The concepts of allostatic load and allostatic processes can help psychologists understand how health trajectories are influenced by stressful childhood experiences in the family. This paper describes psychological pathways and two key allostatic mediators, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the immune system, through which stressful early rearing conditions may influence adult mental and physical health. The action of meshed gears is introduced as a metaphor to illustrate how responses occurring within a brief time frame, for example, immediate reactions to stressors, can influence developmental and health processes unfolding over much longer spans of time. We identify early-developing psychological and biological response patterns that could link chronic stressors in childhood to later health outcomes. Some of these "precursor outcomes" (e.g., heightened vigilance and preparedness for threats; enhanced inflammatory and humoral responses to infectious microorganisms) appear to be aimed at protection from immediate dangers; they may reflect "adaptive trade-offs" that balance short-term survival advantages under harsh rearing conditions against disadvantages manifested later in development. Our analysis also suggests mechanisms that underlie resilience in risky family environments.
Spillover in the Home: The Effects of Family Conflict on Parents' BehaviorConflict with a spouse or child may generate spillover, defined as short-term affective changes in parents that affect their behavior with other family members. In a diverse sample of 86 parents, this 56-day diary study examined daily bidirectional spillover between conflict in the marital or parent-child dyad and parents' irritable, frictional behavior with their child or spouse, respectively. Tests of daily associations between conflict and parent behavior revealed robust spillover effects according to parent as well as spouse and child reports. Parents' daily negative mood and child externalizing behavior contributed to several but not all of these associations. Daily spillover findings were largely unaffected by parents' neuroticism, suggesting that parents' day-to-day fluctuations in negative mood, not average levels of negative affectivity, promoted spillover. Significant direct effects of conflict on parent behavior even when controlling for negative mood, however, implicate additional cognitive or social processes as contributors to conflict spillover in families.Friction is a normal part of everyday family life. Parents use conflictual, irritable behavior to communicate that their spouses or children have
Adolescent girls reported on their experiences both as perpetrators and as victims of several distinct forms of relational aggression. Details of these incidents were gathered from 114 ethnically diverse ninth and tenth graders via a secure online survey. The frequency with which girls perpetrated or were targeted for particular acts of relational aggression was assessed and, based on the responses, a computer program randomly selected one item (i.e., gossip, ignoring, or exclusion) for which each girl was asked to recall a specific experience and answer follow-up questions. Perceptions of the goals and functions of specific relationally aggressive acts were assessed, as well as how the perpetrator or victim felt at the time of the incident. Ignoring or "giving the silent treatment" appeared to be a unique form of relational aggression inasmuch as the girls perceived different motives, or functions, for ignoring compared with gossip and exclusion and felt worse at the time of the ignoring incident, both when they were reporting as aggressors and as victims. C 2010
Questionnaires and laboratory observations have become so engrained in our research literature that it is easy to forget that neither family members' evaluations nor their behavior in situations structured by an investigator are necessarily the phenomena of interest. However, the study of life as it is actually lived is becoming more prominent in research on families. The
Objective An emerging literature provides evidence for the association between romantic relationship quality and sleep, an important factor in health and well-being. However, we still know very little about the specific relationship processes that affect sleep behavior. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine how self-disclosure, an important relational process linked to intimacy, relationship satisfaction and health, is associated with sleep behavior. Method As part of a larger study of family processes, wives (n=46) and husbands (n=38) from 46 cohabiting families completed 56 days of daily diaries. Spouses completed evening diaries assessing daily self-disclosure, relationship satisfaction, and mood and morning diaries assessing the prior night's sleep. Multilevel modeling was used to explore the effects of both daily variation in and average levels across the 56 days of self-disclosure on sleep. Results Daily variation in self-disclosure predicted sleep outcomes for wives, but not for husbands. On days when wives self-disclosed more to their spouses than their average level, their subjective sleep quality and sleep efficiency that night improved. Furthermore, daily self-disclosure buffered the negative effect of daily negative mood on sleep latency for wives, but not husbands. In contrast, higher average levels of self-disclosure predicted less waking during the night for husbands, but not for wives. Conclusion The association between self-disclosure and sleep is one mechanism by which daily relationship functioning may influence health and well-being. Gender may play a role in how self-disclosure is associated with sleep.
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