Comparison of mothers' and fathers' ratings of their children's verbal and motor development

To compare developmental ratings of mothers and fathers, 58 couples, parents of four year olds, mothers and fathers rated separately their children's development on a 190-item eightsubtest inventory of verbal and motor development. The results yielded moderate to high inter-parent correlations ( r = .32 to r = .63) on all eight subtests with one exception (Personal-Social Competence). The mothers rated their children's development (across gender) higher than did fathers on all eight subtests ( p < .001). Mothers' ratings of daughters' development were higher than fathers' on four out of eight subtests (Fine Motor, Language Expression, Achievement and Self Help) and on six out of eight when rating their sons (Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Language Expression, Language Comprehension, Information and Self Help) . No differences emerged regarding child gender in fathers' and mothers' ratings on the eight subtests except on one subtest: mothers rated their sons' Gross Motor ability higher than daughters' Gross Motor. The results suggest moderate mother-father concordance in developmental ratings - but the relative modesty of the correlations and the consistantly higher mother ratings, both in verbal and motor areas, suggest that psychometric developmental rating scales may need separate norms for mothers and fathers.