Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 7, No, 2, 1998, pp. 171-186

Formal Characteristics of Narratives as Predictors of Maladaptive Parenting Paul S. Strand, Ph.D.,1,3 Robert White, MA.,2 and Lisa O. Touster, M.A.2

We examined the relationship between several characteristics of parents' narrative productions and two measures of maladaptive parenting. The two maladaptive parenting variables, indiscriminate responding to children's behavior and parent compliance with child disobedience, were derived from in-home observation of parent-child interactions. These were investigated in relationship to several structural aspects of mother Thematic Apperception Test narratives. Results showed that expressions of personal inadequacy and difficulty remaining task-focused during storytelling were related to mothers' failure to remain firm in the face of child disobedience. KEY WORDS: maladaptive parenting; narratives; information-processing; thematic apperception test.

Recent efforts to understand family functioning and long-term outcomes for children have focused on identifying functional versus problematic parenting behaviors (Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989; Sansbury & Wahler, 1992). This research has resulted in the identification and operationalization of two classes of parenting behavior which appear necessary for smooth and respectful interactions between parents and children (Wahler, 1994; Westerman, 1990). The first class has to do with attunement to children's behavior. This variable concerns the degree to which parent behavior is contingent upon and matched to the child's be1 Assistant Professor of Psychology, Washington State University, Richland, WA. 2Doctoral Student, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA. 3Correspondence should be directed to Paul S. Strand, Department of Psychology, Washington

State University, 2710 University Drive, Richland, WA 99352. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected]. 171

1062-1024/98/0600-0171$15.00/0 ® 1998 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

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havior. Attunement has been measured across several age-groups of children beginning in early infancy, and includes measures of interactional synchrony (Isabella & Belsky, 1991; Isabella, Belsky, & von Eye, 1989), responsiveness to children's emotional cues (Crowell & Feldman, 1988, 1991), and discriminate responding to child behavior (Wahler, Williams, & Cerezo, 1990). A second class of parenting behavior concerns explicit efforts at discipline and behavior control, and may be termed conflict resolution. Parents must be able to resolve conflicts with their children, a skill which sometimes requires firmness in the face of child disobedience and protest (Baumrind, 1973; Gardner, 1989; Patterson, 1982). Unlike the attunement process, conflict resolution skills are not necessary until the child gains a certain degree of behavioral and social competence which allow for the emergence of oppositional behavior. Research suggests that if either of these parenting processes, discriminate responding to child behavior or effective conflict resolution, are absent or dysfunctional, then parents and children are likely to find themselves in increasingly entrenched patterns of conflict escalation (Patterson, 1982; Wahler & Dumas, 1986). This occurs because both maladaptive parenting processes reinforce negative child behavior. Faulty conflict resolution processes serve to reinforce coercive child behaviors to the extent that coercive or oppositional behavior is associated with parents' giving in to child demands or termination of conflict (Patterson, 1982; Snyder & Patterson, 1995). Failures of attunement may act as reinforcers for coercive child behavior to the extent that such behaviors decrease unpredictable parent behavior and, concomitantly, result in a more predictable sequence of parent-child interactions (Wahler & Dumas, 1986). A growing consensus exists that both inconsistent parenting and poor disciplinary efforts lead to patterns of conflict escalation that are related to negative outcomes for both children and their families (Gardner, 1992; Snyder, Schrepferman, & St. Peter, 1997). These include family violence (Patterson, 1976, 1982; Patterson & Cobb, 1971; Snyder, 1977), aversive engagements with others (George & Main, 1979; Lewis, Shanok, Pincus, & Glaser, 1979), and poor adjustment in a variety of social and academic settings (Dishion, Patterson, Stoolmiller, & Skinner, 1991; Estrada, Arsenio, Hess, & Holloway, 1987; Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, & Dornbusch, 1991; Vuchinich, Bank, & Patterson, 1992). Efforts have been made to elucidate the factors related to maladaptive parenting behavior. Such variables include lack of knowledge about parenting, difficult child temperament, and parent's problems with depression and socioeconomic stressors. In addition, variables having to do with internal representations of relationships resulting from early life experiences appear to be important

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mediators of child care behavior. For instance, an unresolved or insecure pattern of adult attachment is related to difficulties regulating affect, and evaluating interpersonal situations (Cowan, Conn, Cowan, & Pearson, 1996; Greenberg, Speltz, & DeKlyen, 1993; Lyons-Ruth, 1996). Similarly, relationship functioning characterized by a failure to take the perspective of others is related to poor attunement with child behavior (Strand & Wahler, 1996). Crittenden (1993, 1994) suggests that early life experiences lead to particular cognitive constructs and styles of information processing that might subsequently influence a parent's interactions with their children. This information-processing approach suggests that maladaptive parenting behavior is related to specific deficits in cognitive and affect-regulation processes that should be evident not only in child care situations, but also in other tasks requiring the processing of complex, emotionally laden information. This hypothesis is supported by studies which show that adult attachment patterns related to negative outcomes for children are characterized by deviant reasoning and incoherent discourse in interview contexts focusing on one's early relational experiences (van IJzendoorn, 1995). However, the degree to which maladaptive parenting patterns may be related to discourse deriving from contexts other than those specifically pulling for personal historical information is unknown. Indeed, recent research does suggest that it is not necessarily attachment-relevant content deriving from these interviews, but rather organizational aspects of the narrative productions that are predictive of relational behavior (Oppenheim & Waters, 1995). Therefore, the elicitation of narrative material predictive of relational functioning may not require personal historical information, but may be accessible utilizing various narrative eliciting techniques. We tested the hypothesis that maladaptive parenting behavior would be related to structural and affective aspects of stories narrated by parents. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) cards served as the narrative-eliciting stimuli because we were interested in whether a widely used clinical instrument that did not explicitly seek personal historical information would predict maladaptive parenting. We were also interested in whether different aspects of narrative expression would be differentially related to separate parenting processes. Three formal characteristics of verbalizations and story structure, and a measure of affect quality of stories, were looked at in relation to two parenting processes: an attunement process and a conflict resolution/discipline process. The formal characteristics of story-structure variables included: the degree to which the subject followed task instructions; number of irrelevant comments made about the testing situation or task

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specifications; and number of expressions of personal inadequacy with regard to task completion. These formal characteristics were hypothesized to be related to one or both parenting processes, with the greatest relationship occurring with discipline behavior. The assumption underlying this hypothesis is that stress-induced organizational failure underlies the relationship between narrative construction difficulties and maladaptive parenting behavior. Because disciplinary encounters are more stressful than simply remaining attuned to child behavior, it was believed that these events would show the strongest relationship with the organizational characteristics of parent narratives. Another narrative variable investigated as a possible correlate of parenting behavior was affect tone of relationships. This variable concerns the degree to which the description of relationships occurring in one's narrative productions have a positive or a negative emotional tone. Previous research points to parent negativity as an important influence in the development of child psychopathology (Patterson & Bank, 1989). Therefore, affect tone as expressed in a story-telling task was hypothesized to be related to one or both parenting processes. These hypothesized relationships were tested using regression procedures, and were expected to remain significant even after controlling for the influence of mother dysphoria and socioeconomic distress, variables that have repeatedly been linked to maladaptive parenting behavior (Lyons-Ruth, 1995).

METHOD Subjects Thirty-two mother-child dyads of primary school children (mean age = 8.12 years, SD = 1.67) were recruited in Knoxville, Tennessee. The study was publicized through the distribution of a flyer to the mothers of 300 children of two public schools and a YMCA summer youth program. For families with more than one child within the target age-range, interactions with the youngest were observed. It was assumed that younger children would be more demanding of mothers' attention than older children. Fortyseven percent of the present sample of children were girls. Thirty children were White, two children were Black. The demographics of the participating families conformed with that of the population sending children into these school and summer environments.

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Measures Measures of Narrative Characteristics Perceptual Organization is a measure of the formal characteristics of story structure, and codifies compliance with the standard TAT instructions (Dana, 1959). Consistent with prior research (McGrew & Teglasi, 1990), the present measure was comprised of six (of Dana's original seven) core story elements including card description, present behavior, past events, feeling, thought, and outcome. One point was assigned for each element that was present; otherwise the score assigned was 0. Thus, the scores could vary from 0 to 6 for each category, and from 0 to 36 across all six cards. Two measures were concerned with the characteristics of verbalizations. Perceptual personalization, derived from the work of Dana (1959) and modified by McGrew and Teglasi (1990), was comprised of the following verbalizations: picture criticism, comments or questions about the card or the testing situation, irrelevant comments or questions, contradictions, personal references only tangentially related to the story, and perseverations of content within and between stories. A total possible score across all six cards could range from 0 to 36. Expression of inadequacy was originally a subcategory of perceptual personalization (Dana, 1959). However, because it proved to be an important factor distinguishing children with and without emotional disturbances in a previous study (McGrew & Teglasi, 1990), it was treated separately in the present work. A score of one was assigned for any card in which a reference was made to the storyteller's inability, frustration, dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence, or anticipation of failure in completing the task; otherwise a score of 0 was assigned. The total score over six cards could range from 0 to 6. In addition to measuring the formal characteristics of stories and verbalizations, the affective quality of stories was also measured. Affect Tone of Relationship Paradigms is a 5-point scale measuring the affective quality of relationships among story characters, and is hypothesized to reflect the extent to which one expects malevolence and/or pain versus fulfillment and/or enrichment from relationships (Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1989). The scale was developed as part of a larger effort by Westen and colleagues to measure important aspects of social cognition and object representations. Each story received an affect tone score of 0 to 4, yielding a total six card score ranging from 0 to 24.

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Measures of Maladaptive Parenting Forty-five minute taped segments of in-home mother-child interactions were collected and analyzed using a standardized coding package, Standardized Observation Codes-Revised (SOC-R; Cerezo, Keesler, Dunn, & Wahler, 1986). The SOC-R is a multi-code observational system yielding a detailed picture of ongoing child-parent behaviors and interactions. The codes reflect both solitary (e.g., work, play) and interactive responses (e.g., approach, instruction), with the interactive codes also qualified in terms of valence (neutral, positive, or aversive). The latter qualification requires the observer to interpret nonverbal cues (e.g., smile or frown), voice tone (e.g., soft or sharp) and choice of words (e.g., Nice job. Quit it.). Coding judgments were made within 15-second intervals using a hand-held computer (Hewlett-Packard HP 71B). Codes were specified as they occurred across the course of family interactions. During the 45-minute observations of each videotape, coders watched the target child and scored that youngster's responses, plus any contiguous (both antecedent and consequent) social stimuli provided by mother or any other family member. The reliability and validity of SOC-R have been assessed in prior studies and reported elsewhere (Cerezo, 1988). The SOC-R provides two indices of maladaptive parenting behavior which served as dependent variables in the present study: parent Indiscriminance and parent Compliance. Indiscriminance was defined by a pattern of child-mother interactions marked by mother inconsistency. Mother's inconsistency could be evaluated for every instance in which the child offered two successive social responses (each was coded as positive, neutral, or aversive), and the mother responded to both. Mother's behavior was defined as indiscriminate under the following conditions: a) The two child social responses were similar in valence and mother's two reactions were different (neutral and positive responses were considered as one class and aversive responses as another). For example, she might react neutrally or positively to one child response and aversively to the second; b) The child's two responses were different and mother's reaction "matched" one response but not the other. Thus, if the child presented an aversive and then a neutral response, the mother may react in an aversive manner to both responses. This definition of indiscriminate mothering was derived from earlier research (Wahler et al., 1990) which illustrated that such units of inconsistency were dependably followed by child aversive responding, thus supporting the role of these maternal episodes in generating aversive child behavior. Compliance referred to episodes in which a mother failed to enforce commands. Compliance was coded for a three response interactive se-

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quence which included mother instruction, child opposition, and mother social approach or failure to respond. This sequence reflected a mother giving in to her child's refusal to obey her command. Previous research results indicated that such mother compliance virtually assured that the child would continue to disobey (Wahler et al., 1990), supporting the role of this maternal behavior in generating child opposition.

Measures of Individual and Family Characteristics The Socioeconomic Disadvantage Index (SDI) is an objective measure of a mother's hardships. It is based on demographic information including gross family income, education level of primary caregiver, degree of crime in one's residential area, marital status, number of children, and whether the target child has been referred for treatment by a human services agency. The degree of mother dysphoria was measured using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), a self-report instrument tapping subject's perceptions of living conditions, personal feelings, and outlook on life. While originally designed as a measure of depression, the BDI serves as a reliable and valid measure of dysphoria in normal populations (Beck, Steer, & Harbin, 1988).

Procedures In order to examine natural mother-child interactions, trained undergraduates videotaped mothers and their children in their home for forty-five minutes. Other family members were allowed to be present. The only rules were that the mother and the target child stay within two rooms of the house, leave television sets turned off, and keep incoming phone calls to a minimum. If she struggled for more direction, it was suggested that playing a game with the child, doing daily chores, or preparing and having dinner were all suitable activities. This procedure has been used in many studies of family interaction of primary-school aged children, and is guided by social learning theory (Reid, 1978). Within one month of the videotaping, mothers met with another experimenter in a university psychology clinic, completed several self-report questionnaires and, using standardized instructions (Murray, 1943), were asked to narrate stories to the following 6 TAT cards: 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 13MF, and 15.

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Interrater Reliability Undergraduate coders were intensively trained in the SOC-R system over a two-month period. To assess their reliability, two coders coded 12 randomly selected tapes. Since the data of interest were summary scores of maternal indiscriminate and compliance episodes, these scores were used in the computation of observer agreement. The total number of indiscriminance and compliance episodes were computed and compared for each observer. Pearson correlations greater than .90 were obtained between the two raters for mother indiscriminance and compliance. After an initial training period, two advanced graduate students in clinical psychology scored the TAT stories for perceptual personalization, perceptual organization, and expression of inadequacy. Reliability was established by having 10 (30%) protocols scored by both students. The double-coded protocols were intermixed throughout the scoring process with the single-scored protocols to prevent rater drift. Affect tone of relationship paradigms was scored by two undergraduate raters each of whom coded 29 of the protocols. Percent agreement and values for Cohen's Kappa statistic (Hayes, 1992) for all TAT measures are as follows: Perceptual Organization .91 and .82; Perceptual Personalization .94 and .86; Expression of Inadequacy .95 and .90; and Affect Tone .79 and .72, respectively. These measures illustrate good reliability (Nunnally, 1978). Discrepancies on all double-scored stories were resolved through discussion by the two raters. RESULTS Descriptive data for the sample of mothers is presented in Table 1. The Beck Depression scores for parents fell within the normal range, suggesting that instead of tapping Major Depression the present instrument acted as a measure of dysphoria. The Socioeconomic Disadvantage Index scores indicate that 30% of the present sample were single parents, and 18% were subsisting on less the $12,000 per year. Raw scores for both parenting processes per 15 sec interval and the four narrative variables are also presented in Table 1. Table 2 shows the Pearson correlations between all the variables. As predicted, perceptual personalization, expression of inadequacy, and mother dysphoria were all related to parent compliance with child aversive behavior. Unexpectedly, perceptual organization was unrelated to compliance, and affect tone was unrelated to either parenting variable. Restricted range of scores may have contributed to the failure of these variables to

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Table 1. Descriptive Data for the Current Sample of 32 Mother-Child Dyads Current Measures Maternal Dysphoriaa

Socioeconomic Disadvantage Indexo Referred Through Agency Pressure Single Parent Families Subsisting on < $12,000 Families with > 3 children TAT Measures Perceptual Organization Perceptual Personalization Expression of Inadequacy Affect Tone of Relationships Parenting Measures Compliance Indiscriminance

Mean

5.38 0.97

SD 7.56b 1.15

3% 32% 18% 35% 30.28 4.06 0.19 17.10

3.55 2.76 0.47 2.04

0.07 0.03

0.12 0.05

Note. aBeck Depression Inventory score. bScored on a 6-point scale (0 to 5).

predict maladaptive parenting. There was no correlation between parent dysphoria and SES and any narrative variable. It was hypothesized that the link between narrative variables and parenting behavior would exist independent of the relationship between parenting behavior and other covariates. To test this hypothesis, an hierarchical regression analysis was performed in which parenting variables were to be regressed against all narrative variables and covariates with which they shared a significant zero-order correlation. Mother indiscriminance was unrelated to any narrative variable and, therefore, was not analyzed further. Mother compliance was significantly related to two narrative variables: perceptual personalization and expression of inadequacy. These two narrative variables were regressed against parent compliance following the inclusion of the one significant covariate, mother dysphoria (see Table 3). The variance accounted for by mother dysphoria was significant (r2 = .22, Fchange(1, 30) = 8.36, p < .01). As predicted, the subsequent entry of the narrative variables to the model added significantly to the prediction of parent compliance (r2 = .25, Fchange(3, 28) = 6.59, p < .01). Examination of the t values of the regression coefficients shows that within the context of the multivariate model, expression of inadequacy was the only narrative variable to account for a significant portion of the variance of mother compliance (p < 0.05). The entire model, including dysphoria and both narrative measures, accounted for 47% of the variance of parent compliance (r2 = .47, Fchange(3, 28) = 8.22, p < .001).

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Table 3. Results of Hierarchical Regression .Analyses Predicting Maladaptive Parenting Beha\nor Predictor

B

SE(B)

B

t

2.89**

AR2

Mother Compliance

Covariate Mother Dysphoria Narrative Structural Variables Perceptual personalizations Expressions of Inadequacy Entire Model

0.01

.003

.467

0.96 -0.03

.007 .040

.201 .375

1.28 -2.40*

.22**

.25** .47***

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. Note: B = B weights. B(SE) = Standard error of B. B = Beta weight, t = t value of B. AR2 = Change in R2.

DISCUSSION Our results suggest that structural aspects of narrative productions are related to parenting behaviors. Specifically, formal characteristics of stories having to do with the inclusion of extraneous information, and expressions of personal inadequacy regarding task completion, predict mother compliance with aversive child behavior. These relationships remained significant even after controlling for the relationship between mother compliance and mother dysphoria. Unexpectedly, but possibly due to restricted range of scores, perceptual organization of stories and affect tone of story relationships were both unrelated to parenting behavior. It appears from these results that certain features of parents' behavior in completing a narrative task, namely the inclusion of extraneous statements and references to one's own task-specific inadequacies, are related to a failure to remain firm in the face of child protest. This is consistent with the notion that the information-processing difficulties that interfere with disciplinary activities should also be manifest in situations requiring the organization into a coherent narrative of relatively unstructured interpersonal stimuli. While the present study does not allow for the specification of causation, the results suggest that information-processing difficulties evident in narrative tasks are related to implementation of disciplinary behavior. What is the nature of these information-processing difficulties, and how might they impact the moment-to-moment interactions between parents and children? Perceptual personalization was related to parent disciplinary behavior. This variable has to do with the inclusion of extraneous comments and

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criticisms in the course of completing the narrative task, and may be conceptualized as measuring difficulty remaining task focused. That this variable is related to discipline problems suggests that such child care behavior may be influenced by one's ability to remain focused in the process of completing a demanding narrative task. Expressions of inadequacy, a variable reflecting the storyteller's dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence, or anticipation of failure in completing the story-telling task, was also related to disciplinary lapses. Importantly, this is not self-reported self-esteem, and it is not captured by a measure of dysphoria. Rather, the present variable concerns a lack of self-confidence within the context of a task requiring conceptual and organizational skill. This performance-based failure of self-confidence may interfere with successful conflict resolution and discipline. Taken together, we see failure to remain task-focused and task-specific self-criticalness as related to parental disciplinary failures. Perhaps equally interesting is the fact that while these variables were related to disciplinary behavior, a conflict resolution process, they were unrelated to indiscriminate child-care behavior, an attunement process. In the context of parenting, attunement processes differ from conflict resolution processes in at least two ways. First, while the former are required from birth, the latter are necessary only when the child's maturation allows for noncompliant behavior. Second, unlike conflict resolution processes which represent strategies for specific, discrete, and sometimes highly intense situations, attunement represents a relatively continuous process of monitoring and responding to child activity. Previous research suggests that parent attunement behavior, but not parent conflict resolution behavior, is related to self-reports of poor interpersonal functioning (Strand & Wahler, 1996). Therefore, when examined in light of previous research, parent discipline behavior appears to have correlates that are different from other aspects of parenting behavior. Given the emerging evidence that differences in parenting may lead to qualitatively different outcomes for children (e.g., Crittenden, 1994), it is important to specify those personal and relational characteristics that are related to different parenting processes. Specification of such relationships may lead to targeted therapeutic interventions for families that address the deficits underlying specific maladaptive parenting behaviors. The present methodology does not allow for an understanding of the possible causal nature of the relationship between parent disciplinary behavior and task-specific attention and self-confidence. However, the results do support the elucidation of a methodology capable of testing the causal properties of this relationship. Such a test would require that the nature of parental discipline efforts be assessed in response to the systematic manipu-

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lation of the demandingness of the child-care situation. The informationprocessing hypothesis formulated here suggests that the disruption of parent disciplinary behavior would be proportional to the degree that attention and self-confidence were threatened by environmental demands. In other words, parent conflict resolution behavior should be affected by the interaction between attention and self-confidence, and the demandingness of the childcare situation. This hypothesis stresses the importance of the immediate situation on individual behavior (e.g., Thelen & Smith, 1994), while allowing for the impact of less immediate influences on parent motivation, attention, and behavior (Staats, 1996; Wahler & Dumas, 1989). The hypothesis also calls for efforts to determine what aspects of the child-care situation negatively impact parent self-confidence and attention, and for whom this is likely to be a problem. The results suggest that giving in to child demands, and thereby reinforcing coercive child behavior, is related to poor attention and lack of self-confidence in the context of an organizationally challenging task. Therefore, it is possible that in some instances a major threat to parenting is not a failure to learn proper parenting skills. Rather, poor outcome results from the fact that organizationally challenging situations arise which interfere with attention and self-confidence—processes necessary for the implementation of parenting skills. Without external supports to attention and self-confidence, such as those provided by a supportive network of friends and family, parents are easily disorganized within certain child-care contexts. Therefore, parenting performance may be enhanced not only through the transmission of parenting skills, but also by efforts to protect parents from threats to attention and self-confidence. This formulation is consistent with recent research suggesting that parent training programs that help parents develop a more coherent personal narrative regarding important relationships result in better long-term outcomes for families than programs that do not (Wahler, Cartor, Fleischman, & Lambert, 1993). It suggests that the effectiveness of such programs may lie in the fact that a coherent narrative about one's life and relationships insulates parents against failures of attention and self-confidence that are likely to be problematic within the context of discipline exchanges. Finally, the present study illustrates that a commonly used clinical instrument that is widely available and easy to administer provides a valuable context for evaluating cognitive processes related to parenting behavior. The extent to which the cognitive processes measured in the present study are related to those tapped by personal historical interview techniques and self-report instruments (Feeney, Noller, & Hanrahan, 1994) represents an area for future research.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Portions of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, 1997, Chicago, Illinois. This work was supported by the Graduate School, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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