The impact of parent-child relationship on adolescent social adjustment following childhood abuse: the moderation of the serotonergic multilocus genetic variation

Revisiting Maternal and Paternal Parenting Styles: Differentiating Latent Profiles and Associations With Psychosocial Outcomes of Chinese Adolescents in a National Sample of Parent-Child Dyads.

INTRODUCTION Parent-child interactions constitute a critical developmental context for the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents. This study aimed to differentiate parenting styles and examine their domain-specific effects on later adolescent outcomes, using a culturally sensitive, person-centered approach. METHODS This study employed latent profile analysis (LPA) on a national sample of 8333 Chinese parent-adolescent dyads (4564 mother-child and 3769 father-child dyads) from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS). At baseline, adolescents were aged 12.93 years on average (SD = 0.82), and 51.5% of them were boys. Analyses were conducted separately for the full sample of parents, mothers, and fathers to identify distinct parenting profiles and their subsequent influence on adolescent academic difficulty, deviant peer affiliation, and depression. RESULTS A robust four-profile structure namely Authoritative, Managerial, Warm Harbor, and Disengaged was identified for the full and maternal samples. Crucially, a unique five-profile structure emerged for fathers, featuring an additional Emotionally Detached profile characterized by average discipline but extremely low warmth. Further analyses revealed that the Authoritative and Warm Harbor profiles were associated with more favorable outcomes across all domains, particularly in mother-child dyads. For father-child dyads, the Emotionally Detached profile was uniquely associated with higher academic difficulty, deviant peer affiliation, and depression. CONCLUSIONS These findings underscore the necessity of using gender-differentiated, person-centered approaches to understand culturally configured parenting and its consequences. Moving beyond uniform theoretical models, these results inform more targeted research and family support practices.

Heritable, Prenatal, and Environmental Pathways of Parental Stress: Differential Influences on Children’s Effortful Control and Cortisol Regulation

Parental stress can have lasting consequences on children’s stress sensitivity and self-regulation capacities. However, it remains unclear the extent to which these effects reflect birth parent influences (genetic and/or prenatal), environmental rearing experiences, and/or interactions between them. Parent–offspring adoption designs offer a powerful framework for disentangling these mechanisms by separating birth parent influences from post-natal environmental pathways when the adoptions occur around the time of birth. Although stress experiences of birth parents and adoptive parents have each been associated with child developmental outcomes, the relationship between them remains unexplored. The present study leverages a parent-offspring adoption approach to examine the associations of birth mother life stress with adolescents’ effortful control (EC) via child diurnal cortisol slopes (a marker of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal [HPA] axis functioning) and whether adoptive mothers’ or fathers’ experience of stressful life events moderate this relationship. Participants were drawn from families participating in the longitudinal Early Growth and Development Study. The analytic sample included 561 adopted children, and their birth and adoptive parents. Structural equation modeling revealed that birth mother life stress was linked to poorer adoptee EC in adolescence; neither adoptive mothers’ nor fathers’ experiences of stressful life events predicted adoptee EC. Among adoptive parents, only fathers’ experiences of stressful life events predicted child diurnal cortisol slopes, such that greater adoptive fathers’ stress was linked to flatter adoptee wake-to-bedtime cortisol slopes. However, the hypothesized mediation and moderation effects were not supported. These findings show how the birth parent influences (genetic and/or prenatal) and rearing dimensions of parental stress have differential impacts on the child’s neurobiological functioning and development, where birth mother life stress predicts adolescent self-regulation, and adoptive fathers’ stress predicts child stress sensitivity.

Differential Associations from Parental Childhood Adversity to Child Psychopathology: Evidence from Sexual and Gender Minority Families

The independent protective role of paternal involvement in the association between maternal containment and depressive symptoms in children aged 3-6

Aims: This study examined the relationship between maternal containment function and depressive symptoms in children aged 3-6 years, with particular attention to the independent protective role of paternal involvement.Methods: The sample consisted of 386 mother–father dyads whose children were clinically referred to an outpatient child psychiatry clinic in İstanbul due to early emotional and behavioral distress. Child depressive symptoms were measured using the Child Depression Symptom Scale (CDSS), maternal containment was assessed using the Parental Containment Function Scale (PCFS), and paternal involvement was assessed using the Father Involvement Scale (FIS). Data were analyzed using non parametric tests, Spearman correlations (ρ), and bootstrapped mediation analyses. Results: Higher levels of maladaptive maternal containment (e.g., separation sensitivity, authoritarian–rigid parenting) demonstrated a significant positive association with increased depressive symptoms in children. In contrast, greater paternal involvement, particularly discretionary engagement and affection–closeness, was negatively associated with child depressive symptoms. Mediation analyses indicated that although paternal involvement contributed to lower depressive symptoms as an independent protective system, it did not significantly mediate the relationship between maternal containment and child depression. Conclusion: Maternal containment and paternal involvement operate as distinct, parallel family systems that contribute to early childhood emotional development. Interventions should address both the maternal containment function and the independent protective resource of father involvement.

Effects of Psychological Maltreatment on Family Psychological Resilience: A Dyadic Longitudinal Model of Parent-Adult Child Relationships.

The quality of parent-child contact is key to understanding the process of family resilience development, given the influence of adverse experiences on family dynamics. The resilience of family members can be significantly impacted by psychological maltreatment, which has an impact on the victim's own mental health. Therefore, the current study looked at the association between adult children (children) and one of their parents' psychological maltreatment and family resilience, both in an interpersonal setting and across time. To achieve this, the Longitudinal Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (L-APIM) and a dyadic longitudinal approach were used to evaluate the relationships. 252 matched adult child-parent dyads (N = 504) make up the study's final data set. Psychological maltreatment had a negative and significant impact on family resilience in both adult children and parents, according to the analysis's findings, which fell under the actor effects framework. The psychological maltreatment levels of adult children and one of their parents were found to have a significant and unfavorable impact on each other's family resilience at the partner effects level. These results would suggest that psychological maltreatment is a risk factor that endures over time and is passed on within the family. It also shows that relational and individual dynamics are impacted by family resilience.

Reciprocal associations between parent-child relationships and adolescent depressive symptoms: The longitudinal mediation role of insomnia and sex differences.