Validation of Parenting Your Baby and Parenting Your Toddler and Associations with Engagement in Parenting Intervention

Infants and toddlers are dependent on supportive and nurturing parenting to promote optimal child development. Assessments of parenting can identify need for parenting intervention, however measures are needed that can predict whether parents reporting challenges will engage in intervention. We validated the Parenting Your Baby (PYB) and Parenting Your Toddler (PYT) parenting measures and examined associations with engagement in parenting intervention. Participants included 403 primary caregivers and their newborns from a multisite longitudinal randomized control trial of the Smart Beginnings (SB) parenting intervention across two urban cities. Caregivers completed the PYB (6 months) and PYT (18 and 24 months) and other self-report measures of parenting and infant and toddler temperament and social-emotional functioning for validation. Observed parenting (6, 18, and 24 months) was coded from observed caregiver-child interactions. Engagement in ongoing intervention (SB) was recorded across infancy and toddlerhood. Factor structure was adequate for the PYB and strong for the PYT. Both measures demonstrated reliability and validity across concurrent and future self-report and observed measures of parenting and caregiver-reported infant and toddler functioning. Parent-reported desire for change in parenting scores on the PYT at 18 months were associated with engagement in parenting intervention 18 through 30 months. The PYB and PYT are reliable and valid measures of the parenting of young children, though more work is needed on the factor structure of the PYB. An important direction for future research is to understand and support engagement in parenting intervention for those who report desire for change but do not engage.