Harsh mothers more likely to have poor executive functioning and interpret others’ behavior as hostile

mother scolds child

Kirby Deater-Deckard led research finding that mothers with harsher parenting practices tend to have poorer executive functioning and are more prone to hostile attribution bias. “The findings suggest that targeting reduction in authoritarian childrearing attitudes and orienting parents to situational explanations for child misbehavior, may mitigate some of the potentially problematic effects of having weaker cognitive self-regulation on harsh reactive parenting behavior,” Deater-Deckard says.

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