Psychology Research Digest
Journal of Family Psychology - Vol 39, Iss 3
The Journal of Family Psychology is devoted to the study of the family system from multiple perspectives and to the application of psychological methods of inquiry to that end.
Dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia self-regulation and coregulation in response to caregiving challenges in at-risk mother–child and father–child dyads.
We examined how mother–preschooler and father–preschooler dyads differed in dynamic self-regulation and time-lagged coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) when having to transition from play into a challenging disciplinary context, and how individual and dyadic regulatory responses to this challenge varied by parenting risk. Participants included 78 mother–preschooler and 51 father–preschooler dyads (53% female, 63.3% non-Hispanic White) oversampled for familial risk. At 2½ years, parents self-reported harsh parenting. At 3 years, parent–child RSA was collected during free play and cleanup tasks. Multilevel models of time-lagged RSA (i.e., parent RSA predicting child RSA in the next time unit and vice versa) were conducted. In response to a task with increased challenge and parenting demands, mothers and children showed expected individual RSA decreases (indicating active regulation), whereas fathers showed increases in RSA (suggesting decreasing arousal or disengagement). Mother-driven negative time-lagged RSA coregulation and father-driven positive time-lagged RSA coregulation were observed during play, but not during cleanup. Harsh parenting was associated with altered RSA responses to challenge: During cleanup, harsher mothers showed no active regulation, suggesting disengagement, harsher fathers showed more stability in RSA self-regulation, and child-driven negative RSA coregulation with harsher fathers was observed. Findings suggest that during preschool, (a) parents are the typical drivers of RSA coregulation, (b) challenging contexts and parenting risk alter dynamic RSA self-regulation and time-lagged RSA coregulation, and (c) typical and atypical RSA self-regulation and time-lagged coregulation patterns differ between mother–child and father–child dyads. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Bidirectional associations between responsive parenting and children’s internalizing problems and moderation by negative emotionality.
Positive parenting behaviors and children’s internalizing problems (Int. Probs) are bidirectionally associated during late childhood and early adolescence. These bidirectional associations likely emerge earlier and may be stronger when children are prone to reactive negative emotions, making parents’ support especially critical in children’s regulation of negative emotions. The purpose of this study was to test (a) bidirectional associations between parents’ positive responsivity and children’s internalizing problems from very early through middle childhood and (b) the moderating role of children’s negative emotionality in these bidirectional associations (N = 4,898). Small bidirectional associations between internalizing problems and responsivity were found from ages 3 to 5. Internalizing problems at 3 years were negatively associated with responsive parenting at 5 years. Parent responsivity at 3 and 5 years was negatively associated with later internalizing problems at ages 5 and 9 years, respectively. Negative emotionality only moderated the parent-driven association between responsivity at 3 years and internalizing problems at 5 years, with higher responsivity associated with lower internalizing problems only for children with moderate to high negative emotionality. Parents’ positive responsivity to children’s behavior and children’s internalizing problems were only bidirectionally associated in early childhood (ages 3–5). Across ages 3–5 and 5–9, greater parent responsivity to children’s behavior was associated with fewer internalizing problems and may be especially beneficial for children with higher negative emotionality. Results further suggest that young children experiencing internalizing problems may be more likely to receive less responsive parenting later, regardless of children’s negative emotionality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Bidirectional relations between parents’ discipline strategies and children’s inhibitory control from early to middle childhood.
Parents’ use of harsh discipline and inductive discipline are theorized to change normatively across the transition from early to middle childhood (ages 5–7 years), with harsh discipline decreasing and inductive discipline increasing. Importantly, within-person support for these changes is lacking. Additionally, these changes are argued to be driven by improvements in children’s cognitive and social abilities, including inhibitory control. The present study examined within-family bidirectional relations between parents’ (primarily mothers’) harsh discipline, inductive discipline, and children’s inhibitory control across the transition to middle childhood. Participants were 118 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds and their primary caregivers. At two time points, separated by 12 months, parents completed a questionnaire about their use of harsh and inductive discipline, and children completed a battery of inhibitory control tasks. A latent change score model was used to examine within-family bidirectional relations. More inductive discipline at Time 1 was related to a decline in harsh discipline over the year for parents of 5- and 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds. Harsh discipline at Time 1 was not related to change in inductive discipline. Parental discipline was not related to the change in children’s inhibitory control, nor was inhibitory control related to the change in parental discipline. Relations between inductive discipline and change in harsh discipline provide within-person support for expectations of normative change in parents’ discipline strategies across the transition to middle childhood. Further research examining when parents of 4-year-olds make this transition and predictors of change in parental discipline will inform research of normative trajectories of parental discipline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Intergenerational consequences of parents’ late-life divorce on their adult children’s romantic and marital relationships.
Parents’ late-life divorce usually occurs when their adult children are married or seeking a marital relationship. The effects of divorce on young children have been studied extensively, revealing psychological, emotional, and mental difficulties, and increased relationship troubles. Yet knowledge about the effect of late-life divorce on adult children’s perception of marital/romantic relationships in societies that value self-determination alongside strong family ties is lacking. Accordingly, we examine the consequences of parents’ late-life divorce on their adult children’s experiences and perceptions of marital/romantic relationships, from the perspective of both generations in the family, in Israel. Semistructured, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted separately with 51 participants (28 adult children; 23 parents) composed of seven family units (n = 33) and nine parent–child dyads (n = 18) and analyzed using thematic analysis and dyadic analysis. The two themes identified were adult children’s shattered concept of marriage and the lessons they learned from their parents’ marriage and late-life divorce and apply to their own marital/romantic relationships. Findings within both themes revealed a gap between generations regarding awareness of the long-term consequences of late-life divorce on adult children’s romantic relationships. Implications include raising the awareness of families and therapists to these consequences. Developing constructive communication may enable both generations to beneficially process emotions and perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>In memoriam.
Memorializes Michael F. Lorber, director of developmental research at the Family Translational Research Group (FTRG) at New York University, who died on January 31, 2024. Dr. Lorber was integral to FTRG for decades and made numerous contributions to family violence, child development, and methodology and measurement literature. Although he published extensively in the areas of maltreatment and parenting, the research he was most passionate about focused on the development of normative and atypical aggression during infancy and toddlerhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Intergenerational transmission of emotionally responsive parenting via parenting-related emotion and cognition.
Childhood experiences shape later parenting behaviors; however, few studies have examined the mechanisms that explain how parenting is transmitted across generations. The present study examined direct and indirect effects of mothers’ remembered emotionally responsive parenting in childhood on maternal sensitivity to infant distress via parenting-related emotion, physiology, and cognition. Participants included 299 mothers (Mage = 29.71, SD = 5.48; 47.5% non-Hispanic White) and their infants (48.8% female). Mothers self-reported their emotionally responsive parenting in childhood, and measures of emotional, physiological, and cognitive responses to video clips of crying infants were assessed prenatally. Maternal sensitivity was observed during distress-eliciting tasks when infants were 2 and 6 months old. Covariates included maternal age, education, race, and concurrent observed infant distress. Results from the structural equation model demonstrated women’s emotionally responsive parenting in childhood was significantly associated with lower negative emotion in response to infant crying but not with physiological arousal, regulation, or negative cognition about infant crying. Lower negative emotion in response to infant crying was significantly associated with lower negative cognition about infant crying, which was then significantly associated with higher maternal sensitivity to distress. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant serial indirect effect of mothers’ emotionally responsive parenting in childhood on maternal sensitivity to distress via negative emotions and negative cognitions about infant crying. The findings suggest that screening pregnant women based on recalled parenting in childhood and targeting how they emotionally and cognitively respond to infant cry cues may be an effective approach to promote positive parenting during early infancy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Attachment, conflict, and relationship satisfaction of couples transitioning to parenthood: The moderator role of intimacy.
On average, couples experience increase in conflicts and decrease in relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood. How couples manage conflicts may improve or erode their relationship over time. While romantic attachment (anxiety, avoidance) is known to modulate couples’ adaptation during the transition to parenthood, the contribution of conflict resolution styles and intimacy to better understand these links seems promising. The goal of this study was to examine the mediator role of conflict resolution styles in the associations between romantic attachment and relationship satisfaction and the moderator role of intimacy in the conflict—satisfaction associations. In a dyadic prospective study involving 211 couples welcoming their first child, we assessed prenatal romantic attachment, conflict resolution style and intimacy at 4-month postpartum, and relationship satisfaction at 12-month postpartum. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that prenatal attachment insecurities predicted a higher use of conflict engagement, compliance, and withdrawal and a lower use of positive problem-solving conflict resolution styles in both partners at the actor and partner levels. Bearing mothers’ lower relationship satisfaction was explained by their own and their partners’ attachment insecurities through their lower use of positive problem solving and by their partners’ higher use of conflict engagement. Partners’ lower relationship satisfaction was explained by their own and the bearing mothers’ attachment insecurities through their own compliance and withdrawal styles, as well as the bearing mother’s conflict engagement. When partners perceived a high level of intimacy, their withdrawal and compliance were related to a higher level of relationship satisfaction. Implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Ready for the transition to parenthood? Predicting relationship satisfaction trajectories from prenatal indicators of low readiness.
During the past decades, interventions to strengthen marriage and promote healthy family formation during the transition to parenthood have become more widely available. The broad attendance to such interventions may suggest to the public that having a baby can put the health of any marriage at risk, although large heterogeneity in parents’ trajectories of relationship satisfaction has been demonstrated. In this study, we investigated whether four indicators of low transition-to-parenthood readiness in expecting couples—both for the individual (actor) and their partner—predicted a larger decline in relationship satisfaction across this major life transition. Latent class growth analyses estimated heterogeneous relationship satisfaction trajectories for 1,433 couples from 21 weeks gestation to 19 months postpartum. Findings indicated three groups of parents: 38.7% experienced initially high and stable relationship satisfaction, 51.3% initially high with a small decline, and 10.0% initially low with a large decline. For both the pregnant and nonpregnant partner, actor and partner’s prenatal doubts about the future of the relationship predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup rather than to the two more stable groups. For the nonpregnant partner, lacking a clear wish for a child substantially predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup. Nonmarital status or unplanned pregnancy did not predict group membership. These results supported that most new parents experience their relationship as robust against the challenges of early parenthood. However, parents experiencing relationship doubts and childbirth as an unwanted life transition may benefit from targeted pregnancy support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Empathic accuracy for a partner’s negative affect is associated with couples’ daily sexual well-being.
Sexual well-being contributes to satisfying relationships, yet commonly declines in long-term couples. According to theory, effective coregulation of emotions promotes couples’ sexual well-being. Accurately perceiving a partner’s affect (i.e., mood, emotions)—empathic accuracy—may be fundamental to coregulating emotions and promotes intimacy; thus, higher empathic accuracy might promote couples’ sexual well-being. In the first test of this hypothesis, an inclusive sample of 141 cohabiting couples completed daily online measures of negative affect, perceived partner negative affect, sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, and sexual distress for 28 days. We tested how daily variations in congruence/incongruence between perceived partner negative affect and a partner’s (the “target’s”) reported negative affect were associated with each partner’s sexual well-being, controlling for relationship satisfaction, using multilevel Dyadic Response Surface Analysis. For targets, sexual satisfaction was lower on days when partners were more inaccurate at perceiving their negative affect, and desire was not associated with inaccuracy but was higher on days when partners were accurate at perceiving extreme (low or high) negative affect versus midrange levels. When perceiving partners were more inaccurate, their own sexual distress was higher and, unexpectedly, their desire was higher. Finally, when perceivers overestimated (vs. underestimated) negative affect, they reported higher sexual distress and higher desire. Couples’ sexual well-being may benefit from noticing daily changes in one another’s negative affect. However, there may be drawbacks for perceiving partners’ desire. Future work testing mechanisms such as responsiveness and intimacy would contribute to developing evidence-based approaches to support couples’ emotional coregulation and sexual well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Did the COVID-19 pandemic increase intimate partner aggression among married couples?
Discrepant theoretical perspectives assert that challenges brought on by COVID-19 could either increase or decrease intimate partner aggression (IPA) between spouses. As reliance on retrospective or post-COVID-19 data cannot resolve these competing views, we turn to a sample of established mixed-sex married couples (N = 223) who provided six waves of pre-COVID-19 data and three waves of post-COVID-19 data. We examined whether the onset of COVID-19 affected IPA and whether any such changes were more pronounced for some couples than for others. Replicating prior research, dyadic piecewise regression showed that IPA declined significantly over time prior to COVID-19; these declines continued following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-COVID-19 IPA intercepts were reliably lower than pre-COVID-19 intercepts, and the proportion of couples reporting any IPA dropped by 20% after the pandemic onset. Finally, post-COVID-19 IPA intercepts tended to be higher when, prior to the onset of COVID-19, spouses reported more IPA, less relationship satisfaction, and more stress, suggesting continuity rather than disruption in predictors of IPA. Thus, on average, among established mixed-sex married couples, (a) IPA declined over time, including from before to after COVID-19 onset, and (b) post-COVID-19 levels of IPA were predictable from pre-COVID-19 couple functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Prenatal depressive symptoms, infant temperament, parental role satisfaction, and child adjustment: A longitudinal serial mediation.
Maternal prenatal depressive symptoms (PD symptoms) pose a risk factor for child adjustment difficulties (CAD), defined as internalizing and externalizing symptoms. This study examined the underlying mechanisms of the link between PD symptoms and CAD in a longitudinal study. Longitudinal data from pregnancy to age 3, encompassing four assessment points, were analyzed for N = 582 mothers participating in the German family panel pairfam. We tested a serial mediation model considering infant temperament during the first year and mothers’ parental role satisfaction 2–3 years postpartum as mediators between PD symptoms and CAD at age 3. PD symptoms significantly predicted CAD. We could not find that infant temperament or parental role satisfaction mediated between PD symptoms and CAD, though all variables were significantly associated on a correlational level. Furthermore, infant temperament partially mediated between PD symptoms and parental role satisfaction. Our findings emphasize the importance of the infant’s temperament in the scope of PD symptoms for the mother’s perception of her parental role, with possible adverse long-term effects for the mother–child relationship and the child. This study provides evidence for a complex bidirectionality between maternal and child-driven effects in the transmission of adverse effects of maternal PD symptoms. Depressive symptoms, even on subclinical levels, should already be targeted prenatally to prevent negative long-term effects for mothers and children. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Network analysis of intergenerational transmission of psychopathological symptom among adolescents: A cross-sectional study.
The intergenerational transmission of psychopathology has been well documented, but limited studies have examined the link at the symptomatic level accounting for these associations. This study aimed to identify the central symptoms that bridge adolescents and parental psychopathological symptoms and the specific symptom pathways by using a novel network approach. From September to October 2021, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Wuhan, China. A total of 8,032 adolescent–primary caregiver dyads completed a questionnaire reporting their depression and anxiety symptoms. Network analysis was used to identify central symptoms and the network pathways between adolescents’ and parental psychopathological symptoms. Three robust networks were identified in this study: adolescent, parent, and integrated network. The nervous was the most central symptom in the adolescent network, while the parental fatigue was the most central symptom in both the parent and integrated network. Adolescents’ suicidal ideation and parental fatigue had the most bridge strength that linked the adolescents’ and caregivers’ psychopathological symptoms. Parental and adolescents’ suicidal ideation had the strongest association in the integrated network. Significant gender differences were found in the link between adolescents’ and caregivers’ psychopathological symptoms. Network analysis revealed the distinctive core psychopathological symptoms across each network and the specific pathways between adolescents’ and caregivers’ psychopathological symptoms. Family-based interventions or therapies targeting the resolution of central and bridge symptoms may have potential to reduce the co-occurrence of psychopathological symptoms within families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The family’s role in mental health care: Perceptions of Bay Area Muslims.
This qualitative study examines perceptions of Muslims living in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States, regarding the family’s role in mental health help-seeking and well-being. This study employed a community-based participatory research approach through content analysis of three focus group (n = 37) discussions conducted with the help of a community advisory board comprised San Francisco Bay Area Muslim community members. Four main themes were generated. (1) Participants stated that Muslim American families play a unique role, via socioreligious norms and cultural expectations, in mental health quality and help-seeking. (2) The types of familial mental wellness support depend on the capacity of family members relative to their roles and influence in the family. (3) Families are responsible for referring individuals to external support, especially when the problem is beyond familial capacity. (4) The family is a potential source of mental health-related challenges. Participants noted the need for family-wide interventions led by mental health professionals or religious/community leaders. These findings stress the need for increased attention to and engagement of families in providing psychiatric care for Muslim Americans, specifically those living in the Bay Area, California, United States. Special attention should be placed on mental health barriers and challenges the family may create for an individual. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
- Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961)
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