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Williams, Kate & Berthelsen, Donna(2017)The development of prosocial behaviour in early childhood: Contributionsof early parenting and self-regulation.International Journal of Early Childhood, 49(1), pp. 73-94.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-017-0185-5
1
The Development of Prosocial Behaviour in Early Childhood: Contributions of Early
Parenting and Self-Regulation
International Journal of Early Childhood, April, 2017.
Pre-publication version
Corresponding Author
Kate E. Williams
School of Early Childhood
Queensland University of Technology |
Victoria Park Road
Kelvin Grove QLD 4059
Queensland Australia
Email [email protected]
Donna Berthelsen
School of Early Childhood
Queensland University of Technology
Victoria Park Road
Kelvin Grove 4059
Queensland Australia
Email: [email protected]
Acknowledgements
This paper uses unit record data from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of
Australian Children (LSAC). The study is conducted in partnership between the Department
of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and the
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The findings and views reported in this paper are those
of the authors and should not be attributed to DSS, AIFS or the ABS.
Abstract
This research considers the role of parenting practices and early self-regulation, on children's
prosocial behaviour when they begin school. Data for 4,007 children were drawn from
Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). The
analyses explored relations between self-reported parenting practices for mothers and fathers,
using scales for parenting warmth and hostility, and parent report on children's emotional and
attentional regulation at 2-3 years. Teacher reports for prosocial behaviour were obtained
when children were 6-7 years. Maternal and paternal non-hostile parenting and warmth made
significant, indirect contributions to later prosocial development, through influencing
children's early self-regulation. These findings inform understandings about the
intergenerational pathways through which children's self-regulation influences prosocial
skills. Responsive caregiving by parents, and by adults in early childhood education
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programs, supports the development of early self-regulation. This, in turn, enables children to
take greater advantage of the learning opportunities afforded to them at home and in early
childhood education programs. Support for early self-regulation can offset effects of child
and family risk factors on children's later development.
Keywords: early childhood; self-regulation; responsive parenting; mothers; fathers; prosocial
behaviour
Résumé
Cette recherche examine le rôle des pratiques parentales et l'autorégulation en bas âge, sur le
comportement prosocial des enfants lorsqu'ils commencent l'école. Les données pour 4007
enfants ont été tirées de Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian
Children (LSAC). (Grandir en Australie : L'Étude longitudinale des enfants australiens). Les
analyses explorent les relations entre les pratiques parentales auto rapportées par les mères et
les pères, à l'aide d'échelles sur la chaleur et l'hostilité parentales, et la régulation
émotionnelle et attentionnelle des enfants à 2-3 ans, rapportée par le parent. Les rapports de
l'enseignant sur le comportement prosocial ont été obtenus lorsque les enfants avaient 6-7
ans. Le parentage maternel et paternel non hostile et chaleureux contribue significativement,
indirectement au développement prosocial futur, en influençant l'autorégulation chez les
jeunes enfants. Ces résultats éclairent la compréhension des pistes intergénérationnelles à
travers lesquelles l'autorégulation des enfants influe sur les habiletés prosociales. Des soins
attentionnés prodigués par les parents, et par les adultes en éducation de la petite enfance,
soutiennent le développement de l'autorégulation en bas âge. Ceci, à son tour, permet aux
enfants de profiter davantage des possibilités d'apprentissage qui leur sont offertes à la
maison et dans les programmes d'éducation de la petite enfance. Le soutien à l’autorégulation
en bas âge peut compenser les effets des facteurs de risque familiaux sur le développement
ultérieur de l'enfant.
Resumen
Esta investigación considera el rol de las prácticas de crianza y la auto regulación temprana
en el comportamiento pro-social de los niños cuando comienzan la escuela. Los datos de
4.007 niños fueron extraídos de Creciendo en Australia: El Estudio Longitudinal de Niños
Australianos (LSAC, por sus siglas en inglés). El análisis exploró las relaciones entre
prácticas auto-reportadas de madres y padres, utilizando escalas de crianza de calidez y
hostilidad, y reportes de los padres sobre la regulación emocional y atencional de los niños a
los 2-3 años. Los reportes sobre comportamientos pro-sociales de los maestros fueron
obtenidos cuando los niños tenían 6-7 años. La crianza maternal y paternal no hostil y cálida
fue significante, con contribuciones indirectas al desarrollo tardío pro-social a través de la
influencia en la auto regulación temprana de los niños y niñas. Estos hallazgos informaron
entendimientos acerca de los caminos inter generacionales a través de los cuales la auto
regulación de los niños influenció aptitudes pro-sociales. El cuidado sensible de padres y
adultos en los centros de educación temprana apoya el desarrollo de la auto regulación
temprana. Esto, a su vez, permite a los niños tomar mayores ventajas de las oportunidades de
aprendizaje entregadas a ellos en el hogar y en programas de educación temprana para niños.
Apoyar la auto regulación temprana puede compensar los efectos de los factores de riesgo de
los niños y sus familias en el desarrollo posterior de niños y niñas.
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Introduction
The publication of From Neurons to Neighborhoods (National Research Council and
Institute of Medicine 2000) foreshadowed a drive towards a single, integrated science of early
childhood development and emphasised important scientific issues that included: both
biology and context are important in early childhood development; growth of self-regulation
is a cornerstone of early childhood development across domains of behaviour; and,
relationships are the building blocks of human development (Lombardi 2012). The now
multidisciplinary science of human development which includes the neurosciences,
developmental psychology, sociology, and economics, has provided a paradigm shift for
understanding ways to enrich the life prospects for children (Shonkoff and Bales 2011). The
processes of development can now be understood as “nature dancing with nurture over time”,
through interactions between biology and the social and physical environments (Shonkoff et
al. 2012; p. 3). This study considers the role of environmental and neurobiological factors on
the development of prosocial behaviour.
Children’s early self-regulation is a neurobiological process supported by caregiving
that is consistently sensitive and responsive. Self-regulation of emotions and attention enables
children to learn more easily through their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences
(Sameroff 2010). Brain architecture, constructed through an ongoing process that begins
before birth, is influenced by children’s relationships and engagement with adults. The nature
of the relationships and interactional processes for each child provides a foundation, sturdy or
fragile, for the child’s capabilities that follow (Shonkoff and Bales 2011). While a wide range
of moderating and mediating factors may contribute to children’s development of prosocial
behaviours over time, these analyses address the contributions of early parenting and
children’s self-regulation.
Prosocial behaviour can be described as “voluntary behaviour intended to benefit
another” (Eisenberg et al. 2006, p. 646). Prosocial behaviours include comforting others,
providing emotional support, sharing resources, and providing instrumental help to enable
others to reach their goals. Children, as young as 18 months, can demonstrate helping and
sharing, and engage in efforts to comfort someone who seems distressed (Brownell et al.
2009). Developing the ability to voluntarily share valued resources with others is likely to
require skills in picking up on explicit cues that the other person provides to communicate
their needs or desires. This requires the child’s recognition of, and attention to, those cues,
implicating the role of attentional regulation. When young children have had experiences in
which there is sensitivity and responsiveness to their needs from parents and other caregivers,
then the development of such self-regulation is supported.
Self-Regulation and Prosocial Development
Self-regulation is an umbrella term that encompasses a number of inter-related
processes. In this study we focus on emotional and attentional regulation as early
foundational aspects of self-regulation (Blair and Diamond 2008). Emotional regulation can
be defined as the capacity to manage and modulate emotional states that facilitates adaptive
functioning (Raver 2002). Attentional regulation is the control exercised by the child to
sustain attention for extended periods as well as the ability to switch attention when required
within a specific situation (Blair 2002). Emotional and attentional regulation have a
4
neurobiological basis, as identified in early temperament research (Rothbart et al. 2011) and
later brain imaging research (Posner et al. 2014). Studies of brain functioning demonstrate
large changes in the physical connections between brain areas that support the development
of emotional and attentional regulation through infancy to age 4 years that are influenced by
caregiving practices (Posner et al. 2014). A hierarchical process of brain function
development is implicated, with initial brain stem functioning crucial in very early life (Geva
and Feldman, 2008), maturation of the collicular-basal ganglia, posterior attention systems,
hypothalamus and thalamus from 3 months of age, and still later prefrontal cortex maturation
which is involved in the development of higher order cognitive control abilities (Blair 2002).
Attentional and emotional regulation appear to be reciprocally related from an early age
(Williams et al. 2017). Emotional regulation skills support children to return to calm
following emotional distress, thus allowing more time and resources for maintaining attention
on other aspects of the environment. In turn, the ability to maintain attention on social and
environmental cues may support children in learning emotional regulation skills, and in
benefiting from the co-regulation strategies employed by adults. It is important for children to
learn to use and integrate their regulatory skills across the early childhood period.
Children with stronger self-regulatory abilities are likely to have greater capacity to
respond in prosocial ways to others. Laible et al. (2014) found that children, aged 4 years,
with higher attentional regulation and less emotional reactivity (suggestive of higher levels of
emotional regulation) were rated as more prosocial by teachers in the early years of school in
comparison to children with low attentional regulation and high emotional reactivity. In one
intervention study, prosocial behaviours towards peers were enhanced when children aged 2-
3 years were encouraged to talk about their feelings and to build their knowledge about
emotion (Grazzani et al. 2016). Taken together, these findings suggest that improving
emotional and attentional regulation in young children may be one mechanism for promoting
increased prosocial behaviour.
Parenting, Self-Regulation, and Prosocial development
A major developmental task over the first three years of life is for children to learn to
regulate their own behaviour, emotion, and cognitive states through support from parents and
other caregivers. While there are genetic variations, these are not determinants of behaviour
because the expression of such biological variations is influenced by environmental
experiences, such as the quality of interactions with caregivers (Posner et al. 2014).
Responsive parenting defined by affective elements influences self-regulation and subsequent
behaviour, such as prosocial skills.
In infancy, caregivers provide support for children’s emotional and attentional
regulation. This is done by soothing the child, including by holding and rocking, or by
orienting and redirecting attention to manage infants’ distress in any situation. By such
actions, caregivers support children to manage emotions. These practices in the care of young
children will be expressed differently across cultures (Rothbart et al. 2011). These external
supports that caregivers provide to soothe and calm children act to co-regulation children and
thus support development of self-regulation over time (Posner et al. 2014). However, when
caregiving is not responsive and not attuned to children’s needs then they are less likely to
learn to manage their emotions. Parenting that is overtly directive and critical may evoke
frequent negative affect and physiological stress responses from children (from the HPA
axis), straining children’s capacity to practice and develop emotional regulation skills (Blair
and Diamond, 2008). Thus, responsive relationships shape children’s learning in ways that
support longer term development (Kochanska et al. 2008, 2009, 2015; Landry et al. 2006).
5
Morris et al. (2007) proposed that the link between parenting and children’s emotional
regulation capabilities has three components. First, children learn about emotional regulation
through observational learning, modelling, and social referencing with the caregiver. Second,
parenting behaviours related to emotion have a very strong and direct impact on children
through those learning processes. Third, children’s emotional regulation is affected by the
nature of the family emotional environment through the specific parenting practices and each
family’s own emotional expressiveness.
Maternal sensitivity and responsiveness has been a particular focus in the research
examining parenting, self-regulation, and children’s prosocial development. Taylor et al.
(2013; 2015) reported that physiological regulation and observed responsive and authoritative
parenting at 3 years predicted children’s effortful control (related to self-regulation), at 4
years as well as children’s expressed sympathy for others at 6 and 7 years. Razza and
Raymond (2013) reported that maternal sensitivity across the first three years predicted
children’s delay of gratification skills (related to self-regulation) at 54 months which, in turn,
was associated with children’s socialisation skills. In another recent cross-sectional study
with children at 4-5 years of age, lower levels of critical and directive parenting were
associated with emotional and attentional regulation in children, but parental warmth and
sensitivity were not related (Mathis and Bierman, 2015), Taken together, it is still unclear as
to whether a high level of warmth or the absence of critical parenting is most important for
children’s self-regulatory behaviour.
Very few studies have investigated fathers’ contribution to children’s self-regulation
and later prosocial behaviours, with mixed findings to date. Studies have variously reported
that paternal behaviours are more (Ferreira et al. 2016) or as important as maternal
behaviours (Meuwissen et al. 2016), that parenting by fathers matters most in the context of
relatively low supportive behaviour in mothers (Martin et al. 2010), and that father
behaviours have relatively little influence on children’s social-emotional and cognitive
development when compared to the same maternal behaviours (Baptista et al. 2017). Others
still point to the importance of the interaction between maternal and paternal behaviours for
children’s emotional socialisation and self-regulation development, rather than consideration
of each in isolation (Han et al. 2015). While many of these differences in findings are likely
due to disparities in research design, measures, and populations, overall it is clear that further
research that includes both mothers and fathers would be beneficial for understanding
pathways of prosocial development.
It is possible that parenting influences on prosociality and self-regulation development
may differ by gender. This is because of the potential, but contested, differences in the way
fathers and mothers interact with their boys and girls and vice versa. For example, mothers
have been found to use more emotional language with children, with fathers using more
language explaining cognitions (LaBounty et al. 2008). However, a more recent study found
no differences in amount of emotional language use with children between mothers and
fathers, but both were found to use more emotional language with boys than with girls (Roger
et al. 2012). In the same study boys were found to use more emotional language with their
mothers compared to their fathers. It is clear that further research that involves both mothers
and fathers and explores differential processes by child gender are warranted.
The Current Study
Children’s early experiences within the family environment and children’s self-
regulatory skills may predispose children to exhibit greater (or less) concern for others. The
aim of the current study was to advance understanding about the association between early
6
parenting and children’s self-regulation skills and the development of children’s prosocial
behaviours at school entry. While there is research that has considered the direct associations
between parenting and prosocial behaviour and between self-regulation and prosocial
behaviour, there has been limited research that has explored developmental pathways that
include direct and indirect associations among parenting, self-regulation, and prosocial skills
for children.
The research questions addressed in the current study are:
1. Are there direct associations between parenting behaviours (warmth and hostility) for
mothers and fathers when children are 2-3 years of age and children’s prosocial
behaviours at 6-7 years?
2. Are there direct associations between self-regulation (emotional and attentional
regulation) at 2-3 years of age and children’s prosocial behaviours at 6-7 years?
3. Are there indirect associations between early parenting behaviours of mothers and
fathers (warmth and hostility) at 2-3 years and children’s prosocial behaviour at 6-7
years, through children’s self-regulation at 2-3 years?
4. Do the developmental pathways involving early parenting behaviours of mothers and
fathers, children’s self-regulation skills, and later prosocial skills, differ for boys and
girls?
This research contributes new understandings about associations between early
parenting behaviours and prosocial behaviour when children begin school and explores how
children’s early self-regulation is implicated in those associations. An important contribution
of this research is to include mothers’ and fathers’ reports about their parenting that provide
additional information about the family context in which children’s experiences are
embedded.
Methodology
The analyses reported in this study use data from Growing Up in Australia: The
Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). This study is sponsored by the Australian
Government through the Department of Social Services and warehoused at the Australian
Institute of Family Studies (http://www.growingupinaustralia.gov.au). Two cohorts of
children and their families were recruited for the LSAC study in 2004 (Edwards 2012). The
analyses presented in this paper utilize data drawn from the Baby Cohort that comprised
5,107 children (aged 3 to 19 months at recruitment). At each biennial data collection, parents
and teachers complete questionnaires, computer-assisted interviews are undertaken with
parents and children and developmental assessments with children are completed by research
officers undertaking home visits. Further detail on LSAC study design, sample information,
and implementation is reported in a range of sources (Edwards, 2012; Gray & Smart, 2009;
Soloff et al., 2005). The current analyses use data from Wave 2 when children were 2-3-
years-old and Wave 4 when children were aged 6-7 years.
Participants
The sampling unit for LSAC is the study child and children were identified through the
use of the Medicare Australia (health insurance) database (Soloff et al. 2005). A two-stage
clustered sampling design was used to obtain a nationally representative sample of Australian
children. At the first stage, 311 postcodes were randomly selected from all Australian
postcodes. At the second stage, using the national health insurance database, children within
7
families, meeting relevant age criteria were randomly selected from the identified postcodes.
The two LSAC cohorts are broadly representative of the Australian population (Soloff et al.
2005).
LSAC data on various constructs, including parenting behaviour, were collected from
both mothers and fathers when possible. The terms, mother and father, are used to denote the
adult figures who identified themselves as the primary carers for the child in the LSAC study.
In 99.8% of cases these were the biological or adoptive parents with remaining 0.2% being
grandparents, foster parents or aunts/uncles. We selected an analytic sample by examining the
availability of mother and father data across Wave 1 (Infancy) and Wave 2 (child - 2-3
years). Although we do not use Wave 1 parenting data in the substantive analysis, Wave 1
data was used in the imputation model to estimate values for missing data. Cases were
removed if: there were missing data for both mothers and fathers across waves (n = 8); there
was father data for at least one wave but no maternal data at either wave (n = 16); there was
mother data for at least one wave but no father data at either wave (n = 1076). This resulted in
a final sample for these analyses of 4,007 families. A comparison by demographic
characteristics was made between included and excluded cases (Table 1). It was found that
cases included were less likely to be Indigenous or speak a language other than English at
home. Mothers in the analytic sample were also significantly older than those not included.
Included families also had a higher average socio-economic position score than those not
included. These differences in the analytic sample and the excluded sample mean that
findings are not generalizable at the population level.
8
Measures
Self-regulation. When children were 2-3 years of age, the primary parent completed a
number of measures related to children’s self-regulation skills. The primary parent was the
parent who self-identified as the parent who knew the child best and for 98% of families this
was the mother. Based on our prior work and that of others (Gialamas et al. 2014; Williams et
al. 2016), six items were selected that rated emotional regulation and six items that rated
attentional regulation. Items details are provided in Table 2.
9
Emotional regulation. Four items from the Short Temperament Scale (STS; Fullard et
al. 1984) and two items from the Brief Infant Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment
(BITSEA; Briggs-Gowan et al. 2004) were used to represent emotional regulation. Example
items include: ‘child cries or tantrums until he/she is exhausted’ and ‘child responds to
frustration intensely’. Parents responded on a 6-point scale (almost never to almost always)
for the STS items, and a 3-point scale (not true/rarely to very true/often) for the BITSEA
items. Items were reversed scored so that higher scores indicated better emotional regulation.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to assess whether the data supported a
measurement model for a single latent variable for emotional regulation with the items
designated as categorical given the response scales had a maximum of six points. The CFA
10
measurement model fitted the data adequately (RMSEA = .06; CFI = .99). Table 2 provides
the factor loadings for each item.
Attentional regulation. Five items from the Short Temperament Scale (STS; Fullard et
al. 1984) and one item from the Brief Infant Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA;
Briggs-Gowan et al. 2004) were used to represent attentional regulation. Example items
include: ‘child stays with a routine task for 5 minutes or more’ and ‘can pay attention for a
long time’. Parents responded on a 6-point scale (almost never to almost always) for the STS
items, and a 3-point scale (not true/rarely to very true/often) for the BITSEA items. Higher
scores indicate better attentional regulation. CFA was used to assess whether the data
confirmed a measurement model for a single latent variable for attentional regulation with the
items again designated as categorical given the response scales had a maximum of six points.
The CFA measurement model fitted the data adequately (RMSEA = .08; CFI = .98). Table 2
provides the factor loadings for each item.
Prosocial skills were measured using the prosocial behaviour subscale from the
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 2001), completed by the child’s
teacher at Wave 4 of data collection, when children were 6-7 years old. The SDQ is a 25-item
inventory with five subscales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity /
inattention, peer relationship problems, and prosocial behaviour. Informants rate how
true/typical the statements reflect the child’s behaviour across the last 6-months on a 3-point
scale from not true to certainly true. The prosocial subscale consists of five items with
example items being ‘child is kind to younger children’ and ‘child often volunteers to help
others’. The SDQ has received extensive psychometric evaluation across national contexts
and exhibits strong reliability and validity (Goodman 2001; Hawes and Dadds 2004). Higher
scores represent higher levels of prosocial behaviours. CFA was again used to assess whether
the data confirmed a measurement model for a single latent variable for prosocial behaviour.
The items were designated as categorical given the response scale had only three points. The
CFA measurement model fitted the data adequately (RMSEA = .11; CFI = .99). Table 2
provides the factor loadings for each item.
Parenting measures for mothers and fathers. Composite scores for two parenting
constructs were calculated using weighted CFA factor coefficients published by experienced
LSAC researchers (Zubrick et al. 2014). Score means, standard deviations and alpha
coefficients for internal reliability are provided in Table 3.
Parental Warmth was assessed using six items from the Child Rearing Questionnaire
(Paterson and Sanson, 1999) on which parents rated their expression of physical affection and
enjoyment of the child. Each item was rated on a 5-point scale (never or almost never to
always or almost always). Example items include: ‘How often do you express affection by
hugging, kissing and holding this child?’ and ‘How often do you have warm, close times
together with this child?’
Parental Hostility was measured using adapted items from the Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study of Children, Birth Cohort (National Center for Statistics 2004) and the
National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth 1998-1999 (Statistics Canada 1999).
The scale consists of five items which are answered on a 10-point semantic differential scale
ranging from 1 = not at all to 10 = all of the time. Example items are: In the past four weeks
‘I have lost my temper with this child’ and ‘I have raised my voice with or shouted at this
child’.
Control variables. A number of variables were included as covariates in the analyses
to control for demographic variability across families. These covariates were family socio-
11
economic position and children’s age in months. Socio-economic position is a derived
variable within the LSAC that combines parental occupational prestige, parental education
level, and household income. It has an approximate mean of zero and standard deviation of
one. It is strongly associated with other known indicators of child and family outcomes which
are influenced by socioeconomic position (Blakemore et al. 2009). The data for this measure
were collected when children were 2-3 years old. Given that child age in months varied
substantially within the data collection period for each wave for this cohort, we also
examined child age (in months) as a potential control variable for the final analytic models.
Approach to Analysis and Missing Data.
Mplus Version 7.11 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998 – 2012) was used to develop
structural equation models (SEM). Due to the manifest variables for the latent variable
measurement models of emotional and attentional regulation and prosocial skills being
designated as categorical, the weighted least squares mean variance (WLSMV) estimator was
used. Two models were examined: (1) a baseline model in which the direct associations
between parenting behaviours and children later prosocial behaviour, and children’s early
self-regulation and prosocial behaviour were estimated; (2) an indirect effects model in which
the indirect associations, via self-regulation, for the associations between parenting
behaviours and prosocial behaviour were estimated. This model was assessed for the full
sample and for a multi-group model for boys and girls. Model fit was assessed using the root
mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) and the comparative fit index (CFI),
interpreted using Hu and Bentler’s recommendations (Hu & Bentler 1999; RMSEA value <
0.05 and CFI value > 0.95). Models were assessed as adequate where they met the criteria for
at least one of the three fit statistics and good if they met both criteria.
The amount of missing data varied across data collection waves and variables ranging
from 11% for parent-reported data at 2-3 years, 27% missing for teacher-reported data at 6-7
years, and 39% missing for father-reported parenting data at 2-3 years. The data were
considered missing at random (MAR) because it was unlikely that the presence of a missing
value was related to the response that would have been provided (Enders 2010). We used
MPlus to create 40 imputed datasets. The results presented use the pooled results across the
40 datasets. This imputation strategy exceeds the number of datasets recommended for
generation of imputed values given the level of missing data (Graham et al. 2007).
The imputation model included all of the substantive and control variables described
above, along with child age in months at each wave, cultural background, gender, infant
irritability (parent-reported temperament measure from Wave 1 of LSAC when children were
aged birth to 1 year), child sociability at 2-3 years (parent-reported temperament measure),
and Wave 1 parent-reported maternal and paternal warmth, hostility, and maternal mental
health.
Results
Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and correlations among all
variables are provided in Table 3. All correlations were in the expected directions. Children’s
emotional and attentional regulation at age 2-3 years were both positively correlated with
parenting warmth for mothers and fathers and later prosocial skills, and negatively correlated
with parental hostility for mothers and fathers. Children prosocial skills at 6-7 years were
12
negatively correlated with maternal and paternal hostility but not significantly correlated with
parental warmth.
In the interest of model parsimony for the structural models, covariates were included
only if there was a significant correlation between the control variables (family socio-
economic position or child age) and the substantive variables. In the following models, we
adjusted for the influence of socio-economic position on emotional regulation, maternal and
paternal hostility, and children’s prosocial skills. We also adjusted for the influence of
children’s age in months at 2-3 years on attentional regulation and maternal and paternal
hostility.
Research Questions 1 and 2: Model 1:
1. Are there direct associations between parenting behaviours (warmth and hostility) for
mothers and fathers when children are 2-3 years of age and children’s prosocial
behaviours at 6-7 years?
2. Are there direct associations between self-regulation (emotional and attentional
regulation) at 2-3 years of age and children’s prosocial behaviours at 6-7 years?
Model 1 included all direct paths between the parenting variables and the self-
regulation variables, at 2-3 years, and prosocial skills, at 6-7 years, adjusted for child age in
months and socio-economic position, as previously described. The self-regulation variables
measured were correlated with each other, as were the parenting measures. The model was a
poor fit to the data (RMSEA = .07; CFI = .85) and accounted for 5% of variance in prosocial
skills. There were significant but small associations between prosocial behaviour at 6-7 years
and measures taken at 2-3-years of emotional regulation (β = .15), attentional regulation (β =
.08), maternal hostility (β = -.07), and paternal hostility (β = -.06). There were no significant
direct associations between prosocial behaviour and maternal or paternal warmth.
In relation to the covariates, children who were older in age (in months) at 2-3 years
had, on average, higher attentional regulation at that age (β = .10. p < .00), and slightly higher
levels of maternal (β = .05, p = .01) and paternal hostility (β = .04, p = .04). Higher family
13
socioeconomic status was significantly associated with lower levels of paternal hostility (β =
-.05, p = .02), and higher emotional regulation in children (β = .15, p < .00), but was not
significantly associated with maternal hostility or prosocial skills. Therefore, these two paths
were not included in the subsequent models.
Research Questions 3 and 4: Model 2
3. Are there indirect associations between early parenting behaviours of mothers and
fathers (warmth and hostility) at 2-3 years and children’s prosocial behaviour at 6-7
years, through children’s self-regulation at 2-3 years?
4. Do the developmental pathways involving early parenting behaviours of mothers and
fathers, children’s self-regulation skills, and later prosocial skills, differ for boys and
girls?
In Model 2, we tested a model that included all the direct paths from early parenting to
self-regulation, as well as regressing self-regulation and parenting on to prosocial skills at 6-7
years. This model tested the role of self-regulation in the developmental path between the
parenting variables and prosocial behaviour. The covariates of child age in months and socio-
economic position were again included in the model. The model testing the indirect
associations between self-regulation and prosocial behaviour was a good fit for the data
(RMSEA = .04; CFI = .96). This represents an improvement in model fit compared to the
previous direct effects model when comparing the CFI fits for each model (Δ CFI > .02;
Cheung & Rensvold 2002). The model accounted for 4% of the variance in predicting
prosocial skills.
We repeated the analysis of this model as a multi-group path model to explore the
extent to which the indirect parenting associations with prosocial skills, through self-
regulation, differed for boys and girls. This model was also a good fit to the data (RMSEA =
.03; CFI = .96). However, because Wald tests for sequentially constrained paths across
groups showed that there were no statistically significant differences for the estimates for
boys and girls and the estimates were highly similar across the whole group and multi-group
models, only the whole group model estimates are presented (Figure 1A & B).
14
In Figure 1A, the estimates indicate that maternal and paternal parenting hostility were
associated with prosocial behaviour at 6-7 years only through an association with emotional
regulation, rather than directly. The negative coefficients between the parenting hostility
variables and emotional regulation show that higher levels of parenting hostility were
associated with lower levels of emotional regulation which was in turn associated with poorer
prosocial skills at 6-7 years. This indirect association was stronger for maternal hostility than
for paternal hostility. The association between parenting hostility and prosocial behaviour at
6-7 years, through an influence on attentional regulation, was similar but showed smaller
overall estimates. In Figure 1B, the estimates indicate that maternal and paternal parenting
warmth, had a positive association with prosocial skills at 6-7 years through an association
with attentional regulation, and to a lesser extent, emotional regulation. In this indirect effects
model, there were no longer significant direct associations between parenting and prosocial
behaviour.
Discussion
The present study explored associations between early maternal and paternal parenting
behaviours and self-regulation at 2-3 years, and prosocial behaviour at 6-7 years. Of
particular interest, was whether relations between parenting and prosocial behaviour were
largely direct, or indirect through an influence on emotional and attentional regulation. In a
baseline model we found self-reported parenting hostility, both for mothers and fathers, had a
negative association with later prosocial behaviour. However, there were no associations
between self-reported parenting warmth and prosocial behaviour.
In modelling the indirect associations between early parenting and later prosocial
behaviours through the pathways of emotional and attentional self-regulation, a better fit for
the data emerged. Parenting hostility for both mothers and fathers at 2-3 years was associated
with poorer emotional and attentional regulation in children. Maternal warmth was associated
with positive attentional and emotional regulation development while paternal warmth was
related to positive attentional regulation, but not to emotional regulation. In turn, emotional
15
and attentional regulation skills at 2-3 years were associated with more positive prosocial
skills in children four years later. The stronger and more robust associations with parenting
hostility rather than warmth reflect recent cross-sectional work suggesting that the absence of
overly critical and hostile parenting is a highly salient consideration in children’s self-
regulatory development (Mathis and Bierman, 2015). Overall, the findings indicate the
relative importance of self-regulation skills in the development of prosocial behaviour, and
the important role that parenting plays in this developmental path.
Children of parents who reported higher frequencies of hostile parenting (e.g.,
frequencies in rates of losing their temper, raising their voice, feeling angry when punishing a
child), had poorer self-regulation, and these children had poorer prosocial skills and the
potential for other less optimal social-emotional developmental outcomes. These parents
were not likely to be modelling behaviours to support children’s self-regulation and the high
correlation between maternal and paternal hostility provided some indication that these
family environments would be stressful home environments for children and for parents.
While specific child or family characteristics may have led to such negative parenting
environments, these were not explored in these analyses. This would be an important
direction for future research.
The findings of the current study suggest that parenting and self-regulatory pathways to
prosocial skill development are equally important for boys and girls and that overall, maternal
behaviours were more salient. However, what is important about the models tested here is
that because maternal and paternal behaviours were tested simultaneously, the estimates
reflect the additional variance contributed by each, controlling for the other. That is,
controlling for maternal warmth and hostility, paternal warmth and hostility explained
additional variance in children’s self-regulatory skills and subsequent prosocial skills. This
suggests a unique and beneficial contribution by fathers despite the stronger associations with
maternal parenting which may reflect the quantity of time mothers tend to spend with
children as the most likely primary caregiver at 2-3 years of age (at a population level). The
lack of gender differences in the developmental paths explored suggest that emotional and
attentional regulation are important precursors to prosocial skills for both boys and girls, and
the absence of hostile parenting is equally beneficial across gender.
Parent-Driven and Child-Driven Effects
As in previous research (Razza and Raymond 2013; Taylor et al. 2015), the models
explored in these analyses assumed parent-driven influences on the development of self-
regulation and prosocial behaviour. Child-driven effects were not taken into account. For
example, children who do not develop expected capacities to self-regulate their own
behaviour by age 3 years may elevate the stress experienced by one or both parents. When
parents own psychological resources are stretched to manage children’s emotional and
attentional reactions then the family environment may fail to be able to support the child
sufficiently.
While there has been limited empirical investigation, particularly longitudinally, that
investigates child-driven effects on parenting, Eisenberg and colleagues (2010) found that
children’s effortful control (self-regulation) at 18 months and 3 years predicted mother’s use
of teaching strategies one year later, while mothers’ use of teaching strategies with their child
did not result in improved self-regulatory capacities for the child. It would seem from these
findings that mother’s prior knowledge of children’s self-regulation skills came into play as
mothers chose the strategies to use with their child to be most appropriate for a given
situation. Individual differences in children’s self-regulation by age 3 years arise for a range
16
of reasons that include genetic and temperamental predispositions with recent research
identifying specific genetic bases associated with the development of self-regulation
(Kochanska et al. 2009; Sheese et al. 2007). However, critical support from the social
environment by parents and other caregivers is still required in those circumstances.
Leaders in the parenting intervention field have proposed that positive and responsive
parenting requires high levels of self-regulation on the part of parents (Sanders and
Mazzucchelli 2013). The items that measured parenting hostility in this study may reflect
parents’ own capacity for self-regulation. These items asked parents to rate how often they
had lost their temper or raised their voice to a child. Parental responses on such items might
reflect the extent to which mothers have the capacity to emotionally regulate themselves.
Parents with poor self-regulation skills may pass on a genetic vulnerability to poor self-
regulation to their children and may also model behaviours indicative of poor self-regulation.
For parenting interventions to be effective then the focus may need to be on parents’ own
skills for self-regulation (Sanders and Mazzucchelli 2013).
Strengths and Limitations of this Research
A strength of this research is the use of a large longitudinal dataset of children across
Australia that enables some generalisation of the findings, bearing in mind that the analytic
sample did differ from the excluded sample with older mothers, higher socio-economic
position, and being less likely to be Indigenous or to speak a language other than English.
The analysis also did not control for cultural status or other contextual socio-demographic
variables likely to relate to the developmental paths involving parenting, self-regulation and
prosocial skills. Future research should account for a broader range of these contextual
variables. Additional strengths of the study include the use of reliable and well-validated
measures that were employed in the LSAC study and the inclusion of reports on parenting
from mothers and fathers. Research studies often rely on a single parental respondent in large
survey studies, usually the mother. The findings do require replication in other national and
cultural contexts.
As noted above, there was less account taken in these analyses for child-driven effects
as a key influence on the development of prosocial behaviour. Transactional models of
development acknowledge the possibility that there are child-driven effects on parenting as
well as parent mental health (Pesonen et al. 2008; Sameroff, 2010). It may be that children
who show early prosocial and self-regulatory capacity are able to elicit more positive
parenting in their parents and children who are more difficult because of temperament or
health reasons make parenting more stressful. This needs to be considered in future studies.
Replication of the findings with additional measures beyond parent- and teacher-report, such
as direct assessment of children’ self-regulatory skills would also strengthen the evidence
base. Finally, the variance in prosocial skills explained by the models is low, even while the
findings provide evidence of the importance of the intervening role of self-regulation in the
associations between parenting behaviours and later prosocial behaviour.
Implications
The findings of the current study suggest that parenting and family interventions should
aim to increase parents’ understanding of children’s early self-regulation as the basis for
improving later prosocial behaviours. Self-regulatory abilities are critical skills for young
children especially when they begin school, in order to be able to focus their attention and
engage positively with peers (Blair and Diamond 2008). Interventions that have
simultaneously addressed parenting behaviour and children’s self-regulation skills have been
17
successful in improving school adjustment for children, of which prosocial behaviour is of
relevance, and also assisting in promoting school engagement (Pears et al. 2015). Family
interventions that have included fathers have also shown positive effects on paternal positive
parenting and children’s social behaviours (Homem, et al. 2014). While early child
temperamental disposition is important, ultimately behaviour is also largely shaped by the
external environmental, and especially through family relationships. This makes efforts to
support these relationships within families particularly important.
Conclusions
This research contributed increased understanding about the role of early parenting and
child self-regulation to children’s later prosocial behaviour. As new knowledge emerges
about the neurobiology of early childhood development, the crucial role of the quality of
parenting has become increasingly evident. The concern in the findings in this research was
the strength of the pathways from hostile parenting behaviours through self-regulation to
prosocial behavioural outcomes. For young children, parenting responsiveness and non-
hostile parenting is essential. It is important for parent education efforts to support adult
recognition of the signals that young children send as well as communicating with children in
ways that help children regulate behaviours and emotions. Self-regulation is a key feature of
developmental change between infancy and childhood that relates to the voluntary regulation
of emotions, thoughts, and actions. This study and many others highlight the important role
that family context plays in shaping key developmental skills such as self-regulation in
children, with significant impacts across many domains including prosocial behaviour.
Policies and practices that aim to simultaneously address parenting approaches and children’s
self-regulatory capacity are likely to have the most impact in ensuring positive school
transitions and lifelong learning and wellbeing outcomes for children.
18
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