Psychophysiology of Parenting School-Aged Children: A Systematic Review of the Physiological Correlates of Parenting Behaviors

Abstract

Parenting behavior is thought to be undergirded by internal processes, including autonomic and neuroendocrine responsivity. Parents are school-aged children's primary sources of support and guidance, underscoring the importance of identifying proximal influences on parenting behavior in middle childhood. However, the literature on physiological correlates of parenting behaviors in school-aged children has yet to be comprehensively reviewed. To address this gap, we conducted a pre-registered systematic review with the aims of assessing physiological responsivity and its correlates at both within- and between-person levels of analysis and during stressful and non-stressful tasks. We identified 23 studies that described parents’ physiological responsivity in either general autonomic, parasympathetic, or hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis functioning and associations between physiological responsivity and observed parenting behavior among families with children ages 5–12 years. Overall, the results suggested that parents’ physiological responses during parent–child interactions varied within and across tasks, though parents typically demonstrated stress responses to child performance challenges. The links between physiological responsivity and parenting behavior depended on family risk status and analytic method (e.g., between- vs. within-level analyses). On the basis of the present results, we suggest several potential directions for future research (e.g., attention to dynamic and multisystem processes) to elucidate biobehavioral processes implicated in parenting.