Parental Authority Styles of Parents with Attention Deficit Disorders ( ADD )

The aim of the present study is to examine the differences between parents (mothers and fathers) with attention deficit disorders (ADD), and parents without ADD, regarding their characterizing parenting style (permissive, authoritarian and authoritative) according to Baumrind (1971, 1991). Many theories have aimed to describe and conceptualize the concept of parental authority style. The present research uses Baumrind’s (1971, 1991) theory, which offers three characteristic styles of parental authority, addresses the ways in which parents settle the needs of their children, by means of nurturing and limit setting, each according to his typical style: permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. The point of departure for this study is, that the parent’s gender in combination with the parent being diagnosed as with ADD, will predict his parental authority style. Different researches in the field of Attention Deficit disorders (ADD) point to gender differences in different characteristics along developmental stages from childhood to adulthood (Chen, Seipp, & Johnson, 2008). Thus, we postulated that fathers with ADD will be characterized as with different parenting styles than mothers with ADD, and in comparison to a control group. Based on different studies, we assumed that fathers with ADD will be characterized by a less responsible behavior, yet they will be more direct and active; while mothers with ADD will be typified as more invasive, demanding and negative (Berger & Landau, 2009; Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2008). In addition, we hypothesized that fathers with ADD will be found as more permissive compared to the control group, while mothers with ADD would be more authoritative compared to the control group. The sample included 62 men, 30 with ADD and 32 control subjects without ADD, and 61 women, 30 with ADD and 31 without ADD. In order to examine the hypotheses subjects were instructed to reflect upon their parenting style in present and/or in the past, and to report it while completing the questionnaire. Parental authoritative style was examined by means of the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) developed by Buri (1991), measuring the parenting styles as conceptualized by Baumrind. The findings of the research reveal no significant differences between fathers and mothers without ADD, in neither of the parenting styles, also no significant difference was found between with ADD and mothers without ADD in each of the parenting styles.


Attention Deficit Disorder and Gender Differences among Adults
According to Rucklidge, Brown, Crawford & Kaplan (2007) today approximately 2% of the adult population is affected by the disorder.Biederman et al. (2004), Hun lee, Oakland, Jackson & Glutting (2008) maintain that in adulthood the incidence of the disorder is comparatively more balanced between genders than in childhood (2:1 for males in relative to females).Rasmussen & Levander (2009) and Chtonis-Tuscano et al.
) 2008 ( claim that today there are more evidence that the disorder commenced in childhood and pertains in adulthood.However less studies address ADD in adulthood and fewer deal with gender differences among adults with ADD (Rucklidge et al., 2007).Rasmussen & Levander (2009) mentioned that most of the studies in this field were based on male subjects.
A study by Biederman et al. (2004) have found a co-morbidity of at least one additional disorder among 34% of the women with ADD and among 50% of the men.Among women a lower prevalence was found of conduct disorders (a combined disorder of affect and behavior) or of antisocial disorder than among men.In Rasmussen & Levander's study (2009), a significant difference was found between genders in emotional disorders (more women) and in dyslexia (more men).Among children no significant difference was found in these fields.However among men, as in children, studies documented a more externalized behavior than among women.Also a significant difference was found with regard to abuse and delinquency, which was found more prevalent among men.Another study found that women with ADD have less assets, lower self perception, and more problems than men, all of which may lead to higher dependency towards their male counterparts (Quinn, 2005;Rasmussen & Levander, 2009).
Furthermore, it was found that students that report themselves as having ADD are less achievers than students that do not report having ADD.The former report concerns regarding their academic achievements, higher levels of stress, social difficulties and rate themselves as less emotionally stable.Additionally, they were more prone to alcohol abuse as well as to smoking and using marihuana.Although success during school is marked, and in light of the fact that they succeed in being accepted to superior academic institutions, research have found that hardships and efforts go on throughout life (Blasé, 2009).
In the field of parenthood solely scarce research was conducted, nevertheless Quinn (2005) found that women that were not diagnosed with ADD, compared to diagnosed women, were more capable of consistency as parents, and were less "getting along" at work and in the household.In contrast, Rucklidge et al. (2007) mention that they did not found any differences between women with ADD, and men with ADD.Biederman et al. (2004) found that adult men and women with ADD have demographic, psychosocial and cognitive patterns that are compatible with findings that were recorded with young boys and girls with the disorder.

Parental Authority
At first, researchers have tried to conceptualize parental authority styles based on specific parenting characters, yet those efforts failed to supply a clear and inclusive image, within the concoction of complex parenting traits.With the development of research in this field, three determinants were given major attention, which provide a clearer and more effective picture: the emotional climate between a parent and his child, parenting methods, i.e. parents' behaviors and customs, and the parenting beliefs system towards which the child's socialization is directed on behalf of his parents (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).
Therefore this model offers to examine the parenting style throughout the array of attitudes directed by the parent towards the child, embedding all of the feelings, gestures and behaviors, through which, in practice, the parent performs his role in face of his child (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).Baumrind's (1971) parental authority model defines parental authority as a set of approaches underlying parents' behaviors towards their child.This behavior, as a part of the socialization, includes all the goal-directed acts of parenting practice, as well as those that are not goal-directed such as body gestures, voice intonation or the spontaneous change of emotional expressiveness, meaning-the emotional climate.Baumrind's (1971) study also gives rise to the idea that the child's socialization-allowing him to adapt and conform to essential environmental demands while preserving a certain sense of personal entirety-is the key to parents' functioning.Hence the concept of "parental authority" has developed, a concept formerly being perceived as strictness, as using physical and consistent punishment etc.In contrast, Baumrind called for a conceptual distinction in using the term "parental authority", which in her study meant the parent's demand of his child's behavioral adaptation as a part of his integration in the familial and social settings.
In light of this definition, we can acknowledge the importance in imparting and delineating emotional patterns, methods and values, derived from parenting styles and parenting values and beliefs regarding the essence of their role and the nature of their child (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).
Baumrind was distinguished from other researchers of her time, in that she defined "parental authority" as a broader parenting function, and instead of organizing it in a linear manner, from low authority to high authority, she differentiated between three styles of parental authority, each has distinctive characteristics: Permissive, authoritarian and authoritative (Baumrind, 1966(Baumrind, , 1967)).
Herrin after we present in detail each of the parenting styles according to Baumrind:

Parental Authority Styles Three Parental Authority Styles Model According to Baumrind
A factor analysis of parents' behaviors yielded two evident dimensions, the first 'demanding' and the second "responsibility".Within the model offered by Baumrind three quintessential styles of parental authority were found, describing how parents, by setting and fostering limits, settle their children's needs.The distinction of each style depends upon the social content, the developmental stage and evaluation methods (Baumrind, 1991;Buri, 1991).

Permissive Parenting Style
Parents with this "non-directive" style are characterized by over permission in face of their children's demands towards them, compared to the number of times in which parents set demands to their children.Also these parents are usually readily to make concessions, avoid conflicts and external limit setting, and allow their children to explore and examine their environment and their boundaries of self regulation by themselves, while independently making decisions according to their will.In fact, these parents, relatively, lack control over their children and tend to use the least possible means of punishment.This parenting style integrates high parental support, low control and little demands for mature behavior.These parents usually gained a similar way of upbringing from their parents (Baumrind, 1971(Baumrind, , 1991;;Buri, 1991).

Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parents are characterized by demand and directing, nevertheless they are characterized by emotional distance, i.e.-lack of warmth.They demand obedience and in accordance they do not encourage independence and free will from the part of their children.They are guided by the role they have undertaken, with the expectation that their instructions be fulfilled without any explanations or verbal negotiation in the form of "give and take", with a preference towards punishment means to control the children.However, they provide an organized environment, clear instructions and meticulous supervision on their children deeds.This style of parenting integrates both coercive control efforts and low support.

Authoritative Parenting Style
Authoritative parents tend to be located between the edges of the two other styles mentioned above.They are characterized by demand and responsibility.They believe in and acknowledge their rights and duties as parents, and accordingly they supervise and set clear and consistent demands, according to which they expect their children to act.These parents are assertive, yet not invasive or binding, due to their recognition of their child's uniqueness and will.Their approach is typified by support, warmth, flexibility, abilities to understand and communicate with their children, implementing reason and a "give and take" verbal negotiation instead of punishment and expectations for obedience.Their expectations however are that their children be assertive and socially responsible, as well as organized and cooperative.Thus one can observe integration between the demands for maturity from the children on one hand, while affording high parental support and a warm climate from the other hand.These parents are aware to the possibility that they are apt to mistakes in their lives and that they are not a single and definite authority in their children's lives.
Later in her study, Baumrind (1991) expended her model to include a fourth parenting style, one she defined as "rejectingneglecting".This "disengaged" parenting style is characterized by low levels of responsiveness and demand from the part of the parents.They are not understood, not responsible, not supportive and even actively reject their children, or alternatively neglect them or any accountability for them.
The present research will not refer to this last parenting style due to its extremism.
In the past attention deficit was investigated solely among children, yet nowadays, however the scarce research in this field, it is well knows that attention deficit disorder persists to adulthood.In a research conducted in 2006 it was found that adults with ADD have, in addition to difficulties in school, also occupational, social and parental difficulties, compared to adults without ADD (Rasmussen & Levander, 2009).Chen et al. (2009) claim that many of the existing researches addressed the relationships between the mother and the ADD child, yet the few studies that addressed the relationship between the father and the ADD child found significant differences in their attitude and parental behavior compared to the mothers.
Familial studies regarding children with ADD found that 15% -20% of mothers and 20% -30% of fathers by themselves have ADD.Estimates are that 60% of children to diagnosed parents are likely to be diagnosed themselves as with ADD.This intergenerational transmission was mainly attributed to developmental neurological, social and intellectual vulnerability.However, organic environment, familial influences and unfavorable patterns of interaction between parents and their children were also found as influential (Amiel-Laviad, Atzaba-Poria, Auerbach, Berger, & Landau, 2009;Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2008;Daley, Psychogiou, Sonuga-Barke, & Thompson, 2008).
Recently more and more research was devoted to investigating the variance in parental behavior between parents with ADD, compared to parents without ADD.Sychogiou, Daley, Thompson & Sonuga (2007) studied the relation between parents with ADD and their children and found significant deficits in the parenthood of the diagnosed group.Murry & Johnson (2006) fortify this argument through some studies, which point to a negative relation between parental qualifications and ADD symptoms.Studies that rely primarily on self-report scales, suggest that parents with ADD have higher probability of decreased quality of parenthood, they are more likely to display more negative and chaotic parenthood, with higher levels of familial conflict and lower levels of coherence.This parenthood style is characterized by impulsive decision making that is expressed by difficulty to restrain reactions and by high emotional involvement, and may find expression in rigidity and physical or verbal punishments, that many times are unsuitable to the situation, even not in relation to former conduct in similar situations.Additionally, this parenthood style is characterized by inconsistency, recurring action and lessened ability of self observation.
In light of the above, one may come to see how ADD negatively influences the quality of parenthood, parent-child relationships, effective parental supervision, social relations and the ability to implement structured and organized techniques of parenting.Moreover, it was found that parental and familial roles are violated when one of the parents have ADD.It seems that the presence of one disorganized, non-attentive and hyperactive partner may interfere with the total organization, and may still weaken the parenting behavior of the partner without ADD (Murry & Johnson, 2006).
Some studies on fathers with ADD found that they showed less responsible behaviors in parent-child interaction compared to mothers however fathers were found to be more direct and overly active (Amiel-Laviad, Atzaba-Poria, Auerbach, Berger, & Landau, 2009;Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2008).
Other studies conducted on mothers with ADD revealed that they displayed more invasiveness, demanding/sermonizing and negativity such as: ordering the child without allowing him to reply; less approving and encouraging and express less positive emotion, compared to mothers without ADD.In addition these mothers were characterized by poorer supervision of their child's behavior, due to lower levels of involvement; less consistency in disciplinary matters and also showed lower levels of effectiveness in their problem solving skills.

Method Population
123 participants (see Table 1) comprised the sample.Participants were required to be parents to at least one child, no age limitation.The subjects' average age was 39.97 years ±8.35.Subjects were samples by convenience sampling method, i.e. the researchers were assisted by their acquaintances in order to collect subjects according with the research's criterions.

Tools
Research data was collected through the following questionnaires:  The questionnaire was translated to Hebrew and validated by Sholet (1997), and adapted as a self-report measure to parents, hereinafter-self evaluation of parenting style-by Zafrir (2001).In Buri's (1991) study internal consistency ranged between 0.74 to 0.87.In Sholet's study, (1997) internal consistency for the three style was: 0.79 for authoritative style, 0.85 for authoritarian style and 0.65 for permissive style.In Zafrir's ( 2001) study, the internal consistency was: 0.78 for authoritative style, 0.72 for authoritarian style and 0.83 for permissive style.
The parental authority scale was based on Likert scale, ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree).
Reliabilities for the items are presented in Table 2.

Procedure
The questionnaires were administered in some manners: 1) distributed by email to parents, with and without ADD; 2) distributed through the support center for learning disabilities in Tel Hai College; 3) published in an internet forum for adults with ADD; 4) distributed through a group facilitator that instructs a support group for parents with ADD that takes place in the regional council of northern Galilee in Israel.
Mostly reservations rose regarding the phrasing of two items, i.e. item 8 ("I instruct and guide my child's decisions and actions by persuasion and discipline") and item 13 ("I seldom set expectations and guidelines to my child regarding his behavior").These items were removed from the statistical analysis.

Findings
Our research's goal was to examine the differences between parents (mothers and fathers) with ADD and parents without ADD, regarding their parental authority style.In addition, we examined whether gender differences exist in parental authority style.
Our first hypothesis was that fathers with ADD would be more permissive compared to fathers without ADD.In order to test the hypothesis means and Sd's were calculated for each parental authority style (permissive, authoritative, authoritarian) among both groups (ADD/no ADD).The hypothesis was tested through t-test for independent samples (see Table 3).
Table 3 shows that no difference was found between fathers with ADD and fathers without ADD in each of the parental styles (p > 0.05), therefore, hypothesis 1 was refuted.
The second hypothesis was that mothers with ADD would be more authoritarian in their parental style, compared to mothers without ADD.In order to test this hypothesis means and Sd's were calculated for each parental authority style (permissive, authoritative, authoritarian) among both groups (ADD/no ADD mothers).The hypothesis was tested through t-test for independent samples (see Table 4).
Table 4 shows that no difference was found between mothers with ADD and mothers without ADD in each of the parental styles (p > 0.05), therefore, hypothesis 2 was refuted.

Additional Findings
Table 5 presents the relation between parents' academic degree and their being with our without ADD.
Table 5 shows that there is a significant difference between Note: * These items evoked many complaint s regarding their phrasing.the existence of ADD and the subject's academic degree.It shows that among 24 subjects with MA or higher education solely 20.8% have ADD, compared to 79.2% that do not have ADD.
Next we aimed at examining whether there were differences in the response pattern towards each parental style between parents with and without ADD.In order to achieve this, we conducted the following steps: A factor analysis was conducted for each parental style in order to locate the most significant questions it contains.It was found that the most significant items for the permissive style were items 1 and 28.For the authoritative style items were 5 and 11, and for the authoritarian style items 3 and 16 were found most significant.
Later all ratings to these items were re-coded on a transformed scale from 5 levels to 3 levels as follows: 1 -2 in the former scale were coded as 1 (negative ratings), 3 was coded as 3 (neutral rating) and 4 -5 in the former scale were coded as 5 (positive rating).
A χ 2 analysis was conducted in order to examine the relation between the respondent's ADD and his ratings to the items that were identified in the factor analysis (see above paragraph).
Table 6 shows that the most significant items for each parental style.It can be seen that parents with ADD were more negative towards the permissive style, compared to parents without ADD.

Discussion
The present research examined the relation between the parents' ADD and their parental style.Our hypotheses were that fathers with ADD would be more permissive in their parental style, compared to fathers without ADD; while mothers with ADD would show a more authoritarian style compared to mothers without ADD.Both hypotheses were refuted (see Tables 3 and 4).

The Relation between Parental Style and the Parent's ADD
In our research we have found a trend that can be observed in Table 6, which points to the fact that parents with ADD tend to hold more negative positions towards permissiveness, com-pared to parents without ADD.This finding is somewhat supported by Tables 3 and 4 that show a tendency among parents with ADD towards a less permissive stand, compared to parents without ADD.This stands in contradiction with the trend presently characterizing western society, in which there is a collapse of parental and instructional authority in the course of the last decades, in relation to the traditional parental authority (The admission of the permissive parenthood style stems mainly from the fact that many attributes of the "old authority", such as: physical punishments, distancing, unconditional obedience etc., are no longer perceived as legitimate and as conventions as they were before.Nowadays, a widespread notion is that authoritarian parents compelling limits upon their children, hinders their growth and development (Omer, 2008).
Our finding can therefore be accounted for by the DSM-IV (2000), in which people with Attention Deficit Disorder are described as people easily distracted by external stimulus, as having hardships in emotional regulation, internal restlessness and apt to forgetting and disorganization.Following the will to relieve the internal sense of disorganization among adults with ADD in general, and among parents in particular, and due to the effort to "survive" daily life, parents with ADD adapt a coping style that allows them to preserve a sense of control, order, stability and routine in their lives.Thus this rationale penetrates also their parental style and their relations with their children.

Research Limitations
The current research bears some shortcomings that should be addressed, as follows: 1) A formal diagnosis for ADD was not required from the participants in order to participate in the ADD group.Therefore, this makes the generalization of the research's findings on parents that are diagnosed with ADD, harder.
2) The subjects' age range was relatively wide (standard deviation of 8.35 years).This may bring about potentially intervening age-related variables, ones that were not taken into account in the research.
3) We used a convenient sample.This sampling method allows for the possibility that the sample does not reliably represent the relevant population.

Table 1 .
Description and distribution of sample's characteristics.

•
Demographic questionnaire-this questionnaire was assembled for the purpose of the present research and included the following details: age, gender, diagnosed as with ADD or not, education, no. of children, no. of ADD diagnosed children, familial status and occupation.For the pur-

Table 2 .
Results of Reliability tests (of internal consistency) to the parental authority questionnaire, means, Sd's and ranges for each factor.

Table 3 .
Means and Sd's of parental authority styles among father with and without ADD, and t-tests for independent samples.

Table 4 .
Means and Sd's of parental authority styles among mothers with and without ADD, and t-tests for independent samples.

Table 5 .
The relation between the parents' academic degree and ADD.