What happens when romantic couples discuss personal loss? Relational, emotional, and physiological impacts.
Does talking about loss with a romantic partner have salutary personal and relationship effects? Prior evidence reveals the benefits of emotional disclosure in couple relationships, yet disclosure about loss has been overlooked in research on couple communication. Using a novel communication paradigm with young–adult heterosexual romantic partners (N = 114 couples), we investigated emotions, physiological arousal (skin conductance responses [SCR]), and relationship closeness when narrating a personal loss and listening to the partner’s loss, and compared these loss discussions to discussions about desired relationship ...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Different ways to support and thwart autonomy: Parenting profiles and adolescents’ career decision-making.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(2), Mar 2023, 161-172; doi:10.1037/fam0000982Grounded in self-determination theory, this study aimed to (a) identify profiles of parental autonomy support and control and (b) examine how these profiles predict indicators of adolescents’ career development (i.e., autonomy and competence in career exploration and indecision). To this end, we used three annual waves of data covering the postsecondary transition: the last 2 years of secondary school (T1 and T2) and 1 year after graduation (T3). The sample included 637 French-Canadian adolescents (54% girls; Mage at T1 = 14). Latent profil...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

An uncontrolled trial of couple HOPES: A guided online couple intervention for PTSD and relationship enhancement.
Novel interventions that overcome limited access to empirically supported psychotherapies for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are sorely needed. Couple helping overcome PTSD and enhance relationships (HOPES), a guided, online couple intervention drawing from cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy (CBCT) for PTSD (Monson, 2012), was designed to decrease PTSD symptoms and improve relationship satisfaction. The present study is the first uncontrolled trial of 17 couples in which one partner was a military member, veteran, or first responder and had probable PTSD (PTSD + partner) based on self-report assessment. Intent-to-...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The family stress model and parents’ differential treatment of siblings: A multilevel meta-analysis.
The family stress model (FSM) suggests that stress, particularly economic stress, hinders effective parenting. Expanding on the FSM, the present study examined not only the economic stress but also the general stress and several contexts that may promote stress—namely, physical health, mental health, socioeconomic status, employment status, and marital status. The present study also expanded the FSM to examine parenting of sibling groups. Ineffective parenting of sibling groups was conceptualized as greater parental differential treatment (PDT). A number of moderating variables were also considered. Multilevel meta-analy...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The physical home environment and sleep: What matters most for sleep in early childhood.
The physical home environment is thought to play a crucial role in facilitating healthy sleep in young children. However, relatively little is known about how various features of the physical home environment are associated with sleep in early childhood, and some of the recommendations clinicians make for improving child sleep environments are based on limited research evidence. The present study examined how observer and parent descriptions of the child’s physical home environment were associated with child sleep, measured using actigraphy and parent’s reports, across a year in early childhood. The study used a machin...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

A positive parenting program to enhance positive affect in children of previously depressed mothers.
This study showed the short-term effectiveness of a brief parenting intervention for enhancing interactions between mothers with a history of depression and their children by directly targeting mothers’ positive parenting and, indirectly, children’s expressions of positive affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Journal of Family Psychology)
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Effects of parental bedtime involvement during children’s bedtime.
This study examined the moderating effect of parent bedtime soothing and parent–child bed-sharing on the relationship between parents’ parenting stress and children’s subjective happiness. Data were extracted from the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC). The study participants included 1,360 7-year-old first-graders from South Korea who experienced a transition from preschool to formal schooling. The results demonstrated (a) a negative effect of parents’ parenting stress on children’s happiness and (b) a moderating effect of parental bedtime soothing, which included maternal and paternal bedtime soothing, on th...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - March 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

How social support and parent–child relationship quality relate to LGBTQ+ college students’ well-being during COVID-19.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively impacted the well-being of many college students, particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ +) students who are already at a disproportionate risk for negative mental health and well-being outcomes. To identify potential risk and protective factors we examined LGBTQ + college students’ disclosure of sexual orientation, gender identity, or both (SOGI) to mothers and fathers, living arrangements (whether or not students lived with mothers and fathers), social support from family and friends, and parent–child relationship qual...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 28, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Familias Divididas [divided families]: Transnational family separation and undocumented Latinx immigrant health.
Undocumented Latinx immigrants (ULIs) comprise a large segment of the U.S. population, yet they remain at high risk for diminished health outcomes due to increased exposure to adverse experiences and context. Transnational family separation and the distress that accompanies it is an example of a common adverse experience that is chronic and that impacts the lives of many ULIs. However, despite how chronic and central transnationalism is to the lives of ULIs, little is known about its relation to the health outcomes of ULIs. To that end, this study examined the relation between distress due to transnational family separatio...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 24, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Sexual communication mediates cognitive–behavioral couple therapy outcomes: A randomized clinical trial for provoked vestibulodynia.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 36(7), Oct 2022, 1073-1083; doi:10.1037/fam0000968Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) is a chronic vulvovaginal pain condition affecting 8%–10% of women and is associated with negative sexual sequalae. Our randomized clinical trial comparing cognitive–behavioral couple therapy (CBCT) to a medical intervention (lidocaine) found that both treatments improved affected women’s pain and both affected women’s and partners’ sexual outcomes, with CBCT demonstrating more benefits (Bergeron et al., 2021). The goal of this study was to examine two putative mediators of CBCT’s treatment effects:...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 21, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Sexual communication mediates cognitive–behavioral couple therapy outcomes: A randomized clinical trial for provoked vestibulodynia.
Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) is a chronic vulvovaginal pain condition affecting 8%–10% of women and is associated with negative sexual sequalae. Our randomized clinical trial comparing cognitive–behavioral couple therapy (CBCT) to a medical intervention (lidocaine) found that both treatments improved affected women’s pain and both affected women’s and partners’ sexual outcomes, with CBCT demonstrating more benefits (Bergeron et al., 2021). The goal of this study was to examine two putative mediators of CBCT’s treatment effects: collaborative and negative sexual communication patterns (SCPs). Women with PVD and...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 21, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Child and parent factors predictive of mothers’ and fathers’ perceived family functioning.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 37(1), Feb 2023, 121-131; doi:10.1037/fam0000971Understanding family functioning, particularly the risk and protective factors that may contribute to adaptive versus maladaptive family processes, is critical to promote child and family well-being and resilience. Guided by family systems theory and the family stress model, this study longitudinally investigated parents’ and toddlers’ individual-level challenges and parental internal resources as potential predictors of subsequent perceived family functioning (i.e., general family functioning and family conflict), while accounting for ea...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Child and adolescent caregiving for family: Emotional, social, physical, and academic risk and individual differences.
We examined whether caregiving as a youth is associated with emotional challenges, peer difficulties, course grades, and physical health risk behaviors. A large, diverse sample of middle and high school students in Florida completed the first systematic school-based survey in the U.S. to date to count caregiving youth (N = 10,880; 52% female; Mage = 14.40, 40% Latinx). Youth reported the amount of caregiving they provided to the family each week, in addition to items reflecting their emotional challenges (e.g., suicidality), peer difficulties (e.g., experiences of conflict or victimization), academic course grades, and hea...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Individual differences in timing of susceptibility to adverse effects of family dysfunction.
Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 36(7), Oct 2022, 1229-1239; doi:10.1037/fam0000970Do adolescents vary in the timing of their susceptibility to family-related adversity? Does early exposure to family dysfunction affect later adolescent plasticity? To address these two questions an influence statistic, DFBETAS, was used to capture degree to which 605,344 Danish children (294,479 females, 5.21% immigrants; race/ethnicity information not available in Danish registry) appeared susceptible to the adverse effects of household dysfunction measured annually at ages 0–5 and 13–18 on problematic development at age 18–19. Degr...
Source: Journal of Family Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research