We investigated the influence of family alliance on infants' vagal tone. Physiological studies have shown that the quality of mother-infant interactions can influence infants' vagal tone, which is an important indicator of emotion regulation. Although research has shown that family-level relationships have a unique impact on child development,…

Parents who perceive their social environment as threatening may transmit these anxieties through their parenting, by shaping the skills and beliefs that adolescents adopt to interact with their own environment. This study explores the role of hyper-parenting and two potential psychological mechanisms (i.e., youth emotion regulation and…

The present study aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between social inhibition and behavior problems in preschoolers, as well as the potential moderating role of maternal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) in this relationship. A total of 196 preschoolers aged 3-4 years (M[subscript T1] = 3.460, SD = 0.594)…

In the current paper, we examined the dimensional structure of parenting using a bifactor model of observed parenting domains during infancy. We validated our parenting dimensions by examining correlations with indicators of family well-being and child development. Data come from a longitudinal cohort that recruited a diverse sample of mothers…

Research suggests that the fear of harsh punishment from parents encourages children's antisocial lie-telling as they attempt to avoid the punishment for their transgressions. In contrast, warm and supportive parenting practices foster internalization of moral rules and norms and an ability to resist the temptation, so children have no need to lie…

Recent work suggests that young children develop strong intuitions about inequitable resource distribution when it arises due to fair and unfair procedures (merit, structural, or random chance). Here, we investigated an understudied form of inequality: one that arises due to a single suboptimal choice (referred to as self-inflicted inequality).…

Early caregiving experiences influence the development of children's social behaviors. Caregiving hostility, characterized by anger and rejection toward the child, is associated with higher levels of aggression and lower levels of prosocial behavior. Symptoms of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may underlie the association between…

The Coping with Toddlers' Negative Emotions Scale (CTNES) assesses parents' emotional socialization of toddlers. The original measure is lengthy, with 82 items in total, and no short-form version is available to date. The objective of the current study was to create a short-form version of the CTNES. We aimed to: (1) test the CTNES subscales…

Emotional reactivity and emotion regulation play key roles in adolescent mental health. Positive parenting behavior has been shown to facilitate positive adolescent emotional development; however, relationships between parenting and adolescent neural emotion reactivity have not been thoroughly examined. The present study employed whole-brain…

Contingent self-esteem (i.e., the degree to which one's self-esteem is dependent on meeting particular conditions) has been shown to predict a wide range of psychosocial and academic problems. This study extends previous research on contingent self-esteem by examining the predictive role of perceived parenting dimensions in a sample of early…

Parent responses to children's emotions vary within and across cultures. The present study compared mothers' reports of their emotional and behavioral responses in hypothetical situations depicting their children experiencing anger, sadness, or physical pain in two communities in India (traditional old city, "N" = 60; suburban middle…

This study examined the prospective relationship between negative parenting behaviors and adolescents' friendship competence in a community sample of 416 two-parent families in the Southeastern USA. Adolescents' externalizing problems and their emotional insecurity with parents were examined as mediators. Parents' psychological control was…

Research on sex differences in antisocial behaviour may shed light on the causes of childhood antisocial behaviour. Using a longitudinal design, we tested whether there were sex differences in the amount of harsh discipline children received or in the effect of harsh discipline and whether this accounted for sex differences in later conduct…

This study explores the associations between mothers' religiosity, and families' and children's functioning in a stratified random sample of 695 Catholic and Protestant mother-child dyads in socially deprived areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a region which has experienced centuries of sectarian conflict between Protestant Unionists and…

The present study demonstrated that a more differentiated view of positive parenting practices is necessary in the study of children's acquisition of self-regulation. Here, the unique contributions of maternal warmth and responsiveness to distress to children's self-regulation were tested in a sample of 102 German mothers and their kindergarten…