https://aub.ie/MilitaryREACH-Zhang2020

Zhang, N., Lee, S., Zhang, J., Piehler, T., & Gerwitz, A. (2020). Growth trajectories of parental emotion socialization and child adjustment following a military parenting intervention: A randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 652–663. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000837

Parenting practices play a key role in children’s well-being. One such parenting practice is parental emotion socialization, which is the parents’ responses to children’s emotion and their own emotion regulation. This randomized control study examined the two-year effects of the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) program on parental emotion socialization and children’s internalizing (e.g., depression) and externalizing (e.g., aggression) behaviors. The sample was composed of 255 National Guard/Reserve parents, one of which experienced a deployment. Parents completed measures on supportive (e.g., encouraging child’s emotions) and non-supportive (e.g., minimizing child’s emotions) responses to children’s negative emotions across three time points (i.e., baseline/ preintervention, one-year, and two-year follow-up). Parents also completed a questionnaire on children’s behavior outcomes at baseline and the two-year follow-up. The results suggest that the ADAPT program enhanced child outcomes through improved parental emotion socialization.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/dev0000837

Children
Mental health
Parents
Programming
Youth

Multiple branches

Guard
Reserve

Guard/Reserve member

Adulthood (18 yrs & older)
Young adulthood (18 - 29 yrs)
Thirties (30 - 39 yrs)
Middle age (40 - 64 yrs)

Longitudinal Study
Quantitative Study
Secondary Analysis

Zhang, Na, Lee, Sun-Kyung, Zhang, Jingchen, Piehler, Timothy, Gewirtz, Abigail

Children of combat deployed parents are at risk of behavioral problems. Parental emotion socialization (PES) has been theorized to influence children’s behaviors; many studies lend support to this theory. However, longitudinal studies examining PES with experimental designs are sparse. In this study, we estimated PES growth trajectories following a parenting intervention and evaluated whether intervention induced improvements in PES predict child outcomes in postdeployed military families. National Guard/Reserve families with at least one deployed parent and a child aged 4–13 years were randomized into an intervention or control group. Data from all 255 2-parent married families, who were primarily Caucasian and middle-class, were analyzed. PES was indicated by self-reported nonsupportive and supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions (baseline, 1-year, and 2-year follow-up). Child behaviors were assessed through averaged mother- and father- reports (baseline and 2-year follow-up). Results of latent growth models showed that mothers and fathers assigned to the intervention condition reported greater improvements in nonsupportive PES (steeper negative slopes) over 2 years relative to controls. Both mothers’ and fathers’ intervention-induced improvements in nonsupportive PES were associated with decreased child internalizing behaviors. Mothers’ intervention-induced improvements in nonsupportive PES were associated with decreased child externalizing behaviors. No significant findings were detected for intervention effects on supportive PES growth trajectories. Our findings supported the indirect effects of the intervention on child behaviors through nonsupportive PES over two years. PES is an important, malleable skill that can be targeted in parenting interventions for postdeployed military families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

American Psychological Association

Article
REACH Publication

Arizona State University, NZ
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, SKL
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, JZ
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, TP
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, AG