Trajectories of Fathers' Psychological Distress Across the Early Parenting Period: Implications for Parenting

Abstract

© 2015 APA, all rights reserved).Fathers' parenting behavior is a likely key mechanism underlying the consistent associations between paternal mental health difficulties and poor emotional-behavioral outcomes for children. This study investigates the association between fathers' mental health trajectories and key parenting behaviors (warmth, hostility, consistency) spanning the first 8-9 years postpartum. Secondary analyses of 5 waves of data from 2,662 fathers participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children were conducted. Latent growth class analysis was used to identify distinct trajectories of fathers' distress (Kessler-6; Kessler et al., 2003), and latent growth models es..