The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the possibility that mothers’ and fathers’ support are differentially moderated by personality-informed latent classes in predicting youth social initiative, therefore making contingent the previously detected pattern of fathers’ support being more impactful than mothers’ support with regard to this outcome. To test this, we conducted mixture model regression analyses (separately .[‘or boys and girls). Guided by prior research, we used the youth personality scales activity, openness, and fearlessness, along with mothers’ and fathers’ support, to index the latent class assignments from the mixture model. Results for both boys and girls suggested three classes of youth–apprehensive, easy-going, and spontaneous–that moderate the relationship between mothers’ and/or fathers’ support with social initiative.
Coley and Coltrane (2007) recently identified three streams of research necessary to advance the field of fathering, one of which is “attention to fathers’ uniqueness through detailed study of the similarities and differences in mothers’ and fathers’ behaviors and effects on children” (p. 226). As scholars have sought to conduct such research there has been an increase in the variety of designs and methodological approaches employed to parse the effects of lathers from the effects of mothers. For example, Amato and Rivera (1999) utilized structural equation modeling to identify the unique contributions of fathers, net of the effect of mothers. Hierarchic linear regression has also been employed to identify the outcomes attributable uniquely to each parent in the context of the other parent (e.g., Davidov & Grusec, 2006). Using a different strategy, Downey and colleagues (e.g., Downey, 1994; Downey, Ainsworth-Darnell, & Dufur, 1998; Downey & Powell, 1993) assessed differences between children in single-father families and single-mother families to identify child outcomes that might be more tightly bound up with fathering than mothering or vice versa. Additionally, Stolz and Colleagues (Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005; Stolz, Barber, & Olsen, 2005) applied dominance analysis, a method that interprets rather than controls for the predictive ability shared by parents, to identify the relative importance of mothering and fathering with various youth outcomes.
While this collective work has added to our understanding of mothers’ and fathers’ differential impact on children and adolescents, it is important to note that all of the studies discussed above average over large groups of children. Few studies with the primary purpose of identifying differential mother/father contributions have considered the possibility that youth personality might interact differently with fathering than with mothering. This untested question has the potential to qualify reported findings of unique contributions of either fathers or mothers to specific youth outcomes. In other words, mothering, but not fathering, might contribute uniquely (on average) to a youth outcome. But, there might be many youth, based on personality, for whom that pattern does not hold or for whom the opposite pattern can be detected. The purpose of the present work, therefore, is to consider what youth personality can tell us about the potentially differential linkages of mothering and fathering behaviors with youth outcomes (e.g., their “uniqueness;” Coley & Coltrane, 2007, p. 226). Specifically, we follow up on previously published results (Stolz et al., 2005) indicating strong differential effects of fathers’ and mothers’ support with the degree to which youth initiate interaction with peers and adults outside of the home (i.e., social initiative) and investigate whether those reported gender-of-parent findings hold after appropriately taking into account youth personality.
The remainder of this manuscript first reviews research related to mothers’ and fathers’ support, ending with an overview of the published study on which the present study builds. Next, we review offspring temperament and personality as a moderator of parental support, synthesizing the research to reveal those personality constructs most likely to be involved in moderation of parental support. Finally, we introduce the concept of differential moderation of mothering and fathering, and investigate the possibility that latent classes, distinguishable by youth personality, might differentially moderate mothers’ and fathers’ support, thereby qualifying previously reported differential effects of mothers and fathers.
