Parent-specific reciprocity from infancy to adolescence shapes children's social competence and dialogical skills

Abstract

Reciprocity - the capacity to engage in social exchange that integrates inputs from multiple partners into a unified social event - is a cornerstone of adaptive social life that is learned within dyad-specific attachments during an early period of neuroplasticity. Yet, very little research traced the expression of children's reciprocity with their mother and father in relation to long-term outcomes. Guided by evolutionary models, we followed mothers, fathers, and their firstborn child longitudinally and observed mother-child and father-child reciprocity in infancy, preschool, and adolescence. In preschool, children's social competence, aggression, and prosocial behavior were observed at kindergarten. In adolescence, children's dialogical skills were assessed during positive and conflict interactions with same-sex best friends. Father-child and mother-child reciprocity were individually stable, inter-related at each stage, and consisted of distinct behavioral components. Structural equation modeling indicated that early maternal and paternal reciprocity were each uniquely predictive of social competence and lower aggression in preschool, which, in turn, shaped dialogical skills in adolescence. Father-adolescent reciprocity contributed to the dialogical negotiation of conflict, whereas mother-adolescent reciprocity predicted adolescents' dialogical skills during positive exchanges. Results highlight the role of parent-child reciprocity in shaping children's social collaboration and intimate relationships with non-kin members of their social world.

Parental embodied mentalizing: how the nonverbal dance between parents and infants predicts children’s socio-emotional functioning

“…Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target (2002) suggested that the evolutionary function of the dyadic relationship between parent and human infant goes far beyond ensuring the safety of the latter, to furthering the understanding of the nature of subjectivity and the ability to develop social intelligence, skills, and competence (e.g., Feldman, Bamberger, & Kanat-Maymon, 2013). Indeed, our results provide preliminary evidence that the infant's experience of the mother's embodied mentalizing carries over into childhood and expands beyond the parent-infant relationship, seeming to influence (in this observational study) the development of social skills as late as 54 months.…”

Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences

“…Although humans are among the few mammalian species where some male parental caregiving is relatively common, father involvement varies considerably within and across cultures, adapting to ecological conditions (1,3). Involved fathering has been linked with children's long-term physiological and social development and with increases in mothers' caregivingrelated hormones such as oxytocin and prolactin (3)(4)(5)(6). In addition, animal studies demonstrated structural brain alterations in caregiving fathers (7,8).…”

“…It has been suggested that, although maternal caregiving is triggered by neurobiological processes related to pregnancy and labor, the human father's brain, similar to other biparental mammals, adapts to the parental role through active involvement in childcare (1)(2)(3). Despite growing childcare involvement of fathers (3,5,6), mechanisms for human fathers' brain adaptation to caregiving experiences remain largely unknown, and no study to our knowledge has examined the brain basis of human fatherhood when fathers assume primary responsibility for infant care.…”

Fathers' and Mothers' Verbal Responsiveness and the Language Skills of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…First, fathers overall are increasingly involved in childrearing (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Second, whether a child is among the approximately 64% of children (including children with ASD) in the United States who reside in a two-parent household (Freedman, Kalb, Zablotsky, & Stuart, 2012), or is in a home with a nonresident father, high-quality paternal involvement with children is related to improved child outcomes, accounting for variance beyond that accounted for by mother-child relationship variables (e.g., Adamsons & Johnson, 2013;Feldman, Bamberger, & Kanat-Maymon, 2013;Washington et al, 2014). The generalizability of these findings for fathers of typically developing children to fathers of children with ASD is unknown at this time.…”