You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!: Emotion socialization and child physiology jointly predict early prosocial development.

Prosocial behavior in early childhood is a precursor to later adaptive social functioning. This investigation leveraged mother-reported, physiological, and observational data to examine children's prosocial development from age 2 to age 4 (N = 125). Maternal emotion socialization (ES) strategies and children's parasympathetic regulation have each been implicated in prosocial behavior, but are rarely examined together or prospectively. Given the transactional nature of parent-child relationships, the effects of maternal ES strategies on children's prosocial behavior are likely moderated by children's individual differences in parasympathetic regulation. As expected, mothers' reported use of problem-focused ES strategies predicted prosocial behavior at age 4. Additionally, children who showed parasympathetic reactivity consistent with more effective emotion regulation during a lab-based disappointment task were rated as more prosocial at age 4. Several interactions with maternal ES strategies emerged. Children's parasympathetic regulation moderated the relations between observed physical comfort or cognitive reframing and prosocial behavior. Observed distraction (either behavioral or cognitive) moderated the link between mothers' reported use of problem-focused ES strategies and children's prosocial behavior. Findings suggest that children's emerging prosocial behavior is shaped by the interactive contributions of interpersonal maternal ES as well as intrapersonal intrinsic physiological regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Within- and between-family differences in cooperative and competitive coparenting.

Coparenting, the coordination between adults in their parental roles, contributes to the functioning of multiple family subsystems. The ecological context model of coparenting posits that multiple factors, including contextual, marital, and child characteristics, influence coparenting behavior (Feinberg, 2003). To date, coparenting has primarily been considered a between-family construct, and the focus has been on examining the factors that account for differences in coparenting across families. There is very limited research exploring variations in coparenting within-families across contexts. To address this gap, the current study explores whether there is significant within- and between-family variation in coparenting. In addition, family, marital, and child correlates of both within- and between-family variation in coparenting are examined. Fifty-eight 2-parent families, drawn from a larger ongoing longitudinal study on children's emotional development, participated in this study. Parents and their children participated in a laboratory visit when children were 42-months-old that included 3 triadic family interaction tasks that were coded to assess cooperative and competitive coparenting, as well as child-centered behavior. In addition, children completed a computerized go/no-go task to assess their inhibitory control and parents completed questionnaires about their marital relationship quality. Results indicated that a substantial portion of the variance in coparenting occurred within families. In addition, the correlates of coparenting cooperation and competition differed.

Cooperative coparenting moderates the association between parenting practices and children's prosocial behavior.

This study examined how aspects of the parenting and coparenting relationships relate to children's prosocial behavior in early childhood. Fifty-eight 2-parent families from a larger ongoing longitudinal study participated in this study. Mothers completed questionnaires that measured their use of inductive reasoning, as well as their children's prosocial behavior. Furthermore, parents and their children participated in 3 triadic interaction tasks that were coded to assess cooperative coparenting behavior. Results revealed that cooperative coparenting was positively associated with children's prosocial behavior. A significant interaction also emerged between maternal inductive reasoning and cooperative coparenting behavior. These findings underscore the important role of a cooperative coparenting subsystem in influencing children's emerging prosocial behavior, as well as highlight the association between positive parenting practices and children's prosocial development within the context of cooperative coparenting behaviors. This study demonstrates the utility of understanding family-level processes that contribute to children's prosocial development during early childhood.