Externalizing in preschoolers and early adolescents: A cross-study replication of a family model.

Abstract

With families of 3'/2-year-olds, the direct and indirect links among parents' depression, marital quality, parenting style, and their children's externalizing behavior were examined using partial least squares analysis. No direct paths were found between parents' depression and their child's behavior. Instead, parents' depression was mediated by the quality of their relationship as a couple or by their parenting style, or by both. A replication with families of 9- to 13-year-olds supported these findings in the form of the interconnections among family variables and children's outcomes, although the magnitude of the family-child linkage was much lower than it was in the younger sample. Children's cognitive and social competence has been found to correlate with their parents' psychological adjustment, parenting style, and, more recently, the quality of their marriage (C. P. Cowan, Cowan, Heming, & Miller, 1991; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992). Although the direction of influence, from child to parent or parent to child, has not been clearly established, findings have been consistent in relating children's adaptive or maladaptive behavior to parent functioning in intrapersonal , parent-child, and marital domains. The task of describing pathways from adult functioning to children's adaptation raises both conceptual and statistical issues. Conceptually, the fact that there is a correlation between, for example, mothers' depression and children's aggression, does not tell us whether there is a direct link between maternal and child behavior or an indirect link resulting from the influence of mothers' depression on the quality of their relationships with their children. Statistically, the problem is how to analyze direct and indirect effects in nonexperiment al, observationbased family studies. The question of whether family models of children's development have the same form when children are at different developmental levels has not been given the attention it deserves. Part