Liens prédictifs entre les traits de personnalité et l’alliance parentale : une comparaison des mères et des pères
It has been theorized that personality has implications in both parenting behaviours and the extent to which parents are willing to collaborate in order to respond to a child’s changing needs (Abidin, 1992 ; Belsky, 1984 ). However, few studies examined the relationship between parent’s personality traits and their parenting alliance (Jacobson et al., 1995; Stright et Bales, 2003). This study focused on three objectives.  The first aim was to examine the influence of parent’s personality traits on his own perception of the parenting alliance. The second objective was to verify if the partner’s personality traits predicted the perception of the parenting alliance of the other parent. Lastly, the study aimed to identify potential sexual differences in the predictive relations between personality traits and parenting alliance. Data was collected using a sample of 170 mothers and fathers of children aged 24 to 48 months, living in the Montreal area, who completed self-report questionnaires. The results of this study show that high agreeableness in mothers and high emotional stability in fathers were linked to better perception of the parenting alliance. Furthermore, spouse’s high agreeableness predicted higher parenting alliance scores, for both parents. Compared to father’s agreeableness, mother’s agreeableness is significantly a better predictor of father’s perception of the parenting alliance. Also, when mother’s and father’s scores were compared, none of the partner’s personality traits emerged as a more significant predictor of the parenting alliance as perceived by mothers. This study provides evidence that some parent’s characteristics are important in understanding how they perceive the cooperation with their spouse in regard to parenting.
Parents Parenting alliance Personality traits Cross-sectional study