Parental reflective functioning – parents’ capacity to envision the mental states underlying their child’s behavior – plays an important role in parenting behavior, parental well-being, and children’s psychosocial outcomes. Most studies have examined parental reflective functioning in terms of relatively stable interindividual differences between parents. This is unfortunate because theoretical accounts suggest that this capacity is susceptible to intraindividual fluctuations. Parenting stress, in particular that associated with difficult child behavior, has been described as a factor that can put parental reflective functioning under pressure. Using a multilevel approach, this 7-day diary study investigated day-to-day fluctuations in parental reflective functioning and its associations with daily parenting stress and perceived internalizing and externalizing adolescent difficulties. Parents of community adolescents (N = 128) and adopted adolescents (N = 28) were sampled because adoptive parents face unique stressors that may challenge their reflective capacities. Results indicated that daily parenting stress was associated with more daily prementalizing (i.e., severely biased mentalizing), less daily certainty about mental states, and less interest and curiosity in the adolescent’s mental states. Whereas externalizing difficulties were similarly related to more daily prementalizing and less certainty about mental states, findings for internalizing difficulties were mixed. Most associations were consistent across biological and adoptive parents.

Family meals are positively associated with healthier diets among children and parents. We aimed to deepen the understanding of these relationships by exploring the associations between shared meals and dietary quality among children, fathers and mothers. A subset of parent-child dyads (296 children aged 3–6 years, 103 fathers, 293 mothers) from the DAGIS Intervention baseline assessment was included in this cross-sectional study. The parents reported how often they shared meals with the child and filled in a food frequency questionnaire assessing their child’s and their own food consumption. A Healthy Food Intake Index (HFII) describing dietary quality was calculated for all family members. We used linear regression to investigate the associations between shared meals and the HFII of the children, fathers and mothers. Models were adjusted for child’s age and gender, parent’s age and educational level and number of children in the household. Children whose fathers reported less frequently sharing a weekend lunch with the child had a lower HFII (B estimate –1·58, 95 % CI –2·66, –0·50). The association remained close to statistical significance with adjustments (B estimate –0·99, 95 % CI –2·17, 0·19). A less frequently shared weekend lunch was also borderline significantly associated with lower HFII among the fathers (adjusted model, B estimate –1·13, 95 % CI –2·30, 0·04). Fathers should be encouraged to share meals with their family, since it might have a role in the dietary quality of both children and fathers. Future studies should recognise fathers as important contributors to a healthy home food environment.

Fathers have a unique and critical role in children’s development, but limited empirical studies have examined prenatal predictors of fathers’ parenting behaviors. Exposure to early life stressors may alter adult brain white matter fibers, especially in fibers supporting optimal cognitive and emotional functioning. As such, men with experiences of early life stressors, such as risky family environments, may enter parenthood with neurobiological differences that impact their ability to provide optimal parenting. Few studies focus on early life stressors on men’s prenatal neurobiology and subsequent parenting outcomes. This study of first-time fathers (n = 41; Mage = 31.81 years; 32% Hispanic; 32% White; 24% Asian American; 7% Black; 5% Multiracial) investigated whether risky family environments would be associated with prenatal white matter organization and postpartum parenting (infants’ Mage = 6.96 months). White matter organization was quantified through fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of the directionality of the fibers within the tissue. Fathers reporting riskier family environments exhibited lower FA in white matter tracts like fornix and cingulum, which support connections between brain areas underlying memory and emotion regulation. Lower FA in these regions predicted less effective parenting postpartum. Findings provide insight into intergenerational transmission of family risk.

Previous research on biomarkers of individual differences in sensitivity to caregiving contexts has largely focused on children’s parasympathetic activity, commonly indexed by RSA. Recent work, however, suggests that the parent–child dyadic RSA concordance may also provide important insight into heterogeneity in the links between parenting behaviors and children’s adjustment outcomes. This study is among the first to characterize dyadic patterns of RSA concordance between behaviorally inhibited children aged 3.5 to 5 years old (54% female, 47% White) and their caregivers (n = 107 dyads) across tasks designed to mimic children’s exposure to novel social interactions while parents observed their children navigating these tasks. Furthermore, we examined dyadic RSA concordance as a potential moderator of the associations between nurturing and intrusive parenting behaviors and children’s adjustment problems, as reported by teachers and parents. We found that a more positive concordance (i.e., caregivers and children demonstrated similar patterns of epoch-to-epoch RSA change across tasks) protected against teacher-reported internalizing problems in the context of low parental nurturance. A negative concordance (i.e., caregivers and children demonstrated dissimilar patterns of epoch-to-epoch RSA change across tasks), however, exacerbated the risk for parents’ reports of children’s externalizing behaviors in the context of high parental intrusion.

Parents involved with child protective services (CPS) often face stressors that compromise their parenting; thus, it is critical to identify sources of resilience at multiple ecological levels. This study leveraged cross-sectional data from a study of CPS-involved parent-child dyads (N = 129). Most parents identified as having a minoritized racial/ethnic identity and as having low income. Parent responsive involvement, constructive discipline, and problematic discipline were coded from observations of parent-child interactions when children were approximately 4 years old (M = 4.19 years, SD = .34; 45.7% female). Neighborhood resource availability was assessed using the Childhood Opportunity Index, a publicly available measure of resources in a given census tract. Parental attachment was coded from the Adult Attachment Interview. Greater neighborhood resource availability and secure-autonomous parental attachment were associated with reduced problematic discipline. Additionally, parental attachment moderated the link between neighborhood resource availability and responsive involvement, such that autonomous parents in more resourced neighborhoods demonstrated strengths in positive, warm parenting. These findings highlight the potential of neighborhood resources and secure attachment to strengthen parenting, even in the face of adversity, supporting the resilience of families in marginalized communities.

Childhood maltreatment can lead to poor socioemotional development, which may undermine parental functioning in adulthood. Having a large social network of relatives and friends, however, might buffer the effects of childhood maltreatment on parents. This prediction was examined using prospective data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk Adaptation (N = 173). Early childhood maltreatment was assessed prospectively at ages 0 – 5. Socioemotional competence during middle childhood and adolescence (ages 5 – 16) was assessed via teacher reports. Adult parenting was assessed using a semi-structured interview at age 32 (N = 106) and dyadic parent-child observations at various ages (N = 85). At age 32, participants also wrote the names of friends and relatives in their inner, middle, and outer social circles. In a moderated mediation analysis, childhood maltreatment forecasted low socioemotional competence, which in turn predicted more negative parental orientations (greater hostility and lower emotional connectedness and involvement) and lower observed parental support in adulthood. However, having a large social network and having friends in one’s inner circle buffered this effect. These results highlight the significance of social networks in supporting parents who were maltreated in childhood, and primarily the importance of close friends.

Language mixing is a common phenomenon in the language input of bilingual children. However, the relation between the frequency of parental language mixing and children’s language development remains unclear. The present study investigates the relation between language mixing as observed in daylong audio recordings (LENA) and as reported by parents in the questionnaire for Quantifying Bilingual Experience (Q-BEx) and children’s language outcomes in the majority and minority language. Participants were 52 3-to-5-year-old Polish-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch children in the Netherlands and Bayesian informative hypothesis evaluations were applied. In 14 out of 15 regression analyses, the LENA and Q-BEx measures yielded similar associations with children’s language outcomes. Parental language mixing was not related to majority language outcomes, but a negative relation was found with expressive vocabulary in the minority language. Longitudinal studies are needed to pinpoint the directionality of this negative relation.

The development of parenting behaviors is influenced by the coparenting relationship – how parents coordinate and manage their shared parenting responsibilities. However, mothers and fathers may exhibit varying degrees of susceptibility to the coparenting relationship, and different factors may further shape their susceptibility. Longitudinal data from 182 different-sex dual-earner parent families were used (86% White, mostly middle- and upper-class families). Observations of coparenting and parenting behaviors were obtained at 3 and 9 months postpartum. Mothers and fathers reported their beliefs about parental roles and parenting at the third trimester of pregnancy and reported their parenting self-efficacy and infant temperament at 3 months. The results of cross-lagged panel models showed that the associations between coparenting and parenting were not significantly different for mothers and fathers. However, the moderators that shaped the associations between coparenting and parenting were distinct for mothers and fathers. Fathers’ less progressive parental role beliefs strengthened the association between supportive coparenting and positive parenting, and mothers’ lower parenting self-efficacy and children’s lower regulatory capacity enhanced the link between undermining coparenting and negative parenting. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) often struggle with theory of mind (ToM). This study explored the link between parental reflective functioning (PRF) and children’s ToM, focusing on the mediating role of parental stress (PS). A total of 80 children aged 4–7 years (40 with DLD and 40 with typical language development, TLD) and their parents were included for analysis. Assessments included the WPPSI-IV, NEPSY-II, TEC, and ELT for children and the PRFQ and PSI-SF4 for parents. Results showed that children with DLD performed similarly to their TLD peers in terms of nonverbal intelligence but faced difficulties with cognitive and affective ToM and understanding of emotional terms (UET). Parents of DLD children exhibited low interest and curiosity (PRF components) and high PS, particularly due to dysfunctional interactions and challenging behaviors. Mediation analysis revealed that low parental interest and curiosity negatively affected children’s cognitive ToM and UET through increased PS from dysfunctional interactions. These findings highlight the need for early interventions to enhance ToM in children with DLD and support parents in better understanding and interacting with their child. Such interventions can reduce parent–child stress and promote ToM development of children with DLD, aligning with bioecological models of development.