Family Process最新文献

With sociocultural changes in China, the traditional mother-dominated parenting model has shifted toward a more collaborative approach. However, the role of fathers in Chinese family parenting and the dyadic relationship between co-parenting behaviors and parenting stress remain insufficiently explored. This study explores the relationship between Chinese parents' co-parenting behaviors and their own and their partner's parenting stress, and further reveals the diversity of co-parenting behavior patterns in Chinese adolescent families and examines the variations in parenting stress across different co-parenting types. Participants included 1313 families in Chongqing, China (fathers: M_age = 39.78, mothers: M_age = 37.59, children: M_age = 10.08, 55.1% male). Parents completed two self-report questionnaires assessing their co-parenting behaviors and parenting stress. Results showed that both fathers' and mothers' positive/negative co-parenting behaviors were negatively/positively correlated with their parenting stress, respectively, with fathers' positive co-parenting behaviors also negatively correlating with mothers' parenting stress. Latent profile analysis identified four co-parenting behavior profiles: (a) cooperative, (b) cooperative-moderation, (c) compromising, and (d) coexisting. Parenting stress was lowest in cooperative families. Fathers in cooperative-moderation families reported significantly lower stress than those in compromising and coexisting families, with no significant differences between the latter two. For mothers, no significant differences in parenting stress were found between the cooperative and coexisting profiles or between the cooperative-moderation and compromising profiles. These findings extend the understanding of co-parenting dynamics within the changing Chinese family context and provide empirical support for family interventions aimed at reducing parenting stress.

Interparental hostility is a risk factor for adolescents' problematic smartphone use (PSU). However, the mechanisms implicated in this association remain unclear. Using three-wave, multi-informant data from 364 Chinese parent–child dyads over the junior high school years (grades 7–9, M_{child age} = 12.00, SD = 0.38, 58.8% boys), this study examined how parents' reports of interparental hostility at Grade 7 related to adolescents' reports of PSU at Grade 9, with adolescents' reports of conflict appraisals at Grade 8 (i.e., threat, self-blame, low coping efficacy) tested as potential mediators and parents' reports of interparental cooperative conflict at Grade 7 (i.e., constructive problem solving, marital warmth, and effective conflict resolution) as possible moderators. Results demonstrated that when interparental constructive problem solving at Grade 7 was low, interparental hostility at Grade 7 positively predicted adolescents' PSU at Grade 9 through a positive association with adolescents' threat at Grade 8. In contrast, when interparental constructive problem solving was high, interparental hostility at Grade 7 negatively predicted adolescents' PSU at Grade 9 through a negative association with adolescents' threat at Grade 8. Furthermore, interparental hostility at Grade 7 was negatively associated with adolescents' self-blame at Grade 8 when interparental effective conflict resolution at Grade 7 was low. These findings shed some light on the complexity in the underlying mechanisms for the links between interparental hostility and adolescents' PSU. These findings highlight the need for efforts among parents, clinicians, and policymakers to mitigate adolescents' PSU by addressing interparental conflict and adolescents' conflict appraisals.

Parent–child discrepancies in reports of perceived parenting behaviors are common and have been linked to adolescent mental health. However, little is known about these discrepancies for parenting behaviors involving the father–mother–child triad, such as coparenting, and their impact on adolescents' emotional well-being, especially during extraordinary circumstances such as lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested a mediating model to examine whether and how discrepancy patterns are associated with depression and anxiety in adolescents through emotion regulation strategies (e.g., expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal) among Chinese families during the pandemic. The participants included 747 adolescents (48.6% male; M_age = 13.26 years, SD = 3.39) and both their mothers and fathers. Adolescents completed assessments of perceived parental coparenting behaviors, emotion regulation strategies, depression, and anxiety. Parents completed assessments of their own coparenting behaviors. Latent profile analysis with a person-centered approach was used to identify four profiles of parent–child discrepancies in negative coparenting and three profiles in positive coparenting. Adolescents who reported more negative coparenting (i.e., conflict and disparagement) or less positive coparenting (i.e., integrity and reprimand) than their parents adopted increased expressive suppression and decreased cognitive reappraisal, which were associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic. This study emphasizes the importance of comprehending the patterns of parent–child discrepancies in family dynamics and highlights the practical importance of improving emotion regulation strategies in adolescents from maladaptive family patterns to maintain their emotional well-being.

Parental technoference, which refers to the interference of parent–child interactions by technology, has been demonstrated to be a risk factor for adolescent Problematic Mobile Phone Use (PMPU). From the perspective of family systems theory, the impact of adolescent PMPU on parental technoference seems also plausible. The present research investigated the bidirectional predictive association between parental technoference and adolescent PMPU through the mediating roles of paternal and maternal attachment using a two-wave cross-lagged design. A total of 1664 Chinese adolescents (61.24% female; M_age = 16.86 ± 0.77) were surveyed at Time 1 (January 2023) and Time 2 (August 2023). Results showed that Time 1 parental technoference predicted Time 2 adolescent PMPU and Time 1 adolescent PMPU predicted Time 1 parental technoference. Furthermore, both paternal attachment and maternal attachment had longitudinal mediating effects on the reciprocal association between parental technoference and adolescent PMPU. Finally, there was no difference between boys and girls in the longitudinal relationship among parental technoference, paternal and maternal attachment, and adolescent PMPU. The findings reveal the interdependent connections between parental and child usage of electronic devices, highlighting the roles of paternal and maternal attachment separately. The findings contribute to a family-based solution for preventing and intervening in adolescent PMPU.

Intergenerational social support has been considered an important factor in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. However, prior research has overlooked the connection between intergenerational solidarity—social cohesion between generations—and self-esteem across Western and Asian families during the pandemic. We aimed to discover common unobserved latent classes of intergenerational solidarity with older parents among middle-aged adults during the pandemic in the United States and South Korea. In addition, we sought to determine if the identified solidarity latent classes were linked to the self-esteem of middle-aged adults, and whether the above association varies according to parents' gender or cultural contexts. We used data from the 2022 surveys of the Longitudinal Study of Generations and Korean Generation Study, and conducted multigroup latent class analysis for 247 child–mother and 205 child-father groups in the United States and 229 child–mother and 155 child-father groups in South Korea. In addition, multivariate regression analysis based on the three-step approach was conducted. We identified the same three intergenerational solidarity latent classes in the four groups: tight-knit, intimate-but-distant, and detached. Furthermore, we found that middle-aged adults with a tight-knit relationship with older parents reported higher self-esteem than those who had intimate-but-distant and detached types of relationships with older parents, irrespective of parents' gender and national context. Our results suggest that fostering stronger intergenerational relationships would be beneficial for middle-aged adults in both cultures, regardless of the gender of their parents. We provide insight to clarify the understanding of the role of intergenerational solidarity in midlife in American and Korean cultural contexts.

There have been many attempts to conceptualize, understand, research, and teach practitioners how to navigate the diverse range of cultural contexts in the practice of psychotherapy. Yet, becoming competent in multicultural counseling, practicing cultural humility, or delivering culturally-responsive therapeutic services are often limited to monolingual epistemology, especially in the United States. This phenomenological study used language(s) as a marker of culture to track and understand how various cultures are navigated by multilingual Asian American clinicians who were educated in English and are working with non-English speaking clients. By examining their experiences, this study provided a nuanced perspective on how culture can be articulated, understood, and navigated by these multilingual Asian American clinicians. The findings further made implications for new ways that culture can be conceptualized to continue the evolution of culturally-responsive training and practices to increase access and inclusion to mental health services, including a need to articulate and understand the culture of psychotherapy using therapy-speak as a linguistic marker of culture.

The acquisition of emotional self-regulation is a key developmental goal in mid-childhood. Emotion dysregulation occurs when emotion regulation is ineffective. Emotion lability is a major manifestation of dysfunctional emotion regulation. Although previous literature has explored the influences on children's emotion regulation, previous studies have typically examined parental influences on children independently, ignoring the interdependence of mother, father and child within the family system as a whole and the parent–child gender differences that exist between these. The purpose of this study was to examine whether intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation continues to occur in the context of family members' emotion dysregulation and whether there are parent–child gender differences in this process. The study utilized three-wave data collected at 6-month intervals, with 317 parents of primary school children participating in the full assessment. Results indicated that intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation persists despite family members' emotion dysregulation. Bidirectional associations emerged between maternal emotion dysregulation and child emotion lability, highlighting mothers' central role in emotional transmission within family systems. In contrast, paternal emotion dysregulation showed limited observable expression in family interactions. Sons' emotion lability uniquely predicted paternal emotion dysregulation and mediated the maternal-paternal dysregulation link. Critically, parents' capacity to serve as effective emotional regulators for children depended on their active self-regulation. These findings necessitate emotion-focused family interventions that simultaneously target parental self-regulation and child outcomes, while integrating gender-specific strategies rather than relying solely on child-directed emotion control programs.