engleski

Parenting behaviors of fathers of Croatian adolescents: Sociodemographic predictors

Theories on determinants of parenting (Belsky, 1984 ; Martin & Colbert, 1997) postulate that sociodemographic variables are among the factors that influence quality of parenting. In transitional societies such as Croatian, the question of how sociodemographic variables relate to parental behaviors is of high importance. The aim of this study was to examine how parenting behaviors of fathers of Croatian adolescents relate to some sociodemographic characteristics of fathers themselves (age and education), their adolescent child (age and gender), and the whole family (number of children in the family and family income). The study is a part of broader research on determinants of parenting conducted on more than 1000 families with adolescent children. In the present study, self-reported parenting behaviors of fathers from two-parent families were analyzed. Fathers (N=812) filled out the Croatian Parental Behavior Questionnaire (URP, Keresteš, Kuterovac Jagodić & Brković, 2006), which measures three dimensions of parenting: positive parenting, negative parenting and permissiveness. Results of the hierarchical regression analyses have shown that sociodemographic variables were relatively weak predictors of paternal behaviors, explaining only a few percents of variance. Father’ s age was significant predictor of positive parenting and permissiveness, child’ s gender significantly predicted negative parenting, whereas number of children in the family significantly predicted all three dimensions of parenting. Younger fathers reported more positive parenting behaviors and higher permissiveness than did older fathers. Fathers of boys reported more negative parenting than fathers of girls. Fathers who had more children rated themselves lower on positive parenting and permissiveness, whereas higher on negative parenting. Although significant relations found in the study were all in expected direction, overall the results suggest that factors other than sociodemographic variables might be more important determinants of parenting behaviors of fathers of Croatian adolescents.

parenting; sociodemographic predictors; fathers; adolescents

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