Intervention-induced temperament changes in children: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial of the Incredible Years parent program.

Child temperament has long been viewed as a potential susceptibility factor in the link between parenting and child disruptive behavior (CDB). Specifically, the idea is that children with higher negative emotionality, surgency, and lower effortful control are more affected by their received parenting, but experimental evidence is scarce. Also, others have argued that child temperament might not be a susceptibility factor but a factor that can change through parents' participation in a parenting intervention. To test both hypotheses, we analyzed pretest, posttest, and 4-month follow-up data from 386 mostly Dutch parents, mainly mothers (92%; Mage = 38.1, SD = 4.8) with children (Mage = 6.31, SD = 1.33; 54.2% boys). The children had above-average disruptive behavior (i.e., ≥75th percentile Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory questionnaire; Eyberg & Pincus, 1999). The families participated in a randomized controlled trial of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that child temperament did not moderate IY intervention effects on CDB. Furthermore, parallel process analyses showed that the IY intervention led to direct, simultaneous decreases in both negative emotionality and CDB. These findings counter the widely held belief that temperament traits are static, unchangeable modulators of the links between parenting and CDB. Instead, child temperament (negative emotionality) can at least partly be influenced by parents' participation in a parenting program. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

When mummy and daddy get under your skin: A new look at how parenting affects children's DNA methylation, stress reactivity, and disruptive behavior.

Child maltreatment is a global phenomenon that affects the lives of millions of children. Worldwide, as many as one in three to six children encounter physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from their caregivers. Children who experience abuse often show alterations in stress reactivity. Although this alteration may reflect a physiological survival response, it can nevertheless be harmful in the long run-increasing children's disruptive behavior and jeopardizing their development in multiple domains. But can we undo this process in at-risk children? Based on several lines of pioneering research, we hypothesize that we indeed can. Specifically, we hypothesize that highly dysfunctional parenting leads to an epigenetic pattern in children's glucocorticoid genes that contributes to stress dysregulation and disruptive behavior. However, we also hypothesize that it is possible to "flip the methylation switch" by improving parenting with known-effective parenting interventions in at-risk families. We predict that improved parenting will change methylation in genes in the glucocorticoid pathway, leading to improved stress reactivity and decreased disruptive behavior in children. Future research testing this theory may transform developmental and intervention science, demonstrating how parents can get under their children's skins-and how this mechanism can be reversed.

Corrigendum: Determinants of Non-paid Task Division in Gay-, Lesbian-, and Heterosexual-Parent Families With Infants Conceived Using Artificial Reproductive Techniques.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00914.].

Determinants of Non-paid Task Division in Gay-, Lesbian-, and Heterosexual-Parent Families With Infants Conceived Using Artificial Reproductive Techniques.

Background: The division of non-paid labor in heterosexual parents in the West is usually still gender-based, with mothers taking on the majority of direct caregiving responsibilities. However, in same-sex couples, gender cannot be the deciding factor. Inspired by Feinberg's ecological model of co-parenting, this study investigated whether infant temperament, parent factors (biological relatedness to child, psychological adjustment, parenting stress, and work status), and partner relationship quality explained how first-time gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents divided labor (childcare and family decision-making) when their infants were 4 and 12 months old. We also tested whether family type acted as a moderator. Method: Participants were drawn from the new parents study. Only those who provided information about their biological relatedness to their child (N = 263 parents) were included. When infants were 4 months (T1), parents completed a password-protected online questionnaire exploring their demographic characteristics including work status and standardized online-questionnaires on task division (childcare and family decision-making), infant temperament, parental anxiety, parental depression, parental stress, and partner relationship satisfaction. When infants were 12-months-old (T2), parents provided information about task division and their biological relatedness to their children. Results: Linear mixed models showed that no factor explained the division of family decision making at T1 and T2. For relative time spent on childcare tasks at T1, biological relatedness mattered for lesbian mothers only: biologically related mothers appeared to spend more time on childcare tasks than did non-related mothers. Results showed that, regardless of family type, parents who were not working or were working part-time at T1 performed more childcare tasks at T1. This was still true at T2. The other factors did not significantly contribute to relative time spent on childcare tasks at T2. Conclusion: We had the opportunity to analyze the division of non-paid tasks in families where parenting was necessarily planned and in which gender could not affect that division. Although Feinberg's model of co-parenting suggests that various factors are related to task division, we found that paid work outside the home was most important during the first year of parenthood in determining caregiving roles.