The indirect impact of infant negative emotionality on interparental conflict via perceptions of coparenting challenges: What prenatal resources mitigate this risk?

Research clearly demonstrates that conflictual interparental relationship dynamics can create a family context that contributes to child emotional insecurity and psychopathology. Significantly less research has examined familial factors that contribute to maladaptive conflict between parents. Scholars have alluded to the disruptive impacts of parenting a child with certain temperamental characteristics (e.g., negative emotionality). Yet, there is a lack of empirical research examining if and how child temperament contributes to later interparental conflict. Using an established multi-informant, multi-method sample of 150 families first assessed during pregnancy, and again when the child was 1, 2, and 3.5 years of age, the present study aimed to test an integrated conceptual model examining whether infants' negative emotionality assessed at age 1 predicts interparental conflict at age 3.5, as mediated through destructive coparenting dynamics in toddlerhood, and identifying prenatal protective factors mitigating this maladaptive pathway. Findings suggest that greater infant negative emotionality predicts worse interparental conflict management during preschool age by undermining the mother's (but not the father's) report of coparenting relationship quality during toddlerhood. However, these results were significant only to the extent that parents were lacking certain prenatal regulatory resources (i.e., low paternal self-compassion; less secure relationship between parents). Importantly, results point to the need for intervention and prevention efforts during pregnancy that might disrupt the deleterious impacts of parenting a child who is more reactive and prone to expressing negative emotions.

Free to be me with you: Development of the Individuality in Couples Questionnaire.

Despite multiple theories and treatment modalities emphasizing the importance of individuality in couple relationships, the field is lacking a reliable and valid measure of this construct. In the present study, we developed the Individuality in Couples (ICQ) questionnaire and demonstrated its strong psychometric properties across two samples of participants in committed intimate relationships (Sample 1 = 580 undergraduates; Sample 2 = 445 community members). The ICQ is comprised of 25 items that can be combined into a reliable total score to measure individuality in the context of couple relationships (i.e., the extent to which someone feels respected by their partner for their individuality and experiences personal autonomy in the relationship). Scores on the ICQ demonstrated high internal consistency, excellent construct replicability, convergent and divergent validity with measures of other relationship dimensions (i.e., intimacy, support, sexual satisfaction, psychological aggression, communication), criterion validity with measures of relationship satisfaction and partner health, and incremental predictive validity for explaining relationship satisfaction and partner well-being when controlling for other relationship dimensions. Results suggest that individuality in couples is largely a unidimensional construct that is distinct from more severe patterns of control and coercion characteristic of psychological aggression. The ICQ holds promise for identifying and promoting dynamics essential for healthy couple relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning from adversity: What the COVID-19 pandemic can teach us about family resiliency.

The present study aimed to characterize the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on families with preschool age children and to identify pre-pandemic factors that explained unique family experiences. We leveraged an ongoing longitudinal study of relatively well-resourced community families who had reported on family functioning prior to the pandemic and completed surveys 6 months after pandemic onset. Both parents of dual parenting households endorsed significant hardships as a direct result of the pandemic (e.g., disrupted family routines, challenges at work); however, families also reported aspects of flourishing (i.e., experiencing positive outcomes in response to adversity) such as spending more time together as a family. Families were prone to greater hardships and fewer opportunities for growth to the extent that parents were lower in psychological resources (i.e., greater stress and internalizing symptoms, poor well-being) and were not on the same page as a couple (i.e., interparental discord, low quality coparenting) prior to pandemic onset. Finally, greater pandemic hardships predicted poorer parental mental health, greater family dysfunction, and elevated child psychopathology, controlling for pre-pandemic levels. Parents who reported more family flourishing from the pandemic had a stronger interparental relationship. Results are intended to inform theories of family stress and family interventions that can be tailored to promote resiliency (i.e., adaptation to challenging life events) and prevent dysfunction when families face rapid change and adjustment and high degrees of uncertainty and stress.