Early Parenting and the Development of Externalizing Behavior Problems: Longitudinal Mediation Through Children's Executive Function

Michael J. Sulik, Clancy Blair, Roger Mills-Koonce, Daniel Berry, Mark Greenberg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

138 Scopus citations

Abstract

Path analysis was used to investigate the longitudinal associations among parenting and children's executive function and externalizing behavior problems from 36 to 90 months of age in the Family Life Project (N = 1,115), a study of child development in the context of rural poverty. While controlling for stability in the constructs, semistructured observations of parenting prospectively predicted performance on a battery of executive function tasks and primary caregivers' reports of externalizing behavior. Furthermore, the association between early parenting and later externalizing behavior was longitudinally mediated by executive function, providing support for a process model in which sensitive parenting promotes children's self-regulation, which in turn reduces children's externalizing behavior.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1588-1603
Number of pages16
JournalChild development
Volume86
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

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