Citation

Baden AD, Howe GW. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 1992; 20(5): 467-485.

Affiliation

Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1487591

Abstract

As an extension of Patterson's family coercion model, we hypothesized that parental attributions about the causes of child misbehavior and parental expectancies concerning the effectiveness of parenting techniques are involved in the establishment and maintenance of coercive exchanges. Mothers of 40 conduct-disordered children and 40 matched control children completed questionnaires measuring their attributions regarding the causes of their children's misbehavior and their expectations concerning the general and personal effectiveness of parenting techniques. Results supported the hypotheses: parents of conduct-disordered children were more likely to regard their children's misbehavior as intentional and to attribute it to stable, global causes beyond the parents' control. They also were less likely to see their own parenting as effective. We speculate that these parents hold cognitive stances of blame and helplessness that contribute to aversive parent behavior as well as to parent withdrawal in the face of escalating child aggressiveness.

Language: en