The Role of Fathers’ Depressive Symptoms and Lax and Over-Reactive Discipline in Children’s Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors

This study examined the role of fathers’ depressive symptoms and lax and over-reactive discipline in children’s externalizing
and internalizing behavior problems in a community sample of 36 fathers and their children. Correlational analyses provided
considerable support for the expected associations between the study variables. When a regression-based approach recommended
by Baron and Kenny (J Personal Soc Psychol 51:1173–1182, 1986) was applied to the data in order to determine whether fathers’ discipline mediated the association between their depressive
symptoms and children’s behavior problems, results indicated that fathers’ lax discipline mediated the link between fathers’
depressive symptoms and children’s father-reported internalizing behaviors. In contrast, fathers’ depressive symptoms and
lax discipline were independent predictors of children’s father- and mother-reported externalizing behaviors.