FAMILY PROCESS, EMOTIONAL SECURITY, AND CHILD ADJUSTMENT

虽然已知父母之间的关系直接影响儿童的功能（即暴露于冲突），并通过养育间接影响，但对负责这些途径的具体过程知之甚少。一种新的情绪安全理论认为，儿童情绪安全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。目前的提议试图检验从该理论的核心命题衍生出来的假设。首先，婚姻关系通过威胁儿童在父母间子系统中的情感安全感，在儿童问题的发展中起着直接的病因学作用。其次，婚姻冲突通过其与父母干扰的联系，间接导致孩子的情感不安全感，从而为他们未来的心理风险奠定基础。第三，虽然建设性的婚姻关系（如解决冲突、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，但破坏性的婚姻关系（如敌意、养育子女的斗争）被认为对家庭和儿童的功能有有害的后果。第四，更广泛的家庭背景的特征（例如，父母的抑郁，孩子的气质）被假设在塑造育儿和婚姻障碍以及改变其对儿童适应的影响的性质方面是显著的。160名小学生及其父母将参与一项两波纵向研究，测量时间间隔为12个月。情绪安全的三方运作化，具体定义为情绪调节、家庭关系表征和家庭情感暴露调节，使其特别适合于跨多个家庭子系统（例如，婚姻、亲子）的实证检验。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、代理和背景进行评估。将测量家庭关系和儿童功能的适应和不适应维度，以确定一套广泛的发展机制，这些机制是早期上学时期的能力、弹性和风险的基础。纵向设计和结构的重复测量将允许描述未来的中介和调节模型，以及稳定性，变化和家庭过程中的双向性分析。

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.