Transactional dynamics between parental responsiveness and child emotion dysregulation: A longitudinal study from infancy to early school age.

Abstract

Bidirectional influences between parenting and children's emotion regulation are well established, but developmental shifts in these dynamics and differences between mother- and father-child relationships are far from understood. We examined such bidirectional dynamics from infancy to early school age in 102 U.S. Midwestern community families (51 girls), using an autoregressive latent trajectory model that enabled us to distinguish within-dyad co-regulatory processes from traitlike stability across dyads. Parental responsiveness and child emotion (dys)regulation were coded from observed parent-child interactions at seven time points from 7 months to 6.5 years. Results demonstrated significant parent-to-child effects during toddlerhood in both mother- and father-child dyads, with higher parental responsiveness predicting better subsequent emotion regulation in children. However, child-to-parent effects were observed only in father-child dyads, such that children with poorer emotion regulation elicited more, and those with better emotion regulation elicited less paternal responsiveness at the later time point. These findings suggest fathers may adjust caregiving more flexibly, balancing recognition of children's emotional needs and of their growing autonomy, whereas maternal responsiveness may be less influenced by fluctuations in child emotion (dys)regulation. No significant bidirectional associations were observed in infancy or early school age. Findings suggest that bidirectional dynamics are developmentally fluid in early parent-child relationships and that, surprisingly, fathers may be more adept at calibrating their responsiveness based on children's regulatory needs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).