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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Parent Sci Pract. 2011;11(2-3):199–213. doi: 10.1080/15295192.2011.585567

Attributions and Attitudes of Mothers and Fathers in the United States

Jennifer E Lansford 1, Marc H Bornstein 2, Kenneth A Dodge 3, Ann T Skinner 4, Diane L Putnick 5, Kirby Deater-Deckard 6
PMCID: PMC3150111  NIHMSID: NIHMS293478  PMID: 21822402

SYNOPSIS

Objective.

The present study examined mean level similarities and differences as well as correlations between U.S. mothers’ and fathers’ attributions regarding successes and failures in caregiving situations and progressive versus authoritarian attitudes.

Design.

Interviews were conducted with both mothers and fathers in 139 European American, Latin American, and African American families.

Results.

Interactions between parent gender and ethnicity emerged for adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure. Fathers reported higher adult-controlled failure and child-controlled failure attributions than did mothers, whereas mothers reported attitudes that were more progressive and modern than did fathers; these differences remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Ethnic differences emerged for five of the seven attributions and attitudes examined; four remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Medium effect sizes were found for concordance between parents in the same family for attributions regarding uncontrollable success, child-controlled failure, progressive attitudes, authoritarian attitudes, and modernity of attitudes after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias.

Conclusions.

This work elucidates ways that parent gender and ethnicity relate to attributions regarding U.S. parents’ successes and failures in caregiving situations and to their progressive versus authoritarian parenting attitudes.

INTRODUCTION

U.S. American Culture

Individuals’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are grounded in the political, social, and economic histories of their cultural groups (Super & Harkness, 2002). On many dimensions, the United States can be considered to be a prosperous country. For example, with a per capita Gross National Income of $46,040, the United States ranks as one of the wealthiest countries in the world (UNICEF, 2007). The United States also fares well on indicators of national health, with an infant mortality rate of .6%, an under-5 mortality rate of .8%, and a life expectancy at birth of 78 years (UNICEF, 2007). The U.S. high school graduation rate is 75% (Balfanz, Bridgeland, Moore, & Fox, 2010), and the adult literacy rate is 99% (United Nations Development Programme, 2006). Taken together, these numbers suggest that U.S. American parents and children have access to a wealth of resources. However, the United States is also characterized by tremendous diversity in access to resources and experiences that often vary along sociodemographic lines (e.g., as a function of ethnicity, immigration, and SES).

U.S. American culture has been shaped historically by the principles of liberty, freedom, and equality as well as opportunities available within a capitalist society (Tamis-LeMonda & McFadden, 2009). Even for groups that were historically disadvantaged within the United States (e.g., women, ethnic minorities), these principles were driving forces behind social movements designed to secure their rights as American citizens. These principles and opportunities pervade U.S. American society and shape the attributions and attitudes of parents as they socialize their children within this broader societal context. Although there is variation among subgroups of Americans, the general principles of liberty, freedom, and equality are often translated into U.S. American parents’ valuing of their children’s behavioral independence, freedom to make their own decisions, and equality within the parent-child relationship (Tamis-LeMonda & McFadden, 2009). It is not uncommon for U.S. American parents to convey to children that their opinions matter as much as adults’ opinions, and parents often compromise with their children when decisions must be made regarding points of disagreement (Nucci & Smetana, 1996; Nucci & Weber, 1995). Together, these values have been used to describe U.S. Americans as espousing individualism over collectivism (e.g., Triandis, 1995). In several studies, U.S. Americans have been found to have higher levels of individualism than any other people in the world (Hofstede, 1980; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002).

Despite these general guiding principles, there is also a great deal of economic and cultural variability within the United States in terms of opportunities for personal achievement, choice, and equality, which are in part a function of different experiences individuals have as a result of their ethnicity, social class, or geographic location within the country (Tamis-LeMonda & McFadden, 2009). U.S. American capitalism does not equally distribute economic resources. When compared to other industrialized Western societies, the United States has the highest income inequality rate and the highest poverty rate, in addition to the highest GDP (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). Compared to European American children, Latin American and African American children are approximately three times as likely to live in poverty (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2006). Lower levels of parental education and greater likelihood of being reared by a single parent are other challenges facing ethnic minority children (McAdoo, 2002). Furthermore, ethnic minority parents must socialize their children to cope with prejudice, racism, and discrimination in ways that are not required of ethnic majority parents (McAdoo, 2002).

Compared to European American families, in Latin American and African American families children are expected to show greater respect for authority, and it is more accepted by youth for parents to make decisions for their children (Kagitcibasi, 1996; Keller, 2003; Triandis, 1995). Understanding parenting requires attention to how broader sociocultural contexts shape parenting practices (García Coll & Pachter, 2002). Boykin and Toms (1985) proposed that, as African American parents socialize their children, they must negotiate three cultural orientations: African American, mainstream, and minority. A similar framework would likely apply to Latin American parents. For example, through the process of acculturation, immigrant parents balance U.S. American values and beliefs with the values and beliefs of their countries of origin (Bornstein & Cote, 2009). This has been described as a process of becoming bi-cultural—that is, when recent immigrants do not give up the culture from their country of origin but integrate that culture with the culture of their country of destination. Differences among parenting attributions and attitudes of parents from different ethnic backgrounds can be regarded as adaptations to the challenges and opportunities that each group faces (Bornstein, 1995; García Coll & Pachter, 2002).

Ethnic Variation in Attributions and Attitudes within the United States

Latin American families (who originate from Mexico, Central or South America, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean) currently form the largest ethnic minority group in the United States (15% of the population) and are the fastest growing minority group (expected to comprise 24% of the population by 2050; Pew Hispanic Center, 2007). African American families form the second largest minority group in the United States (13.5% of the population; U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). We studied these groups and European Americans, who comprise 66% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008).

Given robust differences across these ethnic groups in parenting behaviors, and the amount of attention devoted to parenting beliefs in general (e.g., Sigel, McGillicuddy-DeLisi, & Goodnow, 1992), it is surprising that only limited attention has been directed to how parental attributions regarding successes and failures in caregiving situations differ across ethnic groups within the United States. Nix et al. (1999) reported no differences in relations among mothers’ hostile attributions, harsh discipline, and children’s externalizing behavior problems, but they did not directly compare mean levels of attributions across ethnic groups. Chavira, López, Blacher, and Shapiro (2000) studied only Latin American mothers and so were not able to test statistically for group differences, but they concluded that conceptual models regarding attributions that were developed with European American also applied to Latin American mothers. Mackinnon-Lewis, Lamb, Hattie, and Baradaran (2001) reported no significant mean differences between European American and African American mothers’ negative attributions about their sons. The present study therefore fills a gap in the literature by directly comparing attributions among European American, Latin American, and African American mothers and fathers.

Studies that have examined ethnic differences in relation to parents’ attitudes have found that Latin American and African American parents tend to display more authoritarian attitudes regarding parenting than do European American parents (Dornbusch, Ritter, Liederman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987; Livingston & McAddo, 2007). Although European American mothers tend to value independence and autonomy (Harkness, Super, & Keefer, 1992; Harwood, Leyendecker, Carlson, Asencio, & Miller, 2002; Richman, Miller, & Solomon, 1988), Latin American and African American mothers tend to value children’s acting in respectful, deferential, and obedient ways toward adults (Harwood et al., 2002; Villanueva Dixon, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008) and may inculcate these values through parent-child relationships (Dumka, Gonzales, Bonds, & Millsap, 2009). However, ethnic differences within the United States are often more a reflection of SES and acculturation (for immigrant families) than ethnicity per se. There is little evidence regarding whether Latin American and African American parents differ from one another on parenting attributions and progressive versus authoritarian attitudes, but in related domains, Latin American parents have sometimes been found to be more similar to European American than African American parents (e.g., Hughes & Kwok, 2007; Zimmerman, Khoury, Vega, Gil, & Warheit, 1995). Furthermore, first-generation Latin American immigrant mothers have been found to interact with their 5-month-old infants in ways that are more similar to the ways that European American mothers interact with their infants than to the ways that mothers from their countries of origin interact with their infants (Cote, Bornstein, Haynes, & Bakeman, 2008).

The extant literature is even more limited in terms of explicating how mothers and fathers in different ethnic groups in the United States differ in parenting attributions and attitudes. Some evidence suggests that differences between mothers and fathers may be more pronounced in Latin American families than in European American families (Bulcroft, Carmody, & Bulcroft, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999). Latin American families are more likely than European American families to divide household labor along traditional gender lines, with primary responsibility for parenting assigned to mothers (Toth & Xu, 1999). There is some evidence that African American fathers are especially likely to value obedience and getting along with others in their children compared to African American mothers (Julian, McKenry, & McKelvey, 1994). These previous studies do not address the issue of whether there are ethnic differences in mothers’ and fathers’ attributions regarding successes and failures in caregiving situations or progressive versus authoritarian parenting attitudes. Not surprisingly, several scholars have called for more research investigating fathers (e.g., Livingston & McAddo, 2007). This study also fills these gaps in the literature.

The Present Study

The present study addresses two research questions. First, are there differences between mothers’ and fathers’ attributions and attitudes within families in the United States, and, if so, are these gender differences moderated by parents’ ethnicity? Second, how highly are mothers’ attributions and attitudes correlated with fathers’ attributions and attitudes in the United States?

METHOD

Context

Participants were recruited from Durham, NC, in the United States of America. Durham is a city with a population of 250,000 located in a larger metropolitan area of North Carolina with a population of 1.2 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). North Carolina’s total population is 8.9 million. The leading employer is Duke University and Medical Center, but Durham was formerly a manufacturing hub in the tobacco industry and largely remains a working-class city. Forty-six percent of the population of Durham is European American, 11% is Latin American (although this number may be an under-representation given undocumented Latin American families living in Durham), and 37% is African American (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). Fourteen percent of the Durham population is foreign born. In the Durham public schools, 23%, 17%, and 54% of the students are European American, Latin American, and African American, respectively (Durham Public Schools, 2009). Because European American students are underrepresented in the public schools relative to their representation in the Durham population, we recruited through two Durham private schools, where there is a higher proportion of European American students, in addition to public schools and community flyers (see below).

Participants

After obtaining university IRB approval and approval from the appropriate elementary school authorities (research review board and school principals), recruitment letters describing the study and asking parents to return a completed form with their contact information were sent home with students at 15 public and 2 private elementary schools. Letters were in both English and Spanish. As an additional avenue for recruiting Spanish-speaking families, flyers were posted in more than 20 retail establishments, restaurants, libraries, and community centers, and Spanish-speaking research assistants described the study at parent meetings at two elementary schools, parent meetings at Latino community centers, at an afterschool program, and at a local charitable organization.

A total of 509 returned forms or calls in response to the posted flyers gave permission to contact the family. Of these, interviews with 314 families were completed, including 111 European American (108 mothers, 64 fathers), 97 Latin American (94 mothers, 48 fathers; who were primarily recent arrivals to the city with more than half from Mexico and with smaller numbers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and other Latin American countries), 103 African American (99 mothers, 36 fathers), and 3 families from other ethnic backgrounds whose data are excluded from the analyses. For the present study, analyses were limited to the 139 families in which data were available from both the mother and the father. Compared to the families in which both parents did not provide data, the 139 families included in the present analyses were more likely to include married parents and more highly educated mothers but did not differ from the families not included on mother’s age, child’s age and gender, or number of children in the household. Compared to mothers not included in this subsample, the mothers who were included had less authoritarian and more modern attitudes; the fathers included in the subsample did not differ from other fathers in any of the parenting attributions or attitudes examine. Table 1 presents demographic characteristics of the 139 families. There were no differences among the ethnic groups on child age or gender. European American mothers and fathers were older and more highly educated than were Latin American and African American mothers and fathers, and African American mothers and fathers were older and more highly educated than were Latin American mothers and fathers. European American parents were significantly more likely than parents in the other two groups to be married, and African American parents were significantly less likely than parents in the other two groups to be married. There were significantly more adults in Latin American households than in either European American or African American households, and significantly more children in Latin American households than in European American households. On the basis of the similarities in demographic statistics between our sample and the population of Durham, we conclude that our sample is generally representative of the population of Durham.

TABLE 1.

Demographic Characteristics of Children and Families

European American

(n = 62)		 Latin American

(n = 44)		 African American

(n = 33)		 F(2, 135)
Child’s gender (% female) 44% 58% 61% 3.40a
Child’s age in years 8.60 (.56) 8.56 (.77) 8.85 (.57) .10
Mother’s age in years 40.37 (6.15)a 33.26 (6.88)c 37.18 (8.95)b 12.66***
Father’s age in years 42.34 (6.06)a 35.53 (7.62)c 38.00 (6.96)b 13.29***
Mother’s education in years 17.03 (2.98)a 10.37 (4.68)c 14.15 (1.99)b 48.01***
Father’s education in years 17.16 (2.70)a 10.02 (4.59)c 13.53 (2.23)b 58.32***
Parents’ marital status (% married) 90%a 74%c 63%b 30.46***b
Number of children in household 2.26 (.94)a 2.93 (1.32)b 2.52 (1.42) 4.06*
Number of adults in household 1.95 (.28)a 2.56 (1.20)b 2.12 (.49)a 8.78***
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Note. M(SD). Means with different subscripts differ significantly.

a

χ2(2, n = 138).

b

χ2(10, n = 136).

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Procedures

Interviews were conducted in participants’ homes or at another location (e.g., public library) chosen by the participants. Interviewers traveled to these sites in teams of two or three, and each family member was interviewed by a different interviewer in a place out of hearing of the other family members. Parents completed a demographic questionnaire, a measure of social desirability bias (Reynolds, 1982), and two parenting measures.

The analyses in this paper focus on constructs from two measures of attributions and attitudes (see Lansford & Bornstein, 2012). First, parents completed the short form of the Parent Attribution Test (Bugental & Shennum, 1984), which was developed to measure parents’ perceptions of causes of success and failure in hypothetical caregiving situations. Parents are presented with a hypothetical scenario that involves either a positive or negative interaction with a child (e.g., “Suppose you took care of a neighbor’s child one afternoon, and the two of you had a really good time together.”). Parents then are asked to respond to a series of questions regarding reasons that the interaction was positive or negative. Parents rate on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all important, 7 = very important) how important factors such as the child’s disposition and the parent’s behavior were in determining the quality of the interaction. The amount of power or control attributed to oneself versus children is the key dimension of interest. This measure yielded four variables: (1) attributions regarding uncontrollable success (6 items; e.g., how lucky you were in just having everything work out well); (2) attributions regarding adult-controlled failure (6 items; e.g., whether you used the wrong approach for this child); (3) attributions regarding child-controlled failure (6 items; e.g., the extent to which the child was stubborn and resisted your efforts); and (4) perceived control over failure (the difference between attributions regarding adult-controlled failure and attributions regarding child-controlled failure).

Second, parents completed the Parental Modernity Inventory (Schaefer & Edgerton, 1985), which assesses parents’ attitudes about childrearing and education. Each of 30 statements is rated on a 4-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree). This instrument yielded three variables: (1) progressive attitudes (8 items; e.g., Children have a right to their own point of view and should be allowed to express it.); (2) authoritarian attitudes (22 items; e.g., The most important thing to teach children is absolute obedience to their parents.); and (3) modernity of attitudes (the difference between the progressive attitudes score and the authoritarian attitudes score). Alphas for each variable are shown in Table 2. Alphas were .60 or higher for all attribution and attitude variables in each of the three ethnic groups, with the exception of uncontrollable success attributions for Latin American fathers and progressive attitudes for African American mothers and for fathers in all three ethnic groups.

TABLE 2.

Parenting Attributions and Attitudes: Alphas, Tests of Gender Differences, and Correlations for Mothers and Fathers

Mothers Fathers Mothers Fathers
α α M (SD) M (SD) F Fa d da r ra
Attributions
 Uncontrollable success .79 .76 5.59 (1.02) 5.47 (.93) .59 .74 .02 .00 .38*** .20*
 Adult-controlled failure .83 .77 4.22 (.62) 4.33 (.67) 6.03* 7.52** −.05 −.06 −.08 −.09
 Child-controlled failure .72 .78 3.76 (.60) 3.87 (.57) 4.55* 3.93* −.14 −.13 .22* .21*
 Perceived control over failure - - .47 (.95) .46 (.88) .37 .94 .05 .04 −.01 .01
Attitudes
 Progressive attitudes .60 .49 3.14 (.33) 3.06 (.32) 10.28** 10.95** .17 .19 .23** .16
 Authoritarian attitudes .93 .92 2.61 (.55) 2.60 (.52) 1.84 1.49 −.01 −.06 .64*** .33***
 Modernity of attitudes - - .52 (.67) .45 (.67) 10.37** 9.78** .09 .16 .62*** .31***
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Note. Ns range from 130-139. Repeated-measures linear mixed models with gender of parent as the within-subjects factor and ethnicity as the between-subjects factor. Cohen’s d was computed using Equation 3 for paired samples in Dunlap, Cortina, Vaslow, and Burke (1996). There were significant Gender of parent by Ethnicity interactions for adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure; main effects for these scales should be interpreted with caution.

a

Controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias.

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001

RESULTS

On average, mothers and fathers made attributions regarding uncontrollable success that were above the scale midpoints (see Table 2). Mothers and fathers both reported higher levels of adult-controlled failure than child-controlled failure attributions. In addition, both mothers and fathers reported more progressive than authoritarian attitudes.

Gender and Ethnic Similarities and Differences in Parents’ Attributions and Attitudes

We conducted linear mixed models with mother versus father report as the within-subject factor and ethnicity as the between-subjects factor to examine gender and ethnic differences in parents’ attributions and attitudes. Test results are presented with and without controls for mothers’ and fathers’ ages, education, and possible social desirability bias. There were two significant Parent gender by Ethnicity interactions, controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias: adult-controlled failure, F(2, 137.91) = 3.79, p < .05, and perceived control over failure, F(2, 136.48) = 4.27, p < .05. Follow-up comparisons indicated that African American fathers reported higher adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure attributions than did African American mothers, but European American and Latin American parents’ attributions did not differ by parent gender. Given these significant interactions between Parent gender and Ethnicity, the main effects for adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure should be interpreted with caution.

As shown in Table 2, there were significant main effects of gender on four of the seven constructs of interest. Main effects analyses revealed that fathers reported higher adult-controlled failure (which was driven by the African American fathers, as shown in the significant interaction) and child-controlled failure attributions than did mothers. Mothers reported more progressive attitudes and modernity of attitudes than did fathers. All of these differences remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias.

As shown in Table 3, there were significant main effects of ethnicity on five of the seven constructs of interest. The three groups differed on parents’ reports of uncontrollable success, with the highest levels reported by Latin American parents, and the lowest levels reported by European American parents. European American parents reported lower levels of child-controlled failure than did Latin American or African American parents. European American parents reported more progressive attitudes than did African American parents and less authoritarian attitudes than did either Latin American or African American parents. Modernity of attitudes was highest for European American parents and lowest for Latin American parents. With the exception of ethnic differences in attributions regarding child-controlled failure, the other four constructs differed even after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias.

TABLE 3.

Tests of Ethnic Differences in Parenting Attributions and Attitudes

European

American

M (SD)		 Latin

American

M (SD)		 African

American

M (SD)



F



Fa
Attributions
 Uncontrollable success 4.92 (.80)a 6.13 (.82)c 5.79 (1.03)b 43.76*** 18.65***
 Adult-controlled failure 4.22 (.57) 4.25 (.70) 4.33 (.77) .59 .69
 Child-controlled failure 3.68 (.56)a 3.91 (.56)b 3.93 (.65)b 4.87** .68
 Perceived control over failure .54 (.77) .34 (.98) .41 (1.09) 1.35 .10
Attitudes
 Progressive attitudes 3.20 (.29)a 3.06 (.35) 3.00 (.32)b 8.97*** 4.07*
 Authoritarian attitudes 2.17 (.37)a 2.99 (.43)c 2.75 (.42)b 89.27*** 26.43***
 Modernity of attitudes 1.04 (.52)a .07 (.50)c .25 (.54)b 79.54*** 23.74***
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Note. Ns range from 130-139. Repeated-measures linear mixed models with gender of parent as the within-subjects factor and ethnicity as the between-subjects factor. There were significant Gender of parent by Ethnicity interactions for adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure; main effects for these scales should be interpreted with caution. Means with different subscripts differ significantly in post-hoc LSD pairwise comparisons.

a

Controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias.

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Within-Family Correlations Between Parents’ Attributions and Attitudes

The final columns of Table 2 present bivariate correlations of mothers’ attributions and attitudes with fathers’ attributions and attitudes. As shown, five of the seven analyses revealed significant concordance between parents within a family; four remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Significant positive correlations were found for mothers’ and fathers’ attributions regarding uncontrollable success, child-controlled failure, progressive attitudes, authoritarian attitudes, and modernity of attitudes.

The equivalence of mother-father correlations across ethnic groups was tested using multiple group models in AMOS 17. Multiple group models in which covariances between mother and father scores were constrained to be equal across the three ethnic groups were compared to models in which the covariances were free to vary across the three ethnic groups. To have the degrees of freedom to compute model fit statistics, we tested the seven attribution and attitude measures in pairs, assuming independence across domains. All of the differences in chi-square values for the unconstrained and constrained models were nonsignificant, indicating that the mother-father correlations were similar across ethnic groups.

DISCUSSION

The present study examined parenting attributions and attitudes among European American, Latin American, and African American mothers and fathers in Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A. Fathers reported higher adult-controlled failure and child-controlled failure attributions than did mothers, and mothers reported more progressive attitudes and modernity of attitudes than did fathers; these differences remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Ethnic differences were found on five of the seven attributions and attitudes examined; four remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Mothers’ and fathers’ attributions regarding uncontrollable success, child-controlled failure, progressive attitudes, authoritarian attitudes, and modernity of attitudes were also moderately correlated; with the exception of the correlation between mothers’ and fathers’ progressive attitudes, these correlations remained significant after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Mothers’ and fathers’ attributions regarding adult-controlled failures and perceived control over failure were not significantly correlated.

Despite these gender and ethnic differences, the overall means within the U.S. American sample revealed that, on average, mothers and fathers from all three ethnic groups held more progressive than authoritarian parenting attitudes. This finding makes sense in the context of the U.S. American cultural emphasis on individualism, which focuses on freedom, choice, and autonomy. On average, parents’ attitudes about parenting seem to reflect these cultural attitudes in granting children freedom to make their own choices and express their own points of view. Within the context of these overarching cultural patterns, it also is informative to consider similarities and differences between mothers and fathers and across the three ethnic groups within the United States.

Similarities and Differences between Mothers and Fathers

Mothers and fathers did not differ in mean levels of uncontrollable success attributions or authoritarian attitudes. European American and Latin American mothers and fathers did not differ in mean levels of perceived control over failure, but African American fathers reported higher perceived control over failure attributions than did African American mothers. The remaining attributions and attitudes differed in mean levels for mothers and fathers in all three ethnic groups. One reason that mothers and fathers may differ in mean levels of their attributions and attitudes regarding parenting is that, on average, mothers spend more time with children and have more responsibility for their day-to-day care than do fathers (Day & Lamb, 2004), which may shape their attributions and attitudes through motivation and experience in these interactions (Miller, 1995). Understanding similarities and differences between mothers’ and fathers’ attributions may have important implications for understanding how attributions are transmitted to children. Goodnow (1992) suggested that the degree to which parents agree on beliefs related to parenting may affect children’s awareness and acceptance of those beliefs.

Medium effect sizes were found for concordance between parents in the same family for attributions regarding uncontrollable success, child-controlled failure, progressive attitudes, authoritarian attitudes, and modernity of attitudes after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias, consistent with the moderate correlation reported by Shears, Whiteside-Mansell, McKelvey, and Selig (2008). Both selection and socialization factors could explain why parents independently report having generally similar attributions and attitudes regarding parenting. Through assortative mating, men and women who are similar on a number of dimensions are more likely to select into relationships and have children with one another than are men and women who have divergent beliefs (Luo & Klohnen, 2005). Furthermore, once they are in a relationship, men and women may shape one another’s attitudes, but there is stronger evidence for selection than socialization factors in explaining similarities between husbands and wives (Luo & Klohnen, 2005). With respect to attributions and attitudes regarding their child, mothers and fathers may show similarities because they are responding to the stimulus of the same child. Within a family, it may be adaptive for mothers and fathers to share similar attributions and attitudes because they may then be more consistent in their responses to a child and less in conflict as coparents (Belsky, Crnic, & Gable, 1995).

Similarities and Differences among Ethnic Groups

Controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias, European American, Latin American, and African American parents did not differ on two of the seven constructs investigated. When mothers and fathers were combined, attributions regarding adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure were similar across the three U.S. ethnic groups. This similarity suggests that parents in all three groups were equally likely to attribute responsibility to themselves when hypothetical caregiving interactions did not go well and to attribute similar levels of control over failure to themselves relative to children in these situations. According to Norenzayan and Heine (2005), this kind of converging evidence across cultural groups is a key to understanding the generalizability of psychological processes.

The three ethnic groups showed differences on the other five constructs, and all except one continued to differ after controlling for parents’ age, education, and possible social desirability bias. These patterns of differences are consistent with previous research using U.S. American samples, which has found that Latin American and African American parents tend to hold more authoritarian attitudes about parenting than do European American parents (Dornbusch et al., 1987; Livingston & McAddo, 2007). These findings fill a gap in knowledge regarding whether there are ethnic differences in parents’ attributions regarding success and failure in caregiving situations. European American parents’ lower levels of attributions regarding uncontrollable success seem consistent with findings that European American parents may have higher levels of parenting efficacy than do Latin American or African American parents (Okagaki & Frensch, 1998).

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

One limitation of this study is that, although we were able to examine the three largest ethnic groups in the United States, we were not able to include others. Asian American families comprise 5% of the population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008) and constitute an important group to include in future research. Our sample size was not large enough to examine Latin American families from different countries of origin separately. Although we recognize that there may be important differences among Latin American families depending on factors such as country of origin, length of time in the United States, and level of acculturation (Mendoza, Javier, & Burgos, 2007), we analyzed the Latin American families in our sample as a single group. Harwood et al. (2002) provide a detailed discussion of variability among Latin American families on a number of dimensions, but they conclude that respeto, or an emphasis on children’s demonstrating respect and obedience, is valued by Latin American families from a wide range of national, economic, and social backgrounds.

There also is evidence that parents’ attributions and attitudes may differ in their associations with children’s adjustment for sons versus daughters (e.g., Dumka et al., 2009). An important direction for future research will be to examine not only parent gender differences but child gender differences as well. Because of our focus on examining relations between mothers’ and fathers’ attributions and attitudes, our analyses were limited to those families in which both a mother and father were available to respond to our measures. These included families in which the parents had never married or in which they had divorced, but there were still two parents to provide data. Although we controlled for parents’ education, we did not have data available on families’ income. There is evidence that parental education is more strongly related than is income to parenting attitudes and values (Davis-Kean, 2005), but future research would benefit from further attention to unpacking components of SES as they relate to parents’ attributions and attitudes. An additional limitation was the low alpha for fathers’ progressive attitudes; caution is warranted in interpreting results using that variable.

Conclusions

Within the United States there are both parent gender and ethnic differences in parents’ attributions and attitudes. These differences cannot be accounted for by parents’ age, education, or possible social desirability bias. Overall, there is moderate concordance between mothers’ and fathers’ attributions and attitudes. Finding parent gender differences and ethnic group differences suggests that there are likely to be powerful gender and cultural processes that help shape childrearing attributions and attitudes. This work contributes to the literature a novel focus on ways that parent gender and ethnicity relate to attributions regarding parents’ successes and failures in caregiving situations and to progressive versus authoritarian parenting attitudes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805 and Fogarty International Center grant RO3-TW008141. Kenneth A. Dodge was supported by Senior Scientist award 2K05 DA015226 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This research was also partially supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NICHD.

Contributor Information

Jennifer E. Lansford, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, Box 90545, Durham, NC 27708. lansford@duke.edu

Marc H. Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University

Ann T. Skinner, Duke University

Diane L. Putnick, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Kirby Deater-Deckard, Virginia Tech..

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