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This thesis aims to develop understanding of the relative role of mothers and fathers for children's psychopathology, with a primary focus on interparental conflict, maternal and paternal parenting, and the coparenting relationship. This is among the only research to use a multimethod, multi-informant, longitudinal adoption-at-birth design to assess these processes from early-to-middle childhood. The present thesis analyzed data from the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS; Leve et al., 2007), a US-based study developed to assess family processes and children's development. The adoption-at-birth design allowed examination of environmental processes without the confound of common genes (Jaffee & Price, 2012). The present thesis examined N > 300 intact mothers and fathers and their children from 2.5 years to 6 years using observational and parent-reported data. Study 1 examined whether interparental conflict, maternal depression and paternal depression influenced child internalizing and externalizing problems via mother-child and father-child hostility. Study 2 examined the relative role of mother hostility, father hostility and coparenting as mediators in the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalizing and externalizing problems. Finally, study 3 examined whether distinct maternal and paternal parenting practices (hostility, harsh and inconsistent discipline, positive parenting) differentially mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalizing and externalizing problems, and whether coparenting moderated these relationships. Each study also examined child-evoked effects on parenting and coparenting. Overall, findings showed interparental conflict to be important for child externalizing problems via father-child hostility, maternal and paternal parenting processes to be differentially related to child internalizing and externalizing problems, and early child behavior to evoke different parenting processes. Coparenting was not associated with parenting or child outcomes, nor did it moderate associations, highlighting the need for changes in conceptualization and measurement of the coparenting relationship. Findings are discussed with regards to policy and practice implications.

This thesis is a study of the formation of the collections at Longford Castle during the period c.1730 to c.1830 by the Bouverie family (later Earls of Radnor). It draws upon previously untapped archival material relating to this understudied but nationally significant collection of art, to provide a contribution to current scholarship on country houses and the history of collecting. The thesis considers issues of acquisition, patronage and display, and looks across a range of art forms, including painting, sculpture, decorative arts and furnishings, exploring the degree to which this family’s artistic tastes can be understood as conventional or distinctive for the time. By contextualising these acquisitions and commissions in terms of their setting, it is shown that although Longford Castle, an unusually shaped Elizabethan building, was appropriated and adapted for the display of art in line with eighteenth-century ideals, its owners also valued and retained aspects of its distinctive character. In addition, the thesis shows that Longford functioned both as a private home and as a public space where visitors experienced the collections. An introduction to the Bouverie family is provided, so as to further contextualise their tastes, exploring their Huguenot and mercantile heritage, and ennoblements, artistic networks, and interests during the long eighteenth century. The thesis argues that these interests were characterised by both an independent spirit and a desire to conform to contemporary trends and to articulate a sense of Englishness. The thesis takes a broad methodological approach, combining studies of architecture, interiors, gardens, furnishings, fine art and social history. It explores the castle and its contents through both archival research and object-based study, providing the first comprehensive study of Longford and its art collections.