PPT Slide
Correlations between mother and father variables
Mothers’ and fathers’ AAI coherence and secure base support were not correlated with one another. However, mothers’ and fathers’ reports of marital discord and the child as stressful were significantly correlated with one another.
The other interesting link we found between mothers’ and fathers’ is that if the mother finds the child stressful, the father is less likely to be available and responsive to the child on the playground. Although this was not an apriori hypothesis, we conducted exploratory post hoc analyses to shed light on the possible direction of effects. Specifically, we wanted to examine more closely the influence of the mothers’ and fathers’ report of the child as stressful on the fathers’ secure base support of the child. When these variables are entered in a path analysis (see next slide), we find that the relation between the fathers’ report of the child as stressful and his secure base support of the child becomes non-significant. However, the most important path, that which is between the mothers’ report of the child as stressful and the fathers’ secure base support, remains significant (beta = -.37, p < .05). This suggests that the fathers’ behavior with his child is influenced by the mothers’ perception of the child.