Previous research has documented that exposure to parental separation/divorce during childhood can be associated with long-term consequences into adulthood. This study sought to extend this literature by examining associations between childhood exposure to parental separation/divorce and later parenting behavior as an adult in a New Zealand birth cohort.
Data were drawn from the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS), a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1,265 children born in 1977 in Christchurch, New Zealand. Information about exposure to parental separation and divorce was gathered annually from birth to 15 years. At the 30-year follow-up, all cohort members who had become parents (biological or nonbiological) were assessed on several parenting dimensions (sensitivity, warmth, overreactivity, inconsistency, quality of child management, and physical punishment).
The analyses showed that exposure to more frequent parental separation in childhood and adolescence was associated with lower levels of parental sensitivity and warmth, greater overreactivity, and an increased use of physical punishment as a parent, after controlling for a wide range of family socioeconomic and psychosocial factors, and individual child characteristics.
The findings suggest that as exposure to parental separation increases, so does the likelihood of experiencing multiple developmental challenges in childhood and adolescence. As an adult, these life-course experiences can have small but significant associations with the quality of parenting behavior.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 June 2018.
All research outputs
#10,249,696
of 34,517,649 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry
#2,301
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Outputs of similar age
#104,717
of 335,778 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry
#29
of 43 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,517,649 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,916 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 25.7. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 335,778 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 43 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
