For the last of our videos from Noclor (North Central London Research Consortium) and Healthy Start Happy Starts “Attachment Master Class” back in 2016, Stephen Scott thinks about how to alleviate the effects of poor parenting.

Here at Imperial college we are trialling one of the many early parenting inventions available. VIPP-SD (Video Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting- Sensitive discipline) aims to increase a parent’s sensitivity to their child’s cues as well as to appropriately reward and criticise their child. These are not one in the same, says Professor Stephen Scott.

His research on parenting as a whole has suggested that this distinction taps in to two different aspects of parenting and predicts different aspects of a child’s behavioural and emotional functioning.

In one of his own studies he found that a parent’s sensitive responding predicted their child’s attachment security over and above positive and negative parenting however a parent’s level of criticism towards the child predicted conduct problems over and above sensitive responding.

The effects of parenting as a whole therefore may contribute to different aspects of child functioning as a whole. What we can say is that both aspects are important contributors to a child’s future. Marinus van IJzendoorn, Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, Pasco Fearon and Stephen Scott are paving the way in early interventions to allow children to have a brighter one.

As the second International Fathers’ Mental Health Day comes around, Mark Williams asked us if we’d write a blog. We’re delighted to, and thought we’d muse a bit on dads and depression, and talk about a couple of papers that the pPOD team (www.ppod.org.uk) have been involved with which have come out in recent weeks.  

It’s now much better known and accepted that men can also have mental health problems in the postnatal period and when their children are young, and that this can (can, but doesn’t always) affect their ability to work, look after their children and build and maintain a supportive relationship with their partner.  Many men continue to manage brilliantly in the face of depression, anxiety and other mental health difficulties, but it can be a struggle.  More men are speaking out about their experiences, and that is empowering and helpful.  As well as this though it’s important to know what research tells us about the mental health of men who are fathers.

We recently wrote a review article for the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, which appeared in a special issue about parenting (reference 1 below).  For this article we studied as much of the available research as we could, to draw together the key views on the importance of the different dimensions of fathering, to understand how these can shape the father-child relationship, as well as child outcomes.  The key conclusions we arrived at from this were:

• Increased sensitivity and engagement seen in interactions between dads and their children, as well as secure father-child attachment, have been associated with reduced levels of child psychopathology, including reductions in child internalising and externalising behaviours.
• Paternal depression, which is one of the most studied problems affecting fathers, can impact upon the way in which dads interact with their children, and this negative impact has been linked to the development of child behavioural and emotional problems. Interestingly, it seems from some studies that girls and boys may be affected in different ways, dependent on the mental health problem their dad is experiencing (e.g. anxiety, depression, alcohol dependence).
• Key aspects of fathering, commonly affected by paternal mental health difficulties, can be positively influenced through parenting interventions. We think newer, innovative approaches to engage dads in parenting interventions are needed, to maximise beneficial outcomes for both the father and child.  

The other paper we’ve been working on recently has also just come out (see reference 2 below).  This isn’t related specifically to the mental health of fathers, but does look at the potential importance of fathers from very early in children’s lives.  In this study we met with men and women who had new babies and visited them at home when the baby was 3 months old, and again when the baby was 2 years.  We were able to video the parents playing with their children, and also do interviews with the parents about themselves and their children. Finally, when the children were 2 years old, one of the research team sat down with each child to do a standard cognitive test with them (a bit like an IQ test, but obviously changed quite a lot to be suitable for young children – it’s called the Bayley Scales).

So, what did we find?  Well the nub of it was that the children of fathers who were more engaged when we saw them at age 3 months, did better on the Bayley Scale assessment at age 2 years. That is they had higher scores for their cognitive development (a bit like IQ). Child development is complex, and this study can’t tell us for sure that fathers being more engaged was what led to the children having higher cognitive development scores, but it fits with some other studies and so a pattern is forming which suggests that father engagement, even in the earliest days of a child’s life, can have an important positive influence on that child’s cognitive development.
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So, what to take away for this International Fathers’ Mental Health Day.  Well two papers on their own don’t change much, but they add to a growing body of research evidence which shows two things. First, that fathers roles in their children’s lives can be important, right from the very earliest days of that child’s life. Second, that mental health problems commonly affect fathers, they can affect not only dads, but also their partners and children, and efforts to recognise this, and provide effective and accessible help for families (both mums and dads) is important. 

Attachment is important and is associated with many of children's mental health and behavioural outcomes. If you aren't convinced I invite you to watch our other clips from our "Attachment Masterclass" available on the pPOD website!

However if we aim to improve children's  outcomes as a whole there may be other influences to consider. Professor Stephen Scott points us to other possible enduring consequences of poor parenting including ill-adaptive habits such as poor diet and low exercise that will have an obviously adverse effect on children.