Associations Between Parenting Behavior and Positive and Negative Affect in Elementary Age Children

Children's experience of positive and negative affect is an understudied area that is associated with many negative consequences. Per the tripartite model of emotion, high levels of negative affect and low levels of positive affect are associated with depression. Parent behaviors have been associated with children's experience of positive and negative affect; however, few studies look at the combination of multiple domains of parenting behavior. In this study we explored the relationship between five categories of parenting behavior (positive parenting, involvement, supervision and monitoring, inconsistent discipline, corporal punishment) and elementary students' positive and negative affect. The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children were completed by 777 third to fifth grade students in public elementary schools. Bi-variate correlations and two separate multiple regressions were calculated to determine if parenting behaviors predicted positive and negative affect in children. We found significant positive associations of positive parenting with positive affect in children, poor supervision and monitoring to be significantly negatively associated with children's experience of positive affect, and corporal punishment to be significantly positively associated with negative affect in children. Finally, poor supervision and monitoring was significantly positively associated with children's negative affect, and this remained after controlling for the associations of all other types of parenting behavior. Results suggest that positive parenting, corporal punishment, and poor supervision/monitoring may be key in understanding the development of positive and negative affect in children.