The relations between 4 sources of family stress (marital dissatisfaction, home chaos, parental depressive symptoms, and job role dissatisfaction) and the emotion socialization practice of mothers' and fathers' responses to children's negative emotions were examined. Participants included 101 couples with 7-year-old children. Dyadic analyses were conducted using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model and relations were tested in terms of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Results suggest that measures of family stress relate to supportive and nonsupportive parental responses, though many of these relations differ by parent gender. The results are discussed in terms of the 3 theoretical hypotheses, all of which are supported to some degree depending on the family stressor examined. Keywords emotion socialization; family stress; parental responses to children's negative emotions; parent genderCoping with a negative emotion, such as sadness, anger, or fear, is a more developmentally difficult task for children than coping with a positive emotion (Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002). Until children have learned how to cope with and regulate their negative feelings, it is important for parents to assist children in handling these experiences. In their responses to their children's negative emotions, parents are providing valuable information to their children about Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jackie A. Nelson, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402. janelso3@uncg.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Fam Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript appropriate emotional displays and successful coping strategies. Parent responses to children's negative emotions have been described as one of the most important methods of direct emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998).Parents vary in the ways they respond to negative emotions, and their responses can be described as either supportive or nonsupportive (Eisenberg et al., 1998;Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002). Supportive responses by parents invite children to explore their feelings by encouraging the child to express emotions or helping the child understand and cope with an emotion-eliciting situation. Nonsupportive responses, such minimizing the child's emotional experience, punishing the child, or becoming distressed by the child's display, send messages to the child that the display of negative emotions is not appropriate or acceptable. Supportive parental responses to children's negative emotions have been found to be related to aspects of emotional and social competence including children's emotion understanding and friendship quality (McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007). By contrast, parental nonsupportive or suppressive responses have been linked to stored negative affect in the child and disorgan...

Associations between maternal sensitivity to infant distress and non-distress and infant socialemotional adjustment were examined in a subset of dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 376). Mothers reported on infant temperament at 1 and 6 months postpartum, and maternal sensitivity to distress and non-distress were observed at 6 months. Child behavior problems, social competence, and affect dysregulation were measured at 24 and 36 months. Maternal sensitivity to distress but not to non-distress was related to fewer behavioral problems and higher social competence. In addition, for temperamentally reactive infants, maternal sensitivity to distress was associated with less affect dysregulation. Sensitivity to non-distress only prevented affect dysregulation if sensitivity to distress was also high.There is considerable evidence that infants develop healthy relationships, behaviors, and socialemotional skills in the context of early sensitive interactions with their mothers (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters & Wall, 1978; van den Boom, 1994 van den Boom, , 1995. Sensitive responses to infant distress may be of more developmental significance in relation to social-emotional outcomes than sensitivity to non-distress. How parents respond to children's negative emotions may teach infants valuable lessons about their own emotional states and what they can expect from social partners. Two studies support the primacy of sensitivity to negative emotions over and above other dimensions of maternal sensitivity in relation to infant-mother attachment security (Del Carmen, Pederson, Huffman & Bryan, 1993;McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006). It is still not known, however, whether sensitivity to infant distress predicts other aspects of early socialemotional adjustment independent of sensitivity to non-distress. Furthermore, the possibility that maternal sensitivity to infant distress is particularly important to the adaptive development of temperamentally reactive infants who are prone to more frequent and intense negative emotions remains to be examined. Thus the goals of the present study were to: 1) examine the associations between maternal sensitivity both to infant distress and to non-distress and indices of early social-emotional development (behavior problems, social competence, and affect dysregulation); and 2) determine if these associations vary based on infant temperament. The Meaning and Measurement of Maternal SensitivityMaternal sensitivity refers to the quality with which mothers respond to their infants' cues in a timely and appropriate manner. Sensitive mothers respond to cues reasonably quickly, establishing a clear contingency between their infants' cues and their responses. Moreover, their responses are well matched to their infants' cues, the developmental level of their infant, and the demands of the current context. In most published studies, single scores representing global ratings of sensitivity in response to diverse infant cues are used as indices of the quality of maternal responsivene...

Vagal tone (measured via respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and vagal withdrawal (measured by decreases in RSA) have been identified as physiological measures of self-regulation, but little is known how they may relate to the regulation of cognitive activity as measured through executive function (EF) tasks. We expected that baseline measures of vagal tone, thought to be an indicator of attention, would correlate with EF performance. We also predicted that vagal withdrawal would allow for the reorientation of attention that is needed to succeed on EF tasks, but too much withdrawal would be detrimental. RSA measured at baseline was indeed related to EF performance in 220 3.5-year-old children, and those who exhibited a moderate decrease in RSA during the EF tasks outperformed children whose RSA decreased by too little or too much. These findings implicate vagal tone withdrawal as a psychophysiological measure of higher cognitive processes, most likely substantiated through increases in the levels of focused attention.

Close Relationships Predict Curvilinear Trajectories of Maternal Depressive Symptoms over the Transition to Parenthood Trajectories of change in maternal depressive symptoms were examined in a sample of 98 mothers across the transition to parenthood. Latent class growth modeling revealed two unique trajectories: one characterized by consistently low depressive symptoms, the other characterized by a curvilinear pattern with initially elevated symptoms that declined around the time of childbirth then returned to elevated levels by 24 weeks Bradley/Hasbro Children'

The present study examined pubertal timing and tempo in a sample of 445 adolescents (53% male), using both variable-centered (latent growth curve) and person-centered (latent class) approaches, to discern the pubertal development trajectories associated with the experience of maltreatment. Results from the variable-centered analyses indicated a slower initial tempo that increased later for boys who had experienced neglect. The person-centered results indicated three classes for boys that mainly differentiated tempo effects and two classes for girls primarily distinguishing timing differences. For girls, sexual abuse predicted membership in an earlier pubertal timing class. These findings enhance our knowledge of the variability in pubertal development as well as gender differences in maltreatment types that may alter pubertal timing and tempo.

Results of the research further our understanding of invariance of the HRS/AHEAD cognitive ability measures. Further implications are discussed.

The current study examined the process by which attachment to parents influences satisfaction with and ease in forming friendships at college. One hundred seventy-two female college freshmen completed a measure of parental attachment security the summer before their first semester of college (July 2006) and measures to assess satisfaction with and ease in forming close relationships at the end of their first semester (December 2006). Students ranged in age from 18 to 20 years (M = 18.09, SD = 0.33) and were diverse in their racial makeup (30% racial minority). Consistent with predictions derived from attachment theory, secure attachment to parents was positively associated with ease in forming friendships among racial minority and white participants and satisfaction with friendships among minority participants. Moreover, indirect effects of parental attachment security on relationship outcomes through social anxiety were significant for minority participants but not for white participants. Findings may be useful in the development of retention programs targeted at incoming university freshmen, particularly minority students.

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