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Emotion understanding develops rapidly in early childhood. Firstborn children (N = 231, 55% girls/45% boys, 86% White, 5% Black, 3% Asian, 4% Latinx, Mage = 29.92 months) were recruited into a longitudinal study from 2004 to 2008 in the United States and administered a series of tasks assessing eight components of young children's emotion understanding from ages 1 to 5. Cohort sequential analysis across three cohorts (1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds) demonstrated a progression of children's emotion understanding from basic emotion identification to an understanding of false-belief emotions, even after controlling for children's verbal ability. Emotion understanding scores were related to children's theory of mind and parent reports of empathy, but not emotional reactivity, providing evidence of both convergent and discriminant validity.

An unsettled question in attachment theory and research is the extent to which children's attachment patterns with mothers and fathers "jointly" predict developmental outcomes. In this study, we used individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis to assess whether early attachment networks with mothers and fathers are associated with children's internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. Following a pre-registered protocol, data from 9 studies and 1,097 children (mean age: 28.67 months) with attachment classifications to both mothers and fathers were included in analyses. We used a linear mixed effects analysis to assess differences in children's internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems as assessed via the average of both maternal and paternal reports based on whether children had two, one, or no insecure (or disorganized) attachments. Results indicated that children with an insecure attachment relationship with one or both parents were at higher risk for elevated internalizing behavioral problems compared with children who were securely attached to both parents. Children whose attachment relationships with both parents were classified as disorganized had more externalizing behavioral problems compared to children with either one or no disorganized attachment relationship with their parents. Across attachment classification networks and behavioral problems, findings suggest (a) an increased vulnerability to behavioral problems when children have insecure or disorganized attachment to both parents, and (b) that mother-child and father-child attachment relationships may not differ in the roles they play in children's development of internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. [This article was co-authored by the Collaboration on Attachment to Multiple Parents and Outcomes Synthesis.]

This study examined the links between mothers' and fathers' emotion socialization practices and social behaviour between siblings. We utilized parent reports from 57 two-parent families with preschool- and toddler-aged siblings to assess parental responses to children's negative emotions, as well as siblings' engagement in positive involvement, conflict, and avoidance. Findings indicated that fathers', but not mothers', supportive and non-supportive emotion socialization strategies with the older sibling accounted for a significant amount of variance in older siblings' rivalry, aggression, and avoidance. Additionally, older siblings' rivalry/aggression and avoidance were positively linked to fathers' non-supportive reactions to both the older and younger siblings' negative emotions, highlighting the importance of a within-family approach to emotion socialization to elucidate effects across parents and siblings. Further research is needed to disentangle cause and effect relations among siblings' socio-emotional development and parents' emotion socialization practices.

This study investigated relations among children's Theory-of-Mind (ToM) development, early sibling interactions, and parental discipline strategies during the transition to siblinghood. Using a sample of firstborn children and their parents (N = 208), we assessed children's ToM before the birth of a sibling and 12 months after the birth, and sibling interactions (i.e., positive engagement and antagonism) and parental discipline strategies (i.e., child-centred and parent-centred discipline) at 4 and 8 months in the first year of siblinghood. Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that children's ToM before the birth of the sibling predicted children's positive engagement with the infant sibling, whereas children's antagonistic behaviours towards the infant sibling negatively predicted children's ToM at 12 months, but only when mothers used low levels of child-centred discipline. These findings emphasize the role of parents in the development of young children's social-cognitive understanding in the context of early sibling interactions.

Adolescent motherhood is a risky situation related to poorer quality of infant caregiving. The lack of social support and increased odds for maternal depression are the main concerns. This study aimed to investigate whether maternal-foetal attachment, social support and maternal depression measured during pregnancy and after birth were associated with postpartum maternal behaviours among Brazilian adolescent mothers. Forty-one adolescent mothers participated (M[subscript age]?=?16.88 years; SD?=?1.60) in the first two waves of a longitudinal study. Both mother and infant behaviours were assessed during videotaped home observations at three months postpartum. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that positive postpartum maternal behaviours were strongly related to concurrent, rather than prenatal, measures of social support and maternal depression. Infant birth weight was also associated with positive maternal behaviours. Findings contribute to a better understanding of the personal and contextual factors affecting maternal behaviours shortly after birth in a high-risk sample of adolescent mothers.

Objective: The current study used the family stress model to test the mechanisms by which economic insecurity contributes to mothers' and fathers' mental health and couples' relationship functioning. Background: Although low household income has been a focus of poverty research, material hardship—defined as everyday challenges related to making ends meet including difficulties paying for housing, utilities, food, or medical care—is common among American families. Methods: Participants were from the Building Strong Families project. Couples were racially diverse (43.52% Black; 28.88% Latinx; 17.29% White; 10.31% Other) and living with low income (N = 2794). Economic insecurity included income poverty and material hardship. Bayesian mediation analysis was employed, taking advantage of the prior evidence base of the family stress model. Results: Material hardship, but not income poverty, predicted higher levels of both maternal and paternal depressive symptoms. Only paternal depressive symptoms were linked with higher levels of destructive interparental conflict (i.e., moderate verbal aggression couples use that could be harmful to the partner relationship). Mediation analysis confirmed that material hardship operated primarily through paternal depressive symptoms in its association with destructive interparental conflict. Conclusion: The economic stress of meeting the daily material needs of the family sets the stage for parental mental health problems that carry over to destructive interparental conflict, especially through paternal depressive symptoms. Implications: Family‐strengthening programs may want to consider interventions to address material hardship (e.g., comprehensive needs assessments, connections to community‐based resources, parents' employment training) as part of their efforts to address parental mental health and couples' destructive conflict behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 80% of children in the United States have at least 1 sibling, indicating that the birth of a baby sibling is a normative ecological transition for most children. Many clinicians and theoreticians believe the transition is stressful, constituting a developmental crisis for most children. Yet, a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on children's adjustment over the transition to siblinghood (TTS) has not been done for several decades. The current review summarizes research examining change in firstborns' adjustment to determine whether there is evidence that the TTS is disruptive for most children. Thirty studies addressing the TTS were found, and of those studies, the evidence did not support a crisis model of developmental transitions, nor was there overwhelming evidence of consistent changes in firstborn adjustment. Although there were decreases in children's affection and responsiveness toward mothers, the results were more equivocal for many other behaviors (e.g., sleep problems, anxiety, aggression, regression). An inspection of the scientific literature indicated there are large individual differences in children's adjustment and that the TTS can be a time of disruption, an occasion for developmental advances, or a period of quiescence with no noticeable changes. The TTS may be a developmental turning point for some children that portends future psychopathology or growth depending on the transactions between children and the changes in the ecological context over time. A developmental ecological systems framework guided the discussion of how child, parent, and contextual factors may contribute to the prediction of firstborn children's successful adaptation to the birth of a sibling. (Contains 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

Driven by theory and extant research on the communication of emotions within the family, the current investigation examined marital quality and parents' emotional expressiveness as determinants of coparenting in a sample of 57 couples with young children. Specifically, mothers' and fathers' expressiveness was examined as moderators of the association between marital quality and coparenting behavior. Though negative expressiveness did not emerge as a significant predictor of coparenting when considered in conjunction with marital quality, parents' positive expressiveness made unique and interactive contributions to coparenting. Thus, it appears that positive expressiveness, especially fathers', may be beneficial to family functioning. Positively expressive husbands protected couples from negative coparenting interactions in the face of less supportive marriages. Couples in distressed marriages may benefit from work with practitioners and family life educators who consider the role that the communication of emotions plays in the context of coparenting. [Additional funding for this research was provided by John E. Fetzer Institute.]

In the current research, the authors examined children's observed compliance in a family clean-up paradigm and parents' reports of coparenting to predict young children's conscience (e.g., affective discomfort and moral regulation) in a sample of 58 families with two parents and at least two children. The authors found relations between parents' reports of children's conscience development and observer-rated compliance in a family clean-up session, and significant correlations between coparenting and conscience development. There were a greater number of significant results for younger, 2-year-old siblings than for older siblings, which may reflect the importance of the period between 2 and 3 years for the emergence of conscience. Multiple regressions revealed that younger siblings' age, observed compliance/noncompliance, and parents' reports of coparenting were all significant in predicting parents' reports of affective discomfort and moral regulation. Findings underscore the importance of continuing research on whole-family dynamics when studying young children's early conscience and moral regulation. (Contains 2 tables and 1 note.)

Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions were examined as correlates of emotional understanding (Study 1, N = 55, 5- to 6-year-olds) and friendship quality (Study 2, N = 49, 3- to 5-year-olds). Mothers' and fathers' supportive reactions together contributed to greater child-friend coordinated play during a sharing task. Further, when one parent reported low support, greater support by the other parent was related to better understanding of emotions and less intense conflict with friends (for boys only). When one parent reported high support, however, greater support by the other parent was associated with less optimal functioning on these outcomes. Results partially support the notion that children benefit when parents differ in their reactions to children's emotions.

The early years of toddlerhood mark the emergence of self-regulation and the child's ability to comply with parental requests. The current study examined young children's compliance and noncompliance in a family context by observing mothers, fathers, and two children in a family clean-up paradigm. Marital conflict and mutual responsiveness in the parent-child relationship were used as predictors of children's early self-regulation in an effort to explore risk and protective factors within the family. Several interactions between mother and father behavior as well as between marital conflict and parenting revealed how father-infant attachment moderates the effects of mother-infant attachment on children's compliance and how a close father-child relationship can protect children from the risks associated with high levels of marital conflict. Results indicate that future research on children's early self-regulation needs to be more systemic and move beyond the traditional mother-child dyadic context.

This longitudinal study examined the reciprocal associations between paternal and maternal rejection and firstborn children's (Mage = 49.9 months; 55% boys) behavior problems across the transition to siblinghood in a sample of 120 families recruited from 2016 to 2018 from Shanghai, China. Parental rejection and behavior problems were assessed before (prenatal) and 1, 6, and 12 months after the birth of a baby sibling. Random intercept cross‐lagged panel models revealed positive relations between internalizing problems and both maternal and paternal rejection, and between externalizing problems and paternal rejection at the between‐person level (rs =.32–.37), but only cross‐lagged effects from children's internalizing and externalizing problems to maternal rejection at the within‐person level (βs =.30–.54). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigated how conflict management of boys in Head Start related to disruptive behavior and peer rejection in the Fall and Spring of the preschool year. Found that boys who engaged in higher rates of conflict and exhibited greater aggression and avoidance during peer conflicts tended to be rejected by peers and perceived as disruptive by teachers and peers. (Author/KB)

Examined relations between sibling jealousy and child and family characteristics in families with toddler and preschool-age siblings. Found that positive marital relationship was particularly strong predictor of older siblings' abilities to regulate jealousy in sessions with mothers. Younger siblings' jealous affect with mothers related to child's temperament. Younger siblings' behavioral dysregulation in triads related to mother-reported sibling rivalry. (Author/KB)

Examined relation of early attachment relationships and preschoolers' emotion regulation. Found that preschoolers who ignored younger siblings' distress were more likely to experience personal distress and use avoidant coping strategies. Preschoolers with insecure-resistant infant-mother attachment at 1 year were more likely to seek comfort from younger siblings and engage in more sibling conflict and hostility at 4 years. (Author/KB)

Attempts to integrate two disparate literatures on sibling conflict in childhood with potential benefits of conflictual sibling relations for adult well being. Presents descriptive data on benefits of children's sibling conflicts from interviews with middle-age and older adults. Recommends that future research on adult social relations consider the ways conflict may contribute to both good and bad developmental outcomes. (Author/JDM)

Examines the pairings of adult attachment styles among married couples raising young children. There was no relation between adult attachment styles, parenting behavior, and the security of infant/parent attachments. Future work would benefit by focusing on the dyadic constellations of adult attachment styles and their implications for family relationships. (Author/GCP)