Longitudinal relations between parenting and child big five personality traits

The goal of this research was to examine the relationships between parenting practices and child personality development. There is some lack of consensus on whether and to what extent parenting practices do affect child personality development. For example, social learning and attachment theories assume that parenting practices influence child personality development. Also, a third theory, the psychological resources principle, holds similar assumptions and provides specific predictions about relations between parenting and personality traits. In contrast, some perspectives derived from research in behavior genetics minimize the role of parenting practices on children’s personality development. In order to shed some empirical light on these issues, I examined the long-term relations between parenting and child Big Five personality traits through fitting cross-lagged panel models and bivariate latent growth models in two datasets. Unlike previous studies, I used large samples (N= 3850; N=674), examined multiple parenting measures, and used data from multiple raters. Results from cross lagged models showed a preponderance of insignificant relations between parenting and child personality. A different approach to interpreting the results is to focus on the magnitudes of the associations rather than their statistical significance. In this light, I found that the average regression coefficient between parenting and child personality was .04 in both studies. The average regression coefficient between child personality and parenting was .04 in Study 1 and .06 in Study 2. Results from growth models showed decreasing trends in parenting and child personality across time. The growth models also revealed a preponderance of null relations between parenting and child personality, and especially between changes in parenting and changes in child personality. Focusing on the magnitudes of the associations, we found that the average correlation between the initial levels of parenting and child personality was .08 in Study1 and .10 in Study 2. The average correlation between initial levels of parenting and changes in child personality was .04 in Study 1 and .10 in Study 2. The average correlation between changes in child personality and initial levels of parenting was .04 in both studies. The average correlation between changes in parenting and changes in child personality was .08 in Study 1 and .13 in Study 2. In general, the obtained associations between parenting and child personality were comparable in magnitude to those between factors such as SES, birth order, and child personality—that is, small. The small associations between environmental factors and personality suggest that personality developmental in childhood and adolescence is driven by multiple factors, each of which makes a small contribution