ABSTRACT
The current study examined relations between child temperament--specifically, negative emotionality--and parents' supportive and undermining coparenting behavior, and further tested whether marital adjustment moderated relations between child negative affect and coparenting. One-hundred eleven two-parent families with a 4-year old child participated in this study. Parents completed questionnaires to provide information on children's negative affectivity, marital adjustment, and the quality of their coparenting relationships. Furthermore, parents and children participated together in two 10-minute task-oriented interactions that were coded to assess coparenting behavior. As hypothesized, parents of children higher on levels of negative affect demonstrated greater undermining coparenting behavior. In addition, marital adjustment moderated relations between children's negative affect and parents' supportive coparenting behavior. However, contrary to expectations, couples with higher levels of marital adjustment were most vulnerable to effects of child negativity on supportive coparenting. Results suggest that high-quality marital relationships may not buffer the coparenting relationship from the effects of temperamentally difficult preschoolers.
Subject(s)
Emotions , Family Conflict/psychology , Father-Child Relations , Mother-Child Relations , Parenting/psychology , Temperament , Adaptation, Psychological , Adult , Child, Preschool , Cooperative Behavior , Female , Humans , Male , Models, Psychological , Social SupportABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Temperamental effortful control involves the voluntary control of attention and behavior. Deficits in effortful control put children at risk for developing externalizing behavior problems. Coparenting behavior, or the extent to which parents support or undermine each other's parenting efforts, has also been identified as an important correlate of children's socioemotional adjustment. The present study tested whether coparenting behavior moderated longitudinal relations between preschool children's effortful control and their externalizing behavior. METHODS: Ninety-two families (mother, father, 4-year-old child) participated. Parents' coparenting behavior was observed during family interaction, and children's effortful control was rated by parents. At that time and one year later, mothers and teachers reported on children's externalizing behavior. RESULTS: Supportive coparenting behavior moderated longitudinal relations between children's effortful control and mothers' and teachers' reports of their externalizing behavior, even when taking into account initial levels of externalizing behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Effective coparenting served as a buffer for children, such that when parents displayed high levels of supportive coparenting behavior, the link between low effortful control and increases in externalizing behavior was not observed.
