Exploring Family Interactions: Heterogeneity in Family Specific Network Models

Abstract

Daily family interactions have a profound impact on children's emotional and behavioral development. While extensive research highlights the detrimental effects of negative parenting practices and the benefits of positive parenting programs, less is known about the complex within-family interactions that occur on a day-to-day basis. Using 5 weeks of daily diary data from 43 mothers (M_{Observations per dyad} = 140.44, SD = 1.05) aged 33–53 years and their children aged 6–14 years, this paper explored the heterogeneity of family-specific networks and their links to parental self-efficacy (PSE) as part of a german national study. Using group iterative multiple model estimation, we identified both contemporaneous and temporal relationships between daily fluctuations in conflicts, praise, quality time, and parental stress. Our results revealed substantial variability in network structures across families. There was no link between network structures and PSE. The current findings indicate that family-specific network modeling may facilitate the identification of interaction patterns that maintain dysfunctional family dynamics, thereby enabling targeted selection of intervention components. Such personalized approaches could improve intervention efficiency and acceptability through alignment with families' unique regulatory processes.