The overarching goal of this dissertation was to investigate parenting processes in relation to affective well-being in families in the daily flow of life from different perspectives (i.e.,... Show moreThe overarching goal of this dissertation was to investigate parenting processes in relation to affective well-being in families in the daily flow of life from different perspectives (i.e., adolescent, mother, father), on different levels (i.e., objective, momentary, and daily), and in a clinical sample (families with an adolescent with a depression) in addition to community samples. Our findings underline the importance of daily parental warmth and criticism of mothers and fathers for adolescents’ well-being. In addition, we showed that adolescents, parents, and their perceptions of parenting influence each other and that becoming more attuned to each other’s intention and needs is essential. Importantly, we consistently demonstrated that not only the extent and direction of the dynamic processes between parenting and affect in daily life differs between, but also within persons and families. This stresses the need for research focusing on individual processes and combining quantitative with qualitative measures. The use of more idiographic approaches would not only enable gaining more insight into these differences between individuals, but also contribute to identifying parenting practices that work for almost all adolescents. This would facilitate the development of interventions combining universal parenting principles with suggestions for tailoring it to individual- or family-specific situations. Show less
This dissertation describes the findings of six studies on mental health problems in the family context, specifically focusing on the associations with the parent-child relationship, parenting... Show moreThis dissertation describes the findings of six studies on mental health problems in the family context, specifically focusing on the associations with the parent-child relationship, parenting behaviors and experiences of childhood maltreatment. The aim is to better understand the risk factors, development and transmission of common psychological problems in order to contribute to prevention and treatment strategies for common psychological problems such as anxiety and depression.Overall, the findings underline the importance of the family context in the development and levels of mental health problems. In addition to the impact of one's own negative parenting experiences, including lack of warmth and experiences of emotional or physical abuse, negative parenting experiences of one's siblings are also associated with elevated anxiety and depressive symptom levels.We also found that externalizing problems of fathers and children have a negative impact on the parent-child interactions. In addition, we found that children with behavioral problems during early adolescence experience harsher parental discipline, even three years later.In the current treatment guidelines for common mental disorders, most therapies focus on the individual. An (additional) systemic approach and considering past and present family relationships in therapy, can be of additional value. For example, supporting families with interventions to improve the parent-child relationship can be helpful in the short and long term. Moreover, (early) treatment of psychological and behavioral problems of the parent or child might be beneficial for all family members. Show less
Anxiety disorders are globally one of the most prevalent and disabling forms of psychopathology in adults and children. Having a parent with an anxiety disorder multiplies the risk of anxiety... Show moreAnxiety disorders are globally one of the most prevalent and disabling forms of psychopathology in adults and children. Having a parent with an anxiety disorder multiplies the risk of anxiety disorders in the ofspring, although the specifc mechanisms and processes that play a role in this intergenerational transmission remain largely unknown. According to information processing theories, threat-related biases in cognitive processing are a causal mechanism in the development and maintenance of anxiety. These theories propose that individuals with anxiety are more likely to cognitively process novel stimuli in their environment as threatening. Creswell and colleagues proposed a theoretical model that highlighted the role of these cognitive biases as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety (Creswell et al., in Hadwin, Field (eds) Information processing biases and anxiety: a developmental perspective, Wiley, pp 279–295, 2010). This model postulated signifcant associations between (1) parents’ and children’s threat-related cognitive biases (2) parents’ threatrelated cognitive biases in their own and their child’s environment, (3) parents’ threat-related cognitive biases and parenting behaviors that convey anxiety risk to the ofspring (e.g., modeling of fear, and verbal threat information transmission), and (4) parenting behaviors and child threat-related biases. This theoretical review collated the recent empirical work testing these four core hypotheses of the model. Building on the reviewed empirical work, an updated conceptual model focusing on threat-related attention and interpretation is proposed. This updated model incorporates the links between cognition and anxiety in parents and children and addresses the potential bidirectional nature of parent–child infuences. Show less
Emotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others’ facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the... Show moreEmotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others’ facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the factors modulating its development in the first year of life. This study investigated infant emotional mimicry and its association with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy. One hundred and seventeen parent-infant dyads (51 six-month-olds, 66 twelve-month-olds) were observed during video presentation of strangers’ happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces. Infant and parent emotional mimicry (i.e., facial expressions valence-congruent to the video) and their mutual attention (i.e., simultaneous gaze at one another) were systematically coded second-by-second. Parent empathy was assessed via self-report. Path models indicated that infant mimicry of happy stimuli was positively and independently associated with parent mimicry and affective empathy, while infant mimicry of sad stimuli was related to longer parent-infant mutual attention. Findings provide new insights into infants’ and parents’ coordination of mimicry and attention during triadic contexts of interactions, endorsing the social-affiliative function of mimicry already present in infancy: emotional mimicry occurs as an automatic parent-infant shared behavior and early manifestation of empathy only when strangers’ emotional displays are positive, and thus perceived as affiliative. Show less
