Brief Report: Young Children's Risk of Unintentional Injury: A Comparison of Mothers' and Fathers' Supervision Beliefs and Reported Practices

Abstract

There is increasing interest in understanding how parent supervision influences young children's risk of injury, but nearly all of this research has been conducted with mothers. The present study compared first-time mothers' and fathers' supervisory beliefs and reported practices, and related these scores to parental reports of their child's history of injuries. Mothers and fathers of children 2-5 years each independently completed a telephone interview and previously validated questionnaires about their supervisory beliefs and practices and their child's history of injuries. Mothers and fathers provided similar reports of their child's injuries (minor, medically attended) and scored similarly on various supervision indices. Despite these similarities, the way mothers' and fathers' supervision indices related to children's injury history scores differed. Children's frequency of minor and medically attended injuries was predicted from maternal supervisory scores but not from paternal scores. Maternal supervision has more impact on children's risk of injury than paternal supervision, possibly because mothers spend more time with children than fathers.