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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Sandra Stith and Jared Durtschi / Controversy still exists in whether parents should or should not use corporal punishment to discipline their young children. The aim of this study was to investigate whether corporal punishment when the child was two years old predicted child externalizing behaviors a year later, and whether or not this association was moderated by parents’ observed positivity and harshness towards their child. A total of 218 couples and their first born child were selected for this study from the Family Transition Project (FTP) data set. Findings indicated that frequency of fathers’ corporal punishment when the child was two years old predicted child externalizing behaviors a year later, while controlling for initial levels of child externalizing behavior. Also, it was found that observed positive parenting and observed harsh parenting moderated the relationship between corporal punishment and child externalizing behaviors. These results highlight the importance of continuing to examine the efficacy of a commonly used form of discipline (i.e., corporal punishment). Furthermore, this study suggests that the parental climate in which corporal punishment is used may also be important to consider because parental positivity and harshness attenuate and amplify, respectively, the association of corporal punishment with child externalizing. Implications for family therapy are offered.

The purpose of the study is to examine young children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in the context of post paternal incarceration by focusing on both risks (i.e., parental depressive symptoms), protective factors (i.e., coparenting alliance), and their impact considered together. The final sample included 426 previously incarcerated fathers and the biological mothers of their three-year-old children. Using hierarchical multiple regression, I examined three sets of analyses: 1) the association between parental depressive symptoms and children's behavior outcomes, 2) the association between coparenting alliance and children's behavior, 3) the association between parental depressive symptoms and children's behavior as moderated by coparenting alliance. Expectedly, higher paternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher externalizing behavioral problems in children. Unexpectedly, higher maternal depressive symptoms were associated with lower externalizing behavioral problems. Also, unexpectedly, the associations between maternal and paternal coparenting alliance and both child behavioral outcomes were not statistically significant. Further, when mothers reported lower coparenting alliance with their child's father, the negative association between fathers' depressive symptoms and children’s internalizing behavioral problems was not attenuated; in fact, children had higher internalizing behavioral problems. My findings suggests father's depressive symptoms are an important point of consideration given the deleterious effects parental depressive symptoms can have on children, and the risks for depressive symptoms among formerly incarcerated fathers. Further, my findings have implications for addressing and treating fathers' depressive symptoms when children are relatively young in order to lower internalizing behavior problems from persisting across and beyond childhood.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how levels of stress among caregivers beginning a behavioral parent training program are related to caregiver and child variables. Research questions were answered using archival data collected from 474 caregivers who participated in HOT DOCS, a behavioral parent training program, between January 2009 through July 2010. The three objectives of the study were to (a) examine caregivers' perceived stress in relation to caregiver demographic variables (i.e., gender, marital status, level of education); (b) examine caregivers' perceived stress in relation to child demographic variables (i.e., levels of externalizing and internalizing behavior and presence or absence of a diagnosis); and (c) determine how levels of caregiver stress were related to number of parent training sessions completed. Results showed that female caregivers beginning a behavioral parent training program have higher levels of perceived stress than their male counterparts. Additionally, caregivers with a higher level of education reported less stress than caregivers with less education. No differences were found among those of different marital statuses. With regard to child variables, parents' perceptions of their child's externalizing behavior, as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Externalizing score, were a significant predictor of caregiver perceived stress, but internalizing behavior (also as measured by the CBCL) and presence/absence of a diagnosis were not. Perceived stress upon entering the behavioral parent training was not a significant predictor of number of sessions completed. Implications of the study for parent training for caregivers raising young children with challenging behaviors are discussed.

Individual differences, particularly callous and unemotional (C&U) traits, and parenting practices are some of the strongest predictors of externalizing behavior in adolescents. However, findings on the associations between C&U traits, parenting, and externalizing behaviors have been mixed, with studies often utilizing single scores to represent these multidimensional constructs. The current study used a developmental-contextual framework to examine how dimensions of C&U traits predict aggressive and non-aggressive rule-breaking behaviors through positive and negative parenting practices. The study used archival data from 174 pairs of adolescent males, ages 11-16 years old, and their mothers. Results showed that C&U traits influenced externalizing behaviors through parenting practices. Findings also showed specificities among these relationships. Particularly, the associations between Uncaring and aggressive, as well as non-aggressive rule-breaking, behaviors was mediated by negative parenting, whereas the association between Unemotional and rule-breaking behaviors was mediated by positive parenting practices. Research and clinical implications are discussed.

This study examined possible interactions between DRD4 genotype and parenting on children’s externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial behaviors, and explored both parent and child perceptions of all variables. Both diathesis-stress and differential susceptibility hypotheses were assessed for examining possible interactions for children with the DRD4 7-repeat allele. Data were collected from 58 families within the Southern Illinois Twins/Triplets and Siblings Study (SITSS). Results indicated that although no gene-environment interactions were found when examining child perceptions, a significant interaction emerged between DRD4 and parenting in predicting externalizing behaviors when using parent reports. Children without the 7-repeat allele appeared to be malleable to both positive and negative parenting, supporting differential susceptibility. Also, child and parent reports of parenting were both predictive of child behavior. Lastly, MZ twins perceived more similar parenting environments than DZ twins, and there appeared to be a stronger environmental effect of parenting on externalizing after controlling for the effects of genes. This study adds to the differential susceptibility literature and points to the importance of considering perceptions of both children and parents when examining the effects of parenting on child behaviors.

Attachment theory is a core theory of child development. The theory proposes a framework to understand how children’s early relationships to their caregiver shape children’s lifelong development. Most attachment research, however, is limited to categorical assessments of infant-mother attachment. This results in a reductionist understanding of children’s development, one that rests on a number of questionable assumptions. From an assessment perspective, categorical measures of attachment assume that all children fit neatly into a fixed number of categories, and that all children within a category present similar attachment behaviors. From a developmental perspective, a focus on infant attachment assumes little change in children’s caregiving environments, and this, despite evidence showing that changes may occur between infancy and the preschool years. Such changes influence child-caregiver attachment relationships. From a caregiver perspective, children’s relationships with their mothers are influential, but they do not span the gamut of children’s early relationships. Fathers, for example, are increasingly involved in child rearing and are influential in children’s development. This dissertation sought to overcome these limitations through the use of the Preschool Attachment Rating Scales (PARS), a novel, continuous measure of child-caregiver preschool attachment. The first study demonstrated the reliability and validity of the PARS as a measure of child-mother and child-father preschool attachment. This study examined the inter-rater reliability, the convergent validity, the construct validity, the predictive validity, and the incremental validity of the PARS. The second study used a longitudinal design to examine the independent and interactive influence of child-mother and child-father attachment in the preschool years on boys’ and girls’ externalizing behaviors in middle childhood. This latter study showed that the prediction of externalizing behavior varied as a function of children’s and parents’ genders, as well as the attachment pattern (e.g., security, avoidance). Taken together, this dissertation shows that a continuous measure of attachment can help uncover the complexity of different attachment patterns, and in turn, provide a more nuanced understanding on how such patterns affect children’s social, emotional, and psychopathological development.

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