Caregivers' time poverty, parenting styles and children's growth mindset.

Abstract

Time poverty is increasingly prevalent in contemporary society, particularly among working parents. This research, consisting of three studies, investigated the impact of caregivers' time poverty on parenting styles and its subsequent association with children's growth mindset regarding intelligence. Study 1a (N = 149 caregivers) revealed that priming caregivers' perceptions of time poverty resulted in lower autonomy-supportive parenting and higher controlling parenting. Study 1b (N = 224 children) demonstrated that manipulating children's perceptions of low autonomy-supportive and high controlling parenting resulted in a lower growth mindset and more negative mindset meaning system indexes, including higher negative effort belief, performance-avoidance goal, helpless attribution and lower challenge-seeking and resilient attribution. Study 2 (N = 1060 caregiver-child dyads) used a two-wave, multi-source design to test the entire model. Results indicated that caregivers experiencing higher levels of time poverty were more likely to exhibit less autonomy-supportive and more controlling parenting styles, which, in turn, were associated with their children reporting a lower growth mindset and a more negative mindset meaning system. These relationships held after controlling for caregivers' subjective socioeconomic status and their perception of children's math competence. The findings highlight the detrimental effects of caregivers' time poverty on parenting practices and children's developmental outcomes.