Interparental relationship adjustment in infancy and child self-regulation at 7–8 years

Abstract

Self-regulation plays an important role in children’s social, emotional and academic adjustment. Yet, relatively little is known about its early family antecedents beyond parenting and parent–child relationships. The aim of this study was to investigate the prospective associations between interparental relationship adjustment in infancy and children’s behavioral and emotional self- regulation at 7–8 years of age. Direct and indirect links between interparental relationship adjustment at 2 months and subsequent child self-regulation were examined, with the affective quality of the mother–child and father–child relationships at 12 months investigated as potential mediators of the indirect association.

The participants were a sample of 353 children and their parents. Mothers and fathers reported their interparental relationship adjustment on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) when their child was 2 months old. When the child was 12 months old, they reported the quality of their child- relationship on the Parent–Child Dysfunctional Interaction subscale of the Parenting Stress Index – Short Form (PSI–SF). Children’s self-regulation was assessed at the age of 7–8 years using parent reports on three subscales of three questionnaires: the Attention subscale of the Five to Fifteen (FTF), the Inhibitory Control subscale of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), and the Emotion Self-Regulation subscale of the Emotion Questionnaire (EQ). The measures of attention and inhibitory control were combined into a single index of behavioral self-regulation. The direct and indirect associations between interparental relationship adjustment and child behavioral and emotional self-regulation were tested within parallel multiple mediator models with mother–child and father–child relationships as mediators. The main analyses were performed using the PROCESS macro for SPSS.

Interparental relationship adjustment in infancy had both direct and indirect positive associations with children’s self-regulation at 7–8 years. The findings varied for behavioral and emotional self- regulation. Interparental relationship adjustment at 2 months had an independent association with children’s behavioral self-regulation at 7–8 years, while there was also evidence for mediated effects through both mother–child and father–child relationships at 12 months. The effect of early interparental adjustment on emotional self-regulation, however, was indirect, mediated only by mother–child relationship quality in infancy.

The findings of this study suggest that better interparental relationship adjustment early in infancy is associated with children’s better self-regulatory abilities at 7–8 years of age, and that at least some of this association may be independent of the quality of parent–child relationships in infancy. At the same time, however, early parent–child relationships, especially mother–child relationship, mediate some of this association. These findings indicate the importance of supporting parents’ interparental relationship adjustment during the early phases of child rearing. The results further suggest that, in addition to the more traditional focus on parent–child interactions, early prevention and intervention of child self-regulatory and adjustment problems could benefit from also targeting interparental relationship functioning.