Maternal Parenting and Preschoolers' Psychosocial Adjustment: A Longitudinal Study.

Previous research reported that positive parenting and parenting stress might impact children's psychosocial adjustment. The current longitudinal study aimed at evaluating the associations over time between mothers' positive parenting, their parenting stress, and their preschoolers' social-emotional competence and emotional-behavioral difficulties. Participants were 53 Italian mothers, aged between 24 and 47 years (M = 35.30, SD = 5.28) at T0, and their children (females = 51%), aged between 3 and 6 years (M = 4.48, SD = 0.84) at T0. Mothers completed self-report scales at 2 time points (with a 2-year lag). An autoregressive cross-lagged model was tested that had a good fit to the data, χ2(6) = 3.37 ns, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = 0.00. The results showed that maternal positive parenting at T0 negatively predicted maternal parenting stress at T1; maternal parenting stress at T0 negatively predicted children's social-emotional competence at T1. Moreover, at each time point, children's social-emotional competence was associated positively with maternal positive parenting and negatively with maternal parenting stress; children's emotional-behavioral difficulties were positively associated with maternal parenting stress. The results confirm that interactions with mothers are fundamental for children's psychosocial adjustment. Implications for research and practice aimed at reducing parenting stress and fostering positive parenting are discussed.

Aligning personal and collective interests in emerging adults during the COVID-19 emergency in Italy.

This study investigated the relations of emerging adults' personal (civic competence and interdependent self-construal) and community-based (sense of community and civic engagement) resources as predictors of appraisal of COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) and attitudes toward preventing contagion in Italy. Participants were 2873 Italian emerging adults (71% females) aged 19-30 years (M = 22.67, SD = 2.82). Structural equation modeling revealed both direct and indirect positive associations among study variables. Civic competence and interdependent self-construal were related to sense of community and civic engagement behavior which, in turn, predicted appraisal of PHEM. Appraisal of PHEM in turn predicted attitudes toward preventing contagion. Overall, findings highlight the importance of examining the alignment between personal and collective interests to understand emerging adults' evaluative and attitudinal experiences during a period of crisis, such as that created by COVID-19.