Emotional dysregulation presents substantial challenges to parents' well-being and healthy child development. Nonetheless, many parents find self-regulation a challenge to manage, which may result in adverse consequences (Lunkenheimer et al., 2023). The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional survey design study was to examine relationships…

This study aims to preliminarily validate the Italian version of the Coparenting Relationship Scale for Children (CRS-C) with 141 mothers, 141 fathers, and 141 children (48.6% males) aged 8-14 years. We tested the factorial structure of the CRS-C, which included five factors (support, endorsement, undermining, agreement, and exposure to conflict),…

The authors examined task-based (i.e., executive function), surveyed (i.e., effortful control), and physiological (i.e., resting cardiac respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) measures of child and maternal regulation as distinct moderators of longitudinal bidirectional links between child externalizing (EXT) behaviors and harsh parenting (HP) from 6…

Social understanding competence develops in sensitive and co-regulating caregiver interactions. Parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting stress can affect children's social understanding. This study investigated if children's social understanding was associated with PRF and parenting stress. Parents of 305 Italian children aged from 24…

Parental stress is a well-documented phenomenon. The relationships between parental stress, parent-child dynamics, and child outcomes are complex and bidirectional. Although this intricate interaction is well recognized, we specifically examined the impact of child-related variables on parental stress. Although many child factors can contribute to…

Children with developmental delay (DD) are at increased risk for behavioral difficulties. Past research has indicated that behavioral problems can interact with other parental difficulties in families of children with DD. To date, no research has explored the moderating role of marital satisfaction in the relationship between child behavioral…

We investigated longitudinal relations between internalizing, externalizing, and total behaviors that challenge in young children on the autism spectrum and mothers' parenting stress. Participants included 93 mothers of children on the autism spectrum aged 27.89-65.84 months, who completed questionnaires on maternal parenting stress, and…

Research Findings: The present study investigated the potential mediating role of maternal parenting in the intergenerational effects of maternal childhood traumatic experiences (CTEs) on prosocial behaviors of their offspring and examined whether the offspring's sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) moderates this association using a 1-year…

Although poor health has been reported in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), most studies excluded fathers and focused on mental health. We combined 2016-2019 data from the National Surveys of Children's Health to determine child and parent characteristics that predict poor mental and physical health in fathers (n = 818) and…

This study examines the unique challenges of raising gifted children, focusing on two child-related risk factors for parental stress: cognitive asynchrony and stress management abilities. Path analysis revealed that poor stress management in children is associated with greater parental stress, as measured by the Difficult Child (DC) and…

The current study was a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data collected in New Zealand. Parents (n = 291) of an autistic child completed an online survey that included temporal/demographic questions relating to the parent and child, and parent ratings of the child's core ASD symptoms, their parenting stress, and psychological well-being.…

Studies commonly measure the challenges of caring for autistic adolescents and young adults, but scarcely explore the positive aspects of the caregiving experience. This study employed an equal-status concurrent mixed methods approach to quantitatively assess predictors of positive aspects of caregiving and qualitatively examine 174 caregivers'…

Background: Parenting a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may lead to emotional distress. However, it has been recognized that it can also be accompanied with positive experiences that may conduce parents to posttraumatic growth (PTG). Few studies have investigated the factors that may be associated with growth. The present study aimed to…

Emotion regulation (ER) is a source of risk and resilience for psychological development and everyday functioning. Despite extensive research on various early contextual predictors of child ER capacity, few studies have integrated them into the same study. Therefore, our longitudinal study investigated the joint and independent contributions of…

Suboptimal parenting characterized by low self-efficacy and perceived impact is associated with poor child mental health and academic outcomes, especially for at-risk families. This study capitalized on a longitudinal study conducted prior to and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to test how prior parenting cognitions and environmental risk…