Parenting and trajectories of children's maladaptive behaviors: a 12-year prospective community study.

This study investigated how parenting accounted for interindividual differences in developmental trajectories of different child behaviors across childhood and adolescence. In a cohort sequential community sample of 1,049 children, latent class growth analysis was applied to three parent-reported dimensions (monitoring, positive parenting, inconsistent discipline) across 12 annual assessments (ages 6-18). Four longitudinal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, uninvolved) were differentiated on the basis of levels and rates of change in the constituent parenting dimensions. Multigroup analyses demonstrated that these parenting styles were differentially related to changes in parent- and child-reported measures of children's alcohol and cigarette use, antisocial behavior, and internalizing symptoms, with the authoritative parenting class being related to the most optimal long-term development.

The development of children's intentions to use alcohol: direct and indirect effects of parent alcohol use and parenting behaviors.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of parent alcohol use and parenting behavior on the development of children's intentions to use alcohol in Grades 1 through 8. The authors hypothesized that the effect of parent alcohol use on children's intention to use alcohol would be mediated through parenting behavior, specifically monitoring/supervision, positive parenting, and inconsistent discipline. Using cohort-sequential latent growth modeling (LGM), the authors tested 3 models examining the effect of the development of parent alcohol use on the development of children's intentions to use alcohol, as mediated by the development of each of the 3 parenting behaviors. Multiple group analyses were used to explore gender differences. The effect of growth in parent alcohol use on growth in children's intentions was mediated only by parent monitoring/supervision and was significant only for girls. The effect of inconsistent discipline was directly related to growth in intentions for both boys and girls. Although parent alcohol use was related to less positive parenting, positive parenting was unrelated to children's intentions to use alcohol.