Bringing behavioral observation of couples into the 21st century.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 1-9; doi:10.1037/fam0001036Recent technological advances have made the remote recording of interactions and the automatic extraction of nonverbal, paraverbal, and verbal behavioral cues from the videos possible. The development of computer programs that can replace human observational coders is imminent. The increasing availability of such new technologies, accompanied by their lower costs and greater convenience, is likely to advance behavioral observation research, giving new insight into the fine-grained moment-to-moment interactional processes. We illustrate how couple...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - November 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Preventing alcohol use among Hispanic adolescents through a family-based intervention: The role of parent alcohol misuse.
This study conducted secondary data analysis of an effectiveness randomized controlled trial of the Familias Unidas intervention, examining parent moderators of intervention effects on adolescent alcohol use. A total of 746 Hispanic families with 12–16-year-old adolescents were randomized to intervention or control. Logistic regression analyses confirmed no evidence of intervention effectiveness in reducing 90-day adolescent alcohol use at 30-month follow-up. However, there was evidence that parent misuse moderated intervention effects on adolescent alcohol use. Among youth whose parents reported any episode of alcohol m...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - November 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Indirect associations between infant sleep, parental sleep, and sexual well-being in new parent couples.
We examined the role of parental sleep in the indirect pathway between infant sleep and sexual frequency and sexual desire in couples, both within and between-person, during the first-year postpartum. In a dyadic longitudinal study, 203 first-time mothers and their partners reported on infant sleep quality, parental sleep, sexual frequency, and sexual desire at 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-months postpartum. Poorer infant sleep was associated with mothers’ (within-couple) and partners’ (between-couple) poorer sleep and, in turn, lower sexual frequency for the couple. For both mothers (within-person) and partners (between-person)...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - November 3, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Fast Track intervention effects on family formation.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 54-64; doi:10.1037/fam0001039The present study examines whether the Fast Track (FT) intervention, a 10-year randomized controlled trial with children at risk for conduct problems, affects family formation in adulthood, as indexed by partnerships, parenthood, and family structure, and whether the intervention effect differs across participants’ gender and race/ethnicity. Participants included 891 children (intervention n = 445; control n = 446; 69% male; 51% Black, 47% White) who were recruited in kindergarten and followed to age 32 or 34 (80% participation of still-livin...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - November 3, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Randomized preventive intervention for families: Adolescents’ emotional insecurity and attachment to fathers.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 79-91; doi:10.1037/fam0001042The family communication project was a randomized preventive intervention designed to support families by improving interparental conflict behavior and the parent–child relationship, with the ultimate goal of decreasing emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship. Evidence for programs that may benefit father–adolescent attachment and adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the marital context is a gap in the literature. According to the fathering vulnerability hypothesis, father–child attachment security might be expected to es...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - October 27, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Explicit and implicit bias among parents of sexual and gender minority youth.
We examined explicit anti-SGM and implicit antisexual minority bias in parents of SGM youth and associations with parenting and parent and youth psychosocial functioning. Heterosexual/cisgender parents (N = 205, Mage = 46.9 years, SD = 8.5) of SGM youth (≤ 29 years old, Mage = 19.4, SD = 4.7) completed an online study including measures of explicit anti-SGM and implicit anti-SM bias, parental acceptance and psychological control, parent–child unfinished business (unresolved negative feelings related to their child’s identity), parental depression and anxiety, and youth anxiety, depression, substance use, and exposure...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - October 20, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Dyadic coping trajectories across the transition to parenthood: Associations with child mental health problems.
This study investigated subgroups in DC trajectories across the transition to parenthood (TTP) and examined subgroup differences in child mental health problems. Mothers’ and fathers’ self-report of positive and negative DC (n = 288 couples) at seven points of measurement (27th, 32nd week of pregnancy, 2nd, 14th, 40th week postpartum, 3- and 4-year postpartum) and children’s emotional and behavioral problems from parent report (4-year postpartum) were used. Latent class growth analyses revealed that over half of the couples experienced a moderate decline in positive DC across the TTP (58%), whereas only fathers repor...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - October 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Leveraging smartphones to observe couples remotely and illuminate how COVID-19 stress shaped marital communication.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 10-19; doi:10.1037/fam0001035The height of the COVID-19 pandemic was an exceptionally stressful time for families that offered a unique opportunity to understand how stressful experiences occurring outside the relationship shape behavior occurring inside the relationship. Given the social distancing requirements of the pandemic, however, most research addressing this issue has relied on self-reports of behavior, which are susceptible to bias. In the summer of 2020, we asked a sample of married individuals living in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - October 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Long-term interparental conflict behavior and knowledge change after a brief family intervention.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 92-104; doi:10.1037/fam0001033To address a gap in the translational research on marital and family conflict intervention, we used a series of multilevel models to examine how interparental constructive conflict behavior, conflict resolution, and conflict knowledge improved up to 3 years postintervention in the Family Communication Project (FCP). The FCP was an experimental, longitudinal intervention focused on family conflict, communication, and adolescent adjustment. Participants consisted of adolescents and their two primary caregivers (N = 225 families). Each family was...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 22, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Maternal encouragement of competitiveness and school adjustment in Chinese adolescents.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 36(8), Dec 2022, 1376-1385; doi:10.1037/fam0001034Due to rapid urbanization and modernization, individual competitiveness has become increasingly important for individuals to acquire success in the contemporary Chinese society. This 1-year longitudinal study examined the relations between maternal encouragement of competitiveness and adjustment in Chinese adolescents (N = 1,493, 720 boys, Mage = 13 years). Maternal encouragement of competitiveness was assessed using child reports, and information on adolescents’ adjustment was obtained from peer reports, teacher ratings, and school recor...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 22, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Household disorder and blood pressure in mother–child dyads: A brief report.
This study was a secondary analysis of data from mother–child dyads (n = 216). Mothers were 87% African American, 34 ± 5 years old, with BMI 33.59 ± 9.43 kg/m². Children were 7 ± 2 (range: 4–10) years of age with BMI z score 0.60 ± 2.07. Household disorder was measured by the Confusion Hubbub and Order Scale. Mother–child dyads were assessed for weight, height, BP (adults), BP percentile (children), energy intake, and sodium intake. The relationship between household disorder and BP was evaluated using Pearson’s partial correlation coefficients. In fully adjusted models, household disorder was positively assoc...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 15, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Maternal, but not paternal, ratings of child preinjury functioning predict child posttraumatic stress.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(2), Mar 2023, 262-267; doi:10.1037/fam0001029Pretrauma internalizing and externalizing behaviors have been found to predict posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (PTSS) in children following injury. However, child in-hospital self-report of pretrauma symptoms may be impacted by their injury and associated medical care (e.g., sedation/pain medications). Parental report of child pretrauma risk factors may be easier to capture; however, mothers and fathers differ in the extent to which they report, and agree on, internalizing versus externalizing behaviors in their child. The prese...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 12, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Paternal identity, maternal gate opening, and fathers’ longitudinal positive engagement.
This study examined the effects of paternal identity (i.e., status-level/role-level centrality) and maternal gate opening on FPE in diverse residential contexts from early to middle childhood. Using longitudinal multilevel modeling, this study analyzed data from 2,339 families in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results demonstrated that maternal gate opening strengthened the association between paternal status-level centrality and FPE, especially, for fathers who were nonresident at childbirth. This protective effect did not change by child age. Furthermore, fathers who were resident at childbirth but nonre...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 1, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Military-related relocation stress and psychological distress in military partners.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 45-53; doi:10.1037/fam0001030Spouses/partners play a crucial role in providing support to military service members (SMs), maintaining a sense of stability for the family, and supporting the overall mission of the armed forces. However, several aspects of the military lifestyle may impact their own psychological health. Much research has focused on the role of SMs’ deployments and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in partners’ distress, but no study has yet quantitatively investigated these factors in tandem with the common military life stressor of frequent...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - September 1, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research