FAMILY PROCESS, EMOTIONAL SECURITY, AND CHILD ADJUSTMENT

虽然众所周知，父母间的关系直接影响儿童的功能（即，由于这些途径包括接触冲突）和间接通过养育子女，人们对这些途径的具体过程知之甚少。 根据一种新的情绪安全理论，儿童的情绪安全感被认为是父母关系对儿童适应的直接和间接影响的主要中介过程。目前的建议旨在测试从这一理论的核心命题得出的假设。 首先，婚姻关系提出了发挥直接病因的作用，在儿童问题的发展威胁儿童的情感安全感的父母子系统。 第二，婚姻冲突，通过其与父母的干扰，被认为是间接导致儿童的情绪不安全感，从而奠定了他们未来的心理风险的基础。第三，虽然建设性的婚姻关系（例如，冲突解决，亲密关系）被假设为促进健康的家庭环境和儿童的安全和能力，破坏性的婚姻关系（例如，敌意、抚养子女的争斗）被认为对家庭和儿童的功能产生有害的后果。 第四，更广泛的家庭背景的特点（例如，父母抑郁、儿童气质）被假设为在形成父母教养和婚姻障碍以及改变其对儿童适应的影响的性质方面是突出的。160名小学生和他们的父母将参加一项两波纵向研究，测量时间间隔为12个月。 情绪安全的三重操作化，具体定义为情绪调节，家庭关系的表征和家庭情感暴露的调节，使其特别适合于跨多个家庭子系统的实证检验（例如，婚姻、亲子关系）。 所有关键结构（即，婚姻关系、养育子女、安全、儿童适应）将使用多种方法、代理人和背景进行评估。 家庭关系和儿童功能的适应和适应不良方面将被衡量，以确定一套广泛的发展机制的能力，弹性和风险在早期的学年。 结构的纵向设计和重复测量将允许描绘的前瞻性调解人和主持人的模型，以及稳定性，变化和双向性的分析家庭过程。

While interparental relations are known to affect children's functioning directly (i.e., exposure to conflict), and indirectly through parenting, little is known about the specific processes responsible for these pathways. According to a new theory of emotional security, children's emotional security is conceptualized as a primary mediating process of the direct and indirect effects of interparental relations on child adjustment. The current proposal seeks to test the hypotheses derived from the core proposition of this theory. First, marital relations are proposed to play a direct etiological role in the development of child problems by threatening children's sense of emotional security in the interparental subsystem. Second, marital conflict, through its link with parenting disturbances, is proffered to indirectly lead to children's emotional insecurity and thus lay the foundation for their future psychological risk. Third, whereas constructive marital relations (e.g., conflict resolution, intimacy) are hypothesized to foster healthy family contexts and children's security and competency, destructive marital relations (e.g., hostility, child-rearing fights) are thought to have deleterious consequences for family and child functioning. Fourth, characteristics of the wider family context (e.g., parental depression, child temperament) are hypothesized to be salient in shaping parenting and marital disturbances and changing the nature of their impact on child adjustment. One hundred and sixty elementary school children and their parents will participate in a two-wave longitudinal study, with measurement occasions spaced 12 months apart. The tripartite operationalization of emotional security, specifically defined as emotion regulation, representations of family relations, and regulation of exposure to family affect, makes it particularly amenable to empirical testing across multiple family subsystems (e.g., marital, parent-child). All key constructs (i.e., marital relations, parenting, security, child adjustment) will be assessed using multiple methods, agents, and contexts. Adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of family relations and child functioning will be measured to identify a broad set of developmental mechanisms underlying competency, resilience, and risk in the early school years. The longitudinal design and repeated measures of constructs will allow for the delineation of prospective mediator and moderator models as well as the analysis of stability, change, and bidirectionality among family processes.