From Negative Emotionality to Aggressive Behavior: Maternal and Paternal Parenting Stress as Intervening Factors.

Child temperament plays a key role in the development of psychopathology, notably through transactions with the family environment. In particular, temperamental negative emotionality is a documented antecedent of child aggressive behavior, with parenting stress sometimes proposed to play a mediating role in this association. However, research has mostly addressed bivariate associations and seldom considered the full chain linking child negative emotionality to aggression through parenting stress. In addition, most relevant studies have focused on mothers; therefore, possible combined contributions of maternal and paternal stress, such as interactive effects, are under-investigated. Addressing these gaps, this longitudinal multi-informant study aimed to examine the mediating role of maternal parenting stress, paternal parenting stress, and their interaction in the association between infant negative emotionality and child aggression. Among 186 mostly White middle-class families (98 boys), infant negative emotionality was reported by mothers and fathers at 15 months, both parents reported on their own parenting stress at 3 years, and child aggression was assessed by teachers in the first grade of elementary school. The results revealed a moderated mediated pathway, such that there was a significant indirect effect of child negative emotionality on aggression through paternal stress, however only when maternal stress was also high. These findings suggest that the risk of negative emotionality translating to aggressive behavior is magnified when both parents experience high levels of stress in their parenting role. The results also underscore that both parents play significant yet different roles in the process linking early negative emotionality to subsequent aggression.

Reconsidering the links between sibship size, maternal sensitivity, and child attachment: A multidimensional interactive approach.

Despite being a well-documented predictor of children's cognitive and social development, sibship has received remarkably little attention in the attachment and maternal sensitivity literature. The only study that has examined both sensitivity and attachment in relation to sibship found greater maternal sensitivity but no more secure attachment among first-born infants. In the current study, we sought to examine the same links while testing two related hypotheses: that sibship size relates only to some specific aspects of sensitivity, and that sibship size relates to sensitivity only among certain mothers, namely those who are at risk for suboptimal parenting because of an insecure attachment state of mind. We assessed three dimensions of maternal sensitivity at 12 months and child attachment at 15 and 25 months among 258 mother-infant dyads living in intact biparental families. Compared with mothers who had fewer children, those with more children were observed to be less accessible/available, less positive, but not less cooperative/attuned, when interacting with their infant. These links were moderated by maternal attachment state of mind, such that significant relations were observed only among mothers presenting a more insecure state of mind. Finally, sibship size was unrelated to attachment. These findings suggest that failure to consider different dimensions of sensitivity or important parental moderators may result in the erroneous conclusion that birth order and sibship size are inconsequential for parent-child relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record

Attachment Security and Developmental Patterns of Growth in Executive Functioning During Early Elementary School.

Despite the extensive research demonstrating the importance of child executive functioning (EF) for school adjustment, little longitudinal work has formally examined developmental change in EF during the early school years. Based on a sample of 106 mother-child dyads, the current longitudinal study investigated patterns of growth in child performance on three executive tasks between kindergarten (Mage  = 6 years) and Grade 3 (Mage  = 9 years), and the predictive role of earlier mother-child attachment security in these patterns. The results suggest that early elementary school is a period of significant developmental improvement in child EF, although child performance on different EF tasks follows distinct trajectories across time. The study also provides evidence for a sustained relation between children's early attachment security and their ongoing acquisition of executive skills.