being, which in turn are likely to be reflected on parents’ sensitivity for theirchild. As disabilities can differ greatly with respect to severity, it seems logicalthat parental sensitivity can also differ greatly depending on the specificdisability of the child. With regards to the disabilities considered here, it isapparent that DS and CLP for 18 month old children differ greatly with respect tothe severity and the charge these disabilities impose on parents. As shown inanother paper (Pelchat et al. 1999), these two groups of parents also greatly differwith respect to parenting stress. Both mothers and fathers of children with DShad more difficulties accepting their child than parents of children with CLP orparents of non-disabled children. No such difference emerged between the latterand parents of children with CLP.

The fact that such factors finally had an impact on fathers only, and not also onmothers, is most puzzling however. It is possible that the added stress imposedby the care of a child with DS and the added psychological distress that resultsfrom it, are more determinant for fathers than they are for mothers. In that sense,mothers’ sensitivity for their child would be more unconditional than that offathers. It is also possible that fathers react in a particularly negative way to thelower input of their child or to a disability such as DS. On this last point, theresults of some studies seem to indicate that men are particularly susceptible tonegatively view problems involving cognitive abilities. For instance, Renaud et al.(1993) have shown that among Canadian physicians concerned with newreproductive technologies, men were more favourable than women to selectiveabortion when DS is diagnosed, whereas no difference emerged between menand women when more physiological disabilities were involved. Still anotherpotential reason for the lower sensitivity of fathers of children with DS has to dowith the ability of fathers to decipher the signals of the child. If fathers were tospend as much time with their child as mothers do, they might be more apt tolearn to understand and be sensitive and responsive to their children’s signals.

Child’s GenderAs expected, child’s gender was not associated with mothers’ and fathers’

sensitivity. This was confirmed both in the bivariate analyses and in theregression analyses. These results concord with those of many recent studies andconfirm the absence of effect of young children’s gender on parental sensitivity.

D. Pelchat et al.44


Socio-Economic Factors

As expected, the family income and level of education are both significantly andstrongly associated with mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity. Parents with moreeducation and a greater family income are more sensitive to their children thanparents with less education and a lower income. This concords with the resultsof many studies (i.e. Floyd and Saitzyk, 1992; Onufrak et al., 1995) aboutthe importance of socio-economic factors on parental practices. Kohn (1977)proposed that higher social positions are more likely to value self-direction, self-control and responsibility in their children. Such values and attitudes could wellexplain the relation between SE factors and parental sensitivity. It can also beargued that parents who have more education or a higher income have moreresources to help them cope with the stress of rearing a child. They also probablyhave more opportunities to attend classes on child rearing and read on the topic.

Yet, the greater impact of SE factors on mothers’ than on fathers’ sensitivity isnotable. For mothers, all explained variance in parental sensitivity (30%) wasexplained by SE factors. For fathers, family income was one of the factors ofsensitivity, along with the child’s disability, marital stress and ERA, andexplained only 8% of the variance in their sensitivity. It might be argued thatincome is for mothers a form of support, a way out, an access to resources in amore important way than it is for fathers. After birth, mothers are more confinedto the house and their maternal responsibilities than fathers. Fathers also havemore possibilities for self-resourcefulness outside the family. That there is asignificant and negative correlation between income and mothers’ index ofdepression and no such correlation for fathers can show some evidence of this.Moreover, a better income for mothers also implies less stress and daily hassles:they may have a larger apartment and more toys to play with the child. They aremore likely to work outside and have a babysitter whose help relieves them ofthe constant care of the child. Finally, as women usually bear the larger share ofthe care of the children, and are usually more preoccupied by child-care, theymay have more susceptible than men to take advantage of their education inlearning about child care and parenting.

Study Limits

The present study has a number of limitations that should be mentioned. First,although several important factors of parental sensitivity were examined, otherpotential factors have not been included in the analyses. For instance, factorssuch as the social support of parents (Crockenberg and McCluskey, 1986),parents’ personalities (NICHD, 2000), and cognitive factors such as the self-efficacy in parenting (Teti et al., 1996) have been shown elsewhere to have asignificant impact on parental sensitivity. Also, a recent study conducted by theNICHD (2000) has shown the impact of some mothers’ characteristics on fathers’sensitivity. Further research and continued efforts with a multivariate approachshould be invested on finding the best set of predictors of mothers’ and fathers’sensitivity. Also, more efforts should be granted towards a further degree ofmodelization with methods such as structural equation modelling (Hayduck,1987). Such methods could help unravel the complexities of the multiple directand indirect associations between the predictors and parental sensitivity. Ideally,further research should also use a longitudinal design, which would helpascertain the causality of effects and help understand the proper dynamics ofmothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity in time.



CONCLUSION

The results of this study emphasise the importance of four types of factors thatclearly stood out as strong predictors of parental sensitivity: parents’ earlyrelational antecedents, marital stress, the child’s disability and socio-economicfactors. On a general level, this concords with Belsky’s model of parenting(1984) about the importance of parent-related factors, child-related factors andthe larger social context. These specific factors were shown to have a markedlydifferent impact on mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity, which raised manyquestions and issues about the proper dynamics of mothers’ and fathers’sensitivity. A number of hypotheses and lines of explanations were offered onthat matter, but it is clear that many other studies will be needed to unravel thecomplexities inherent in the dynamics of parental sensitivity.

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