Patterns of absolute, differential and structural continuity in perceptions of nurturance in mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter and father-son dyads

Abstract

Parents’ and their adolescent children’s perceptions have found to have both similar and different perceptions of their parent-adolescent relationship (Carlson, Cooper, & Spradling, 1991; Comstock, 1994) with changes in perceptions of nurturing and/or warmth becoming more apparent during the adolescent transitional phase and as a function of parent adolescent gender differences (Clark-Lempers, Lempers, & Ho, 1991). Three waves of data were collected from Iowa parents with adolescent children in the sixth (11-to 13years) or eighth grade (12-to 14-years) at the first wave of measurement responded at each wave of measurement to 21 parenting questionnaire items taken from Roberts, Block and Block (1984) Child Rearing Practicing Report, and from Schaefer’s (1965) Child’s Report of Parental Behavior Inventory. Differential, absolute and structural continuity was assessed in parents’ and their adolescent children’s perceptions of parental nurturance. Differential continuity was investigated by correlating for mothers, fathers and the adolescent children their respective nurturance scores at wave 1, wave 2 and wave 3. Absolute continuity was assessed with 2 (gender of child or parent) by 2 (grade) by 3 (time) repeated measures ANOVAs to determine significant difference in mean scores between the 3 times of measurement. Structural continuity was investigated by running confirmatory factor analyses. No evidence for differential continuity was found among mothers, fathers, nor the adolescent children in their respective perceptions of parental nurturance correlate across the 3 measurements. There was significant but low correlations between mothers’ perceptions of maternal nurturance, fathers’ perceptions of paternal nurturance and adolescent’s perceptions of parental nurturance at the 3 waves of measurement. Absolute continuity for mothers and fathers were significant, with small decreases in their respective level of parental nurturance over time. The adolescent children perceived a significant but small increase for both mothers and fathers in their respective level of nurturance across time. No evidence was found for structural continuity across the 3 different respondents at each point in time nor for structural continuity across the 3 waves of measurement. Therefore, the assumption that the same underlying uni-dimensional construct is measured across time or across respondents is not justified.