Paternal activation parenting and growth in children's inhibitory control across early childhood

Abstract

Activation parenting (AP) is a parenting construct derived from research and theory on paternal caregiving that includes behaviors that challenge children to approach novel situations, explore their environments, and take physical and socioemotional risks through a balance of encouragement and limit‐setting. Although components of AP have been linked to different domains of children's self‐regulation skills, comprehensive measures of AP and longitudinal research on families from low socioeconomic backgrounds are lacking. These limitations greatly constrain our understanding of the potential benefits of paternal AP for children's self‐regulation development, including the maturation of inhibitory control (IC) in early childhood. Thus, the present study tested associations between paternal AP at age 3 and growth in parent‐reported IC across ages 3–5 in a sample of low‐income, ethnically diverse fathers. Participating fathers (N = 171; 9% Black, 47% White, 8% Latinx, 61% not Latinx; mean household income = $25,145) and their children (51% female) were drawn from the Early Steps Multisite Study. AP during a clean‐up task at child age 3 years, but not a teaching task, was associated with greater growth in IC across ages 3–5 years. Implications of the current findings are presented for understanding associations between paternal AP and children's IC and broader self‐regulation skills with diverse samples of caregivers.