(WITHDRAWN) Abusive Parenting Reporting Discrepancy between Children and Parents and Its Relation to Child Wellbeing

Background

Reporting discrepancy of parenting behavior including abusive parenting between children and parents is common, and the focus has largely been concerning reporting accuracy (Taber, 2010; Johnston et al., 2003; Reyes, 2013). Parents are often regarded as being more likely to provide positive rating, and there is an increasing emphasis on victim’s perspectives (Taber, 2010). Research examining child and parent reporting agreement on parenting behavior has yielded inconsistent results (Taber, 2010; Reyes, 2013). The current study assessed the predictive capacity of abusive parenting of both child and parent reporting, and further examined whether the reporting discrepancy was linked to child behavioral and mental health wellbeing.

Methods

The study used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study that follows newborn children and their parents in U.S. large cities. The study used the latest 6^th wave of data when the children were about 15 years old (n = 3,444).

Independent variables were child and parent reporting of psychological abuse (child being shouted, yelled, screamed, swore or cursed ) and physical abuse (hit or slapped) in the past year, rated on a 3-point scale (1= never, 2= sometimes, and 3 = often). In addition, a compound independent variable was created to indicated child relative to parent reporting (-1 = underrating, 0 = equal rating, 1 = overrating). The dependent variables included child depression, delinquency, and aggression based on standard measurement. Child and parent characteristics and family and school factors were used as control variables.

Results

Multivariate models show that compared with parent rating of abuse, child rating was more predictive of depression, delinquency, but less predictive of aggression. When compared with their parents’ rating, about 1/4 of the children underrated while another 1/4 overrated psychological abuse, and the corresponding rates were both about 1/10 for physical abuse. Multivariate models further show that for psychological abuse, child overrating was associated with higher depression (b = 0.12, p<.001) and lower delinquency (b = -0.03, p<.006), and child underrating was associated with lower depression (b = -0.08, p<.001) and higher aggression (b = 0.07, p<.001). For physical abuse, both child overrating and underrating was associated with higher depression, delinquency, and aggression.

Implication

The results suggest that parents may justify their abusive parenting as a way to control child aggressive behavior, because parent rating of abusive behavior is more predictive of child aggression than child rating. However, parents may not realize the harm of abusive parenting to children’s behavioral and mental wellbeing, as parents’ rating is less predictive of children’s depression and delinquency than children’s rating. Furthermore, rating discrepancy between children and parents may be an important clue to understand the impairment of child behavioral and mental health wellbeing, such as children who rated abusive parenting higher than their parents were more subjective to depression. The findings suggest the importance of assessing abusive parenting rating discrepancy, and considering interventions that target both parenting and child behavioral and mental wellbeing.