Early studies on fathers focused mainly on their presence in or absence from children's lives, and the amount of time they spent with them. More recently, several authors have stated the importance of understanding the quality of father involvement to comprehend fully its impact on child development. However, studies have also reported that socio-demographic variables, namely, father educational levels and employment status affect parenting and children outcomes. The aims of this study were to analyze a sample of 465 Portuguese two-parent families with pre-school age children, looking for associations between father involvement in care/socialization activities and paternal parenting styles while testing for the moderating effect of father educational levels and working hours. Fathers reported on their own parenting styles and mothers described the father's involvement. Fathers' working hours moderated the relation between his authoritative parenting style and involvement in teaching/discipline and play activities. In addition, fathers' education moderated the relation between his authoritative style and involvement in direct care and teaching/discipline. Given the different roles that fathers can assume in their children's lives, it is important to understand the mechanisms of paternal participation, and identify the factors which explain the differences in effective care so that we can promote higher positive involvement.

a b s t r a c tThis study investigated the relationships between children's secure base and emotion regulation, namely their behavioral strategies and emotional expressiveness, during different situational and social contexts in naturalistic settings. Fifty-five children ranging in age from 18 to 26 months of age and their mothers participated in this study. Children were exposed to three situational (fear, positive affect and frustration/anger) and two social (maternal constraint and involvement) contexts. Toddlers' behavioral strategies differed as function of emotion-eliciting context, maternal involvement and attachment quality. Emotional expressiveness varied as function of an interaction involving situational contexts, maternal involvement and children's attachment security.

We used stochastic actor-based models to test whether the developmental dynamics of friendships and antipathies in preschool peer groups (followed throughout three school years) were co-dependent. We combined choices from three sociometric tasks of 142 children to identify friendship and antipathy ties and used SIENA to model network dynamics. Our results show that different social processes drive the development of friendship and antipathy ties, and that they do not develop in association (i.e., friendship ties are not dependent on existing antipathies, and vice-versa). These results differ from those of older children (age range = 10–14) suggesting that the interplay of friendship and antipathy only plays a significant role in the peer group context in older children. We propose these differences to be likely related with preschool age children's inaccurate perceptions of their classmates' relationships, particularly of their antipathies, and/or with the absence of shared norms to deal with antipathetic relationships.

The present work analyses differences in the attachment representations of institutionalized children as compared with children from low and high educational level living with their natural families. Participants were 91 Portuguese children, 52% girls, aged 48-96 months. There were three different groups: 19 institutionalized children, 16 low educational level families' children and 56 from high educational level families'. Attachment representations were assessed for Security of the narratives of the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT). Psychopathological symptoms were assessed using the Child Behaviour Checklist for parents and caretakers. Verbal skills were assessed using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised. Results show that institutionalized children have signifi cantly lower security of attachment representations, less verbal skills and higher aggressive behaviour than the other two groups. Attachment representations were associated with social/withdrawal and aggression, independently of age, verbal skills and parents' education. The main effect of institutionalization on externalizing aggressive behaviour was completely mediated by the security of attachment representations.

Given the impact of sleep in several domains of a child's development, the comparison between actigraphy and parental questionnaires is of great importance in preschool-aged children, an understudied group. While parental reports tend to overestimate sleep duration, actigraphy boosts the frequency of night-waking's. Our primary goal was to compare actigraphy data and parental reports (Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire, CSHQ), regarding bedtime, wake-up time, sleep duration, and wake after sleep onset (WASO), using the Bland-Altman technique. Forty-six children, age 3-6 years, and their parents participated. Results suggest that, despite existing associations between sleep schedule variables measured by both methods (from r = 0.57 regarding bedtime at weekends to r = 0.86 regarding wake-up time during the week, ps), differences between them were significant and agreements were weak, with parents overestimating bedtimes and wake-up times in relation to actigraphy. Differences between actigraphy and CSHQ were ± 52 min for weekly bedtime, ± 38 min for weekly wake-up time, ±159 min for total sleep time, and ± 62 min for WASO, indicating unsatisfactory agreement between methods. Correlations between actigraphy data and CSHQ dimensions are also explored. Our study contributes to the knowledge of the characteristics of each instrument, along with their tendency to overestimate and underestimate certain sleep parameters. We conclude that a complementary use of both instruments would better inform clinical practice and research on a child's sleep.

No abstract

Resumo: O estudo analisa, no contexto da teoria de Bowlby e Ainsworth, o modo como a criança utiliza as figuras parentais como base segura, explorando a especificidade da organização destes comportamentos nas duas relações. Analisa, ainda, a existência de semelhanças ou diferenças nas classificações da criança em relação à mãe e ao pai. Os participantes são 56 díades mãe/criança e pai/criança, tendo as crianças idades compreendidas entre os 29 e os 38 meses. Observadores independentes realizaram visitas domiciliárias com a criança/mãe e com a criança/pai, utilizando o AQS (Waters, 1995). Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre os valores de segurança para a mãe e para o pai. Com base nas escalas do AQS, obtiveram-se diferenças significativas na Proximidade e no Contacto Físico. Assim, a criança utiliza ambos os pais como base segura, embora os estilos de interacção possam apresentar características específicas. Verificou-se, ainda, a existência de uma correlação significativa entre os valores de segurança da criança em relação à mãe e ao pai, o que vai ao encontro dos resultados obtidos por Veríssimo et al. (2006). Esta correlação poderá ser explicada pela semelhança nos cuidados parentais.

The main goal of this study was to explore the contributions of early father-child and mother-child attachment relationships to children's later social competence with their preschool peers; possible unique and shared contributions were tested. Using a multimethod design and focusing on direct observation, attachment was assessed at home at age 3 with the Attachment Behavior Q-sort (AQS) and two years later social competence was assessed at classrooms of 5-year-olds using a set of seven measurement indicators that are part of the Hierarchical Model of Social Competence. Results show that attachment to each parent made unique and significant contributions to children's social competence and suggested the possibility that each caregiver may have somewhat different patterns of influence on the different indicators of children's social competence. Findings also suggest the possibility that a secure attachment with one parent may buffer the impact of having an insecure relationship with the other. Due to sample size, these results should be seen as a starting point to generate new and larger studies.