Maternal Irritability and Harsh Parenting
According to Belsky’s (1984) process model of parenting parent personality represents one of the most important factor influencing parenting behavior and child development. Among personality characteristics, irritability (i.e., the tendency to react impulsively and aggressively at the slightest provocation or disagreement; Caprara et al., 1985) consistently predicted aggressive behaviors across experimental and correlational studies (see e.g., Caprara, Gargaro et al., 1987).