Depression, Fathering Behavior, and the Moderating Role of Paternal Self-Efficacy

Background and Purpose:  Depression affects a father’s parenting and the mechanisms by which paternal depression affects children are unique from those of mothers.  Depressed fathers are less warm and engaged with their children and are more likely to be hostile, neglectful, and harsh than non-depressed fathers. As a result, children with depressed fathers tend to do worse than children with non-depressed fathers on a myriad of health and developmental outcomes. Although these issues are well-identified in the fathering literature, few studies have addressed potential moderators between depression and paternal behaviors. Paternal self-efficacy, or the beliefs fathers have about their capabilities as a parent, may moderate the relationship between depression and parenting behaviors. The purpose of this study is to determine whether paternal self-efficacy is a resilience factor for depressed fathers, in relation to the warmth they show their children and their use of harsh parenting techniques. 

Method: Data came from the Survey of Contemporary Fatherhood (SCF), a national sample of 2,300 fathers with various paternal roles (i.e., biological parent, residential/nonresidential parent, social parent). The sample matches CDC estimates of the racial/ethnic composition, educational attainment, and paternal roles of fathers over the age of 18 in the United States. Developmentally appropriate measures of father involvement with children 2-8 were employed in this subsample (n= 1107). Fathering was measured through scales for paternal warmth (α= 0.79) and the use of harsh parenting techniques (α= 0.87). The key independent variables were depression, as measured by the CES-D 20 scale (α= 0.91) and paternal self-efficacy, which was measured with an item which asked respondents to indicate how often they felt they could not handle the pressures of parenting. Control variables included race/ethnicity, relationship status, paternal age, child age, child gender, father’s educational attainment, father’s employment, maternal gatekeeping, and number of other children. Because of our interest in the moderating relationship between depression and self-efficacy, we used OLS regression analysis with robust standard errors to analyze the data.

Results: Main effects models showed that depression was negatively associated with warmth (B= -.107, p<.001) and positively related to the use of harsh parenting techniques (B= .214, p<.001). Parenting self-efficacy was positively related to warmth and negatively associated with the use of harsh parenting. Interactive models indicated that depression had a much stronger negative effect on paternal warmth for fathers that reported moderate and low levels of self-efficacy. Relatedly, depressed fathers with moderate and low levels of self-efficacy were more likely to spank, hit, and/or ridicule their children. Depression had no effect on warmth or harsh parenting for fathers with high self-efficacy.

Conclusions:  This study identifies paternal self-efficacy as a resilience factor for depressed fathers.  Self-efficacy significantly moderated the negative association between depression and warmth and the positive relationship between depression and harsh parenting.  As the lack of warmth and the use of harsh parenting tactics have significant deleterious effects on child development, paternal self-efficacy appears to be a crucial intervention factor for family system health.