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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1444447
This article is part of the Research Topic Sensory Processing Sensitivity Research: Recent Advances View all 11 articles

A Longitudinal Study on the Relation between Parenting and Toddler’s Disruptive Behavior: What is the Role of Toddler’s Negative Emotionality and Physiological Stress Reactivity?

Provisionally accepted
Marijke Huijzer-Engbrenghof Marijke Huijzer-Engbrenghof 1*Loes Van Rijn Loes Van Rijn 1Hannah Spencer Hannah Spencer 2Christiane Wesarg-Menzel Christiane Wesarg-Menzel 3Nicole Creasey Nicole Creasey 4,5Esmee S. Lalihatu Esmee S. Lalihatu 6Geertjan Overbeek Geertjan Overbeek 1
  • 1 University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2 Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
  • 3 University Hospital Jena, Jena, Thuringia, Germany
  • 4 Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  • 5 University College London, London, England, United Kingdom
  • 6 Kohnstamm Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Harsh and unsupportive parenting is a risk factor for the development of disruptive behavior in children. However, little is known about how children's temperament and stress reactivity influence this relation. In a three-wave longitudinal study, we examined whether the associations between parenting practices (supportive parenting, positive discipline, and harsh discipline) and child disruptive behavior were mediated by child temperament (negative emotionality) and stress reactivity (heart rate reactivity). In 72 families (Mage child = 14.6 months), parents reported on their parenting practices and their children's disruptive behavior and negative emotionality. Children's heart rate reactivity was assessed through a series of stress-inducing tasks. Results from regression-based mediation analyses with bootstrapping showed that negative emotionality and stress reactivity did not mediate the relation between parenting and disruptive behavior. The results overall demonstrate that in a group of children this age, a reinforcing dynamic between parenting, child stress and disruptive behavior is not yet firmly established.

    Keywords: Disruptive behavior, Parenting, Temperament, stress reactivity, Longitudinal

    Received: 05 Jun 2024; Accepted: 24 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Huijzer-Engbrenghof, Van Rijn, Spencer, Wesarg-Menzel, Creasey, Lalihatu and Overbeek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Marijke Huijzer-Engbrenghof, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.