The influence of fathers in the development of prosocial and problematic behaviours in Singaporean youths

The purpose of this study is to investigate the correlations and influences of psychopathy, quality of father-child relationship, father’s authoritative parenting styles and family adversity on prosocial and problematic behaviours in Singapore. A secondary objective of this study is to look the moderation relationship of the quality of father-child relationship (i.e. father’s support and admiration dimension and father’s conflict and criticism dimension) with the focus variables in this study. A review of the literature indicates that psychopathy, quality of father-child relationship, father’s authoritative parenting styles and family adversity are predictors of prosocial and problematic behaviours. Current research on child and adolescent behaviours tends to emphasize either prosocial or problematic behaviours, but seldom are both kinds of behaviours investigated in a single study and non-clinical sample. To fill this research gap, the present study investigates both the prosocial and antisocial behaviours, as well as, the factors influencing the behaviours in one single study with a non-clinical sample. Data was collected from 694 adolescent participants. Analyses was carried out to establish the variables associated with prosocial and problematic behaviours and their correlations between the variables. Moderation relationships were explored for father’s support and admiration dimension and conflict and criticism dimension as moderators for the independent variables on prosocial and problematic behaviours. Results from this study supported previous research findings that found psychopathy, quality of father-child relationship, father’s authoritative parenting styles and family adversity to be significantly associated with prosocial and problematic behaviours. In this study, psychopathy and father’s authoritative parenting style predicted prosocial and problematic behaviours. Also, family adversity was found to predict problematic behaviours during adolescence but no significant relationship was found between family adversity and prosocial behaviours. The key findings from our moderation analysis reported that for dispositional trait-like individual characteristics, like psychopathy, father’s support and admiration dimension plays a role in decreasing problematic behaviour. For contextual situations type of variables that involved reciprocal relationships or interactions (e.g., authoritative parenting and adverse family circumstances), father’s conflict and criticism dimension plays a moderating role in influencing problematic behaviours.