AMANDA SHEFFIELD MORRIS University of New Orleans

JENNIFER S. SILK AND LAURENCE STEINBERG

Temple University*

FRANCES M. SESSA Pennsylvania State University**

SHELLI AVENEVOLI Yale University School of Medicine***

MARILYN J. ESSEX University of Wisconsin****

Temperamental Vulnerability and Negative Parenting as

Interacting Predictors of Child Adjustment

This study examines parenting by temperament in-
teractions in predicting child adjustment. Partic-
ipants included 40 first and second graders, their
mothers, and teachers. Child report of maternal
psychological control and hostility was assessed
using the Child Puppet Interview. Mothers com-
pleted temperament scales from the Child Behav-
ior Questionnaire, and teachers provided infor-
mation on child adjustment. As expected, among
children high in irritable distress, maternal psy-
chological control was associated with internal-
Department of Psychology, Lakefront GP 2001, University
of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148 (amorris@uno.
edu).
*Department of Psychology, Temple University.
**Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State Univer-
sityAbington.
***Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale
University School of Medicine.
****Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin.
Key Words: child adjustment, child report, parenting, tem-
perament.
izing problems and maternal hostility was asso-
ciated with externalizing problems. Among
children with poor effortful control, maternal hos-
tility was associated with externalizing behavior.
This study offers evidence that the effects of neg-
ative parenting are accentuated among children
with temperamental vulnerabilities.
For more than 3 decades, social scientists have
focused on parenting as a crucial factor in under-
standing the development of behavioral and emo-
tional problems among children. In recent years,
however, the centrality of parenting in understand-
ing child development has been challenged by be-
havior geneticists and others who point to the im-
portance of genetic factors and nonshared
environment in accounting for childrens adjust-
ment (Rowe, 1994). Observed effect sizes in re-
search on parental influence on child development
are typically small to moderate, and much of the
variance in child adjustment remains to be ex-
plained after parenting has been taken into con-
sideration (Bates, Pettit, Dodge, & Ridge, 1998;
Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994).
We propose that these small effect sizes result

Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (May 2002): 461471 461

462
from the fact that parenting does not affect all
children in the same way or to the same degree.
Different children elicit different parenting from
the same parents, and it is also possible that dif-
ferent children may experience the same parenting
in different ways. For example, hostile and coer-
cive parenting may have a more deleterious im-
pact on children who are temperamentally vulner-
able to negative contextual influences. In contrast,
hostility may exert a lesser influence on children
whose dispositions leave them more resilient in
the face of negative parent-child interchanges. The
challenge for researchers, then, is to identify those
factors that render some children more influenced
by parenting than others and to include these fac-
tors in more complex interactive models of par-
enting and child psychopathology (Collins, Mac-
coby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein,
2000).
NEGATIVE PARENTING: HOSTILITY AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTROL
Negative parenting has been implicated consis-
tently in the development of emotional and be-
havioral problems in children. Research suggests
that there are at least two important components
of negative parenting: hostility and psychological
control (Morris et al., in press). Hostility is defined
as overt verbal and physical aggression toward the
child. In contrast, psychological control is covert
aggression and intrusive control in which parents
attempt to manipulate childrens behavior and
identity through the use coercive strategies such
as excessive criticism, contingent affection, guilt
induction, restrictive communication, and invali-
dation of feelings (Barber, 2001). Although these
two components of parenting sometimes occur in
tandem, and are often aggregated in research on
parenting (e.g., Campbell, March, Pierce, Ewing,
& Szumowski, 1991), research suggests these
constructs are distinct and have differential effects
on childrens adjustment (Barber).
Studies examining how children are affected
by various aspects of parental hostility, such as
harsh discipline, punitiveness, coercion, and phys-
ical and verbal aggression, have consistently
linked parental hostility to the development of be-
havior problems and aggression in young children
and preadolescents (e.g., MacKinnon-Lewis &
Lofquist, 1996; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992).
Studies have also linked hostile parenting to in-
ternalizing problems in childhood (e.g., Messer &
Beidel, 1994).
Journal of Marriage and Family
There is a strong theoretical foundation and a
burgeoning literature suggesting that psychologi-
cal control also has harmful effects on childrens
psychosocial development (see Barber, 2001).
Studies of parent-adolescent interaction show that
parents of depressed and/or anxious adolescents
exhibit higher levels of psychological control
compared to parents of nondiagnosed adolescents,
as evidenced by familial enmeshment, autocracy,
parental overcontrol, and decreased autonomy
granting (Messer & Beidel, 1994; Siqueland, Ken-
dall, & Steinberg, 1996).
Most studies of young children have examined
the impact of psychological control as part of an
aggregate measure of overall parenting style or
negative parenting rather than as a distinct par-
enting construct. In one of the few research pro-
grams to examine the distinct effects of psycho-
logical control on young children, Hart and
colleagues found deleterious effects of psycholog-
ical control among preschool children in different
cultures. Psychological control was related to in-
ternalizing and externalizing problems in Ameri-
can preschool children and to externalizing prob-
lems in Russian preschool children (Hart, Nelson,
Robinson, Olsen, & McNeilly-Choque, 1998; Ol-
sen et al., 2001).
Although studies consistently link hostile par-
enting and psychological control to behavior prob-
lems, observed effect sizes are typically small to
moderate, similar to other dimensions of parenting
(Bates et al., 1998; Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994). We
argue that children with different temperaments
are likely to be differentially susceptible to dif-
ferent types of parenting. In the past few years,
several studies have examined the interactive ef-
fects of temperamental and family characteristics
on childrens socioemotional adjustment (e.g.,
Belsky, Hsieh, & Crnic, 1998; Rubin, Hastings,
Chen, Stewart, & McNichol, 1998). Promising re-
sults from these studies suggest that parenting ac-
counts for considerably more variance in child
outcomes when temperamental characteristics of
the child are taken into consideration. Yet, this
area represents a relatively new domain of inquiry
in psychological research, and, as Bates et al.
(1998, p. 984) point out, what is particularly cru-
cial at this point in research on Temperament X
Environment interactions is the replication of ef-
fects. Thus, the primary purpose of the present
investigation is to further examine such interactive
effects.
Child Temperament and Negative Parenting
CHILD TEMPERAMENT: NEGATIVE REACTIVITY
AND EFFORTFUL CONTROL
The current study focuses on negative reactivity
and effortful control, two prominent dimensions
of temperament that have consistently been linked
to socioemotional adjustment. Negative reactivity
(also called negative affectivity) represents the
childs tendency to react to stressors with high de-
grees of emotionality, including anger, irritability,
fear, or sadness (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey,
1994). Children who are high in negative reactiv-
ity are at risk for developing externalizing and in-
ternalizing problems (Eisenberg et al., 1996).
Although negative reactivity has been studied
as a global higher-order construct, recent findings
on temperament and physiology suggest that sad-
ness, anger, and fear are characterized by different
neurological substrates and systems (Buss &
Goldsmith, 1998). For example, anger is regulated
by an approach system whereas fear and sadness
are regulated by a withdrawal system (Derryberry
& Rothbart, 1997), and these systems are likely
related to different outcomes (Kagan, 1998). It
may, therefore, be advisable to distinguish be-
tween these two types of negative reactivity. Be-
cause past research suggests strong links between
temperamental anger and behavior and emotional
problems (Murphy & Eisenberg, 1996), the cur-
rent study focuses only on irritable distress, a
temperamental susceptibility to anger and frustra-
tion, as an index of negative reactivity.
Effortful control refers to a childs ability to
utilize attentional resources and to inhibit behav-
ioral responses in order to regulate behaviors and
emotions and is closely linked to the construct of
emotion regulation. Deficits in the ability to self-
regulate are thought to underlie many clinical dis-
orders, whereas improved emotional and/or be-
havioral regulation is an implied aim of many
treatment programs (Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994).
Low effortful control has been linked to aggres-
sion and behavioral problems in children (Eisen-
berg et al., 1996; Rothbart et al., 1994).
There is some research suggesting that these
specific components of temperament interact with
parenting to predict child adjustment. For exam-
ple, Rubin et al. (1998) found that among male
toddlers with an angry temperament, maternal
negative dominance predicted externalizing be-
havior. Similarly, Belsky et al. (1998) found that
infant negative emotionality and maternal negativ-
ity interact to predict externalizing problems
among boys at age 3. We suspect that children
463
with a predisposition toward negative reactivity
and/or poor effortful control are especially harmed
by parental hostility and psychological control.
Their predisposition to experience negative affect,
or to have difficulty regulating negative affect,
makes them especially likely to experience coer-
cive and hostile interchanges as highly aversive.
Yet, these same reactive and/or dysregulated chil-
dren may not develop problems when their par-
ents are sensitive and responsive to their emotion-
al liabilities. It is also possible that children who
are not very reactive, or who are adept at regu-
lating negative emotions, may be less harmed than
other children by negative parenting. Although
there is a level of negative parenting (e.g., phys-
ical abuse) at which nearly all exposed children
will develop socioemotional problems, at lower
levels, the effect of exposure to hostility or psy-
chological control likely depends on the temper-
amental makeup of the child.
THE CURRENT STUDY
The purpose of the current study is to examine
whether the deleterious influence of negative par-
enting is accentuated among children with tem-
peramental vulnerabilities. The present study ex-
pands upon past research by using childrens
reports of parenting behavior. Because childrens
construction of their world affects the develop-
ment of behavior and emotional problems (Boyce
et al., 1998), we developed an age-appropriate in-
terview to assess childrens perceptions of nega-
tive parenting.
It was hypothesized that the childs report of
maternal hostility and psychological control
would be associated with higher levels of emo-
tional and behavioral problems. It was expected
that maternal hostility would be more related to
externalizing behavior and psychological control
to internalizing behavior. It was also hypothesized
that low effortful control and high irritable distress
would be associated with higher levels of exter-
nalizing behavior and, to a lesser extent, internal-
izing behavior. The primary hypothesis of the
study, however, was that temperament would
moderate the link between parenting and child ad-
justment. It was hypothesized that the relation be-
tween negative parenting (maternal hostility and
psychological control) and childrens internalizing
and externalizing behavior would be stronger
among children high in irritable distress and/or
low in effortful control.
464
METHOD
Participants
Forty children (16 girls, 24 boys) and their moth-
ers and teachers participated in this study. Chil-
dren were recruited from public schools in a large
city in the Northeast. All children were in first or
second grade (M 5 7 years, 7 months). Mothers
ranged in age from 24 to 51 years (M 5 37 years,
SD 5 7 years). Approximately 51% of the chil-
dren resided in two-parent homes (40% of the par-
ents were married and 11% of the parents reported
that they were in steady marriage-like relation-
ships). Forty-eight percent of the children lived in
single-parent homes. The families came from di-
verse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Ap-
proximately 60% of the children were African
American; 35% were White; and the remaining
5% were from other or mixed ethnic groups. Eight
percent of the mothers had some high school ed-
ucation; 10% had completed high school or the
equivalent; 38% had some college education; 15%
had completed college; and 28% had some post-
college education or a professional degree.
Procedure
Data were gathered by trained research assistants
during 1.5- to 2-hour visits in the homes of the
participating families. After explaining the nature
of the study and obtaining informed consent from
the mother, children were administered the Child
Puppet Interview (CPI) while their mothers com-
pleted a series of questionnaires about the target
child, their own parenting, and other domains of
the childrens home environment. With parental
permission, teachers were mailed questionnaires
to assess the childs behavior in school.
Measures
CPI: Hostility and Psychological Control Scales.
Childrens report of maternal negative parenting
was obtained using the Hostility and Psychological
Control Subscales of the Child Puppet Interview-
Parenting Scales (CPI-P), a measure developed in
collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation Re-
search Network on Psychopathology and Devel-
opment (Sessa, Avenevoli, Steinberg, & Morris,
2001). The CPI-P is a child-friendly, interactive in-
terview containing several scales designed to tap
central dimensions of the parent-child relationship
(e.g., warmth, structure, hostility, psychological
Journal of Marriage and Family
control). The CPI has been shown to be a reliable
and valid assessment instrument for use with young
children (for more details see Sessa et al., 2001 and
Morris et al., 2001).
The interviewing technique, similar to that em-
ployed in the Berkeley Puppet Interview (Mea-
selle, Ablow, Cowan, & Cowan, 1998), was
adapted from Eders (1990) self-concept puppet
methodology. Two identical puppets present the
child with opposing statements about parental be-
havior. For example, one puppet says My mom
gets mad at me a lot, and the other says, My
mom gets mad at me a little. Children are asked
to choose the puppet that is more like them by
either pointing to the puppet, repeating what the
puppet said, or putting the statement in their own
words. In order to ensure that interviewers do not
inadvertently reinforce certain choices, childrens
responses are always validated by one of the pup-
pets; for instance, after each response, the puppet
selected by the child indicates acknowledgement
and agreement with the child (e.g., My Mom
does that too.). Children who have better verbal
skills or who are more comfortable with verbal
expression often expand on the item they select
and spontaneously offer more descriptive details
about their parent. More important, children who
are not adept at or comfortable with verbal ex-
pression can simply point to the puppet that is
more like them. In the present study, children re-
ported on maternal behavior because many of the
parents in our study were single mothers.
The CPI-P was administered to children indi-
vidually and childrens responses were videotaped
for later coding. Childrens responses were coded
on a 3-point scale, with a 1 given for an answer
indicating that the mother was low on the parent-
ing dimension assessed and a 3 given for an an-
swer indicating that the mother was high on that
dimension. A 2 was given when children indicated
that both responses equally applied to them. All
videotapes were coded twice by trained research
assistants (inter-rater agreement was 98%), and
discrepancies were resolved by an advanced grad-
uate student. A mean score ranging from 1 to 3
was calculated using all the scale items, with high-
er scores indicating greater maternal hostility or
psychological control.
The Hostility subscale of the CPI-P taps ma-
ternal overt negative affect toward the child and
includes item pairs such as, My mom yells at me
a lot/My mom yells at me a little and My mom
spanks me when I am bad/My mom does not
spank me when I am bad. The scale consists of
Child Temperament and Negative Parenting
five items (a 5 .70; see Sessa et al., 2001, for a
list of all items). The Psychological Control scale
assesses maternal covert hostility toward the child
and maternal intrusiveness and manipulation of
the childs feelings and identity. Sample items for
the 13-item Psychological Control scale include:
My mom gets mad whenever I disagree with her/
My mom doesnt always get mad when I disagree
with her and When I am bad, my mom ignores
me/When I am bad, my mom does not ignore me
(a 5 .73; see Morris et al., 2001 for all items).
Although some items assess specific parenting be-
haviors, the scales are believed to indicate specific
dimensions of parenting style, or emotional cli-
mate, that characterize the parent-child relation-
ship. Specific parenting behaviors were chosen as
items because the use of concrete examples is im-
portant when examining young childrens reports
of their experiences (Sessa et al.).
Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). Maternal
report of child temperament was assessed using
the Child Behavior Questionnaire, a widely used
parent report measure of child temperament. The
CBQ has been demonstrated to exhibit adequate
reliability and validity (Goldsmith & Rothbart,
1991). The version of the CBQ used in the current
study is a shortened 99-item version consisting of
12 scales (Askan et al., 1999). The current study
employs information from 3 scales: Anger, Inhib-
itory Control, and Attentional Focusing. Each
item is rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale rang-
ing from 1 (extremely untrue) to 7 (extremely
true). Internal consistency estimates for the CBQ
scales range from .64 to .94 (Goldsmith & Roth-
bart, 1991). On the basis of the work of Rothbart
et al. (1994), the scales were composited to assess
the following temperament dimensions:
Irritable distress. The irritable distress component
of negative reactivity (conceptualized as distinct
from fearful distress) was assessed using the An-
ger scale of the CBQ. The Anger scale includes
9 items (a 5 .74) that tap the amount of negative
affect related to the interruption of ongoing tasks
or goal blocking. Sample items include: Gets
quite frustrated when prevented from doing some-
thing s/he wants and Gets angry when s/he
cant find something s/he wants to play with.
Effortful control. Effortful control was assessed
using the Inhibitory Control and Attention Focus-
ing scales of the CBQ. The Inhibitory Control
scale of the CBQ contains 7 items that assess the
465
childs capacity to plan and to suppress inappro-
priate approach responses. Sample items include,
Is usually able to resist temptation when s/he is
not supposed to do something, and Is good at
following instructions. The Attentional Focusing
scale of the CBQ contains 6 items and assesses
the childs tendency to maintain attentional focus
upon task-related channels. It is believed to tap
the childs control over attentional processes.
Sample items include, When drawing or coloring
in a book, shows strong concentration, and Has
a hard time concentrating on an activity when
there are distracting noises (reverse scored).
Similar to Eisenberg et al. (1996), these scale
scores were standardized and combined to create
a measure of effortful control (a 5 .80).
Ontario Child Health Study Scales (OCHS).
Teacher report of problem behavior was assessed
using a modified version of the internalizing and
externalizing scales of the OCHS. The OCHS as-
sesses problem behavior symptoms associated
with DSM-III childhood psychiatric disorders
(Boyle, Offord, Racine, Szatmari, & Sanford,
1993) and contains items adapted from the Child
Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Edel-
brock, 1981). The OCHS has good internal con-
sistency, test-retest reliability, and agreement with
psychiatrists diagnoses. The modified OCHS
contains 35 symptom items rated on a 3-point Lik-
ert-type scale ranging from 0 (rarely applies) to 2
(certainly applies). Broadband scales are comput-
ed to assess internalizing (e.g., worries about
things in the future; needs to be told over and over
that things are okay) and externalizing (e.g., kicks,
bites, or hits other children; defiant, talks back to
adults) symptoms. Importantly, the externalizing
scale does not contain symptoms of attention-def-
icit or hyperactivity disorder that could overlap
with CBQ items assessing effortful control.
Chronbachs alphas in the current sample were .95
for the Externalizing scale and .78 for the Inter-
nalizing scale.
RESULTS
Means and standard deviations for the major var-
iables are presented in Table 1. In preliminary
analyses, sex differences were examined with re-
spect to the indicators of negative reactivity, ef-
fortful control, and the externalizing and internal-
izing composites, as well as parenting variables.
There were no significant sex differences in mean
scores on any of the variables except for effortful
466
TABLE 1. CORRELATION MATRIX AND
Variable 1 2
Hostility a
1.00
Psychological controla .46** 1.00
Irritable distressb .36* .03
Effortful controlc 2.37* 2.19
Externalizingd .44** .22
Internalizingd .30 .11
a
Possible scale scores range from 1 to 3, with higher scores indicating more negative parenting. bPossible scale scores
range from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating more irritable distress. cScale scores are the sum of two z-scores, with
higher scores indicating more effortful control. dPossible scale scores range from 0 to 2, with higher scores indicating more
problem behavior.
p , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01 ***p , .001.
control (t 5 2.14, p 5 .04). Boys evidenced lower
effortful control than girls; however, because of
limited power, analyses were conducted using the
entire sample.
Relations Among Constructs
Relations among constructs are presented in Table
1. Teacher reports of externalizing and internal-
izing problems were moderately correlated (r 5
.44, p , .01), suggesting some comorbidity of dis-
tinct constructs. Temperament dimensions were
interrelated. Effortful control was negatively cor-
related with irritable distress (r 5 2.64, p , .01),
suggesting that various manifestations of nega-
tive temperament often coexist in the same child.
As predicted, irritable distress was directly re-
lated to teacher reports of externalizing (r 5 .42,
p , .05) and internalizing behavior (r 5 .42, p
, .05). Effortful control was negatively correlated
with externalizing behavior, as expected (r 5
2.46, p , .05); however, it was not associated
with internalizing behavior. As hypothesized,
child report of maternal hostility was significantly
correlated with teacher reports of externalizing be-
havior (r 5 .44, p , .01) and tended to be cor-
related with teacher reports of internalizing prob-
lems (r 5 .30, p , .10). Relations between
psychological control and externalizing problems
(r 5 .22, p 5 .18) and psychological control and
internalizing behavior (r 5 .11, p 5 .49) were
weaker than for hostility and teacher-reported be-
havior problems.
Interaction of Hostility and Temperament in the
Prediction of Problem Behavior
The next step was to explore whether the inter-
active effects of these variables further contribute
to the prediction of teacher-reported internalizing
Journal of Marriage and Family
MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF VARIABLES
3 4 5 M SD
1.61 .60
1.61 .38
1.00 4.46 1.01
2.64*** 1.00 .00 1.72
.42* 2.46** 1.00 .42 .48
.42* 2.08 .44** .45 .27
and/or externalizing problems. A series of step-
wise regression equations were computed to ex-
plore whether child report of maternal hostility
and mother report of child temperament interacted
to predict teacher-reported emotional and behav-
ioral problems. Regressions predicting external-
izing and internalizing problems were computed
by entering maternal hostility and one of the tem-
perament dimensions (irritable distress or effortful
control) on the first step; and the interaction be-
tween hostility and the temperament dimension on
the second step. Each of the independent variables
and their interactions were centered (M 5 0) prior
to inclusion in the regression equations in order
to minimize multicollinearity (Aiken & West,
1991).
Table 2 presents the regression equation pre-
dicting externalizing behavior from hostility, irri-
table distress, and their interaction. As shown in
Table 2, the hypothesized interaction between hos-
tility and irritable distress in predicting external-
izing problems was marginally significant (b 5
.27, p 5 .09). Following Aiken and Wests (1991)
procedures for interpreting and graphing interac-
tions, unstandardized betas (slopes) were calcu-
lated for children scoring high (75th percentile)
and low (25th percentile) on irritable distress in
order to examine the relation between maternal
hostility and externalizing behavior at different
levels of irritable distress. The Wald test was used
to test the significance of the slope for hostility at
high and low levels of irritable distress. These
analyses show that among children high in irrita-
ble distress, maternal hostility significantly pre-
dicted externalizing behavior (slope 5 .31, F[1,
31] 5 6.62, p , .05), but among children low in
irritable distress (slope 5 .06) hostile parenting
was not related to externalizing behavior. The in-
teraction between hostility and irritable distress
Child Temperament and Negative Parenting 467

did not predict teacher reports of internalizing be-

2.39**
havior.

2.37*
.22


b
Table 2 also presents the regression equation

F(3, 31) 5 8.08***

With Interaction
predicting externalizing behavior from hostility,
effortful control, and their interaction. As hypoth-
esized, the interaction between hostility and ef-
fortful control was significant in predicting teach-

2.18**
er reports of externalizing behavior (b 5 2.39, p

2.09*
.16

.44


B , .01). Among children low in effortful control,
maternal hostility significantly predicted external-
Externalizing

izing behavior (slope 5 .39, F[1, 31] 5 10.70, p

, .01), but among children reported to be higher
in effortful control, hostile parenting was not sig-
nificantly related to externalizing problems (slope
.31

2.34*

5 2.05). Introducing the interaction between hos-
b
Without Interaction

F(2, 32) 5 6.62**

tility and effortful control into the equation sig-
TABLE 2. REGRESSION ANALYSES PREDICTING EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIOR

nificantly increased the proportion of variance in

externalizing behavior accounted for (R2) from
29% to 44%. Although it was hypothesized that
.22

2.09*

the interaction between effortful control and ma-

.29

ternal hostility might also predict teachers reports

of internalizing behavior, the interaction for inter-
nalizing behavior was not significant.

Interaction of Psychological Control and

.29
.27
.25

F(3, 31) 5 5.23**

Temperament in the Prediction of

With Interaction

Problem Behavior
Contrary to the hypotheses, there were no signif-
icant interactions between psychological control
Note: B is the unstandardized coefficient and b is the standardized coefficient.
.12
.19

and effortful control in predicting internalizing or

.18

.34


B

externalizing behavior. However, as expected,

Externalizing

psychological control did interact with irritable

distress to predict internalizing behavior (b 5 .34,
p , .05; see Table 3). Among children high in
irritable distress, childrens reports of psycholog-
.33*
.30



Without Interaction
b

ical control predicted teacher reports of internal-

F(2, 32) 5 5.88**

izing behavior (slope 5 .28, F(1, 35) 5 4.11, p

5 .05); but among children low in irritable dis-
tress, psychological control was not predictive of
p , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

internalizing behavior (slope 5 2.08). Adding the

.24*
.12

.27

interaction term between psychological control

B

and irritable distress increased the proportion of

variance in internalizing behavior accounted for
from 15% to 26%. Although it was also expected
that psychological control might interact with ir-
Hostility 3 effortful control
Hostility 3 irritable distress

ritable distress to predict externalizing behavior,

the interaction term was not significant in the re-
gression predicting externalizing problems.
Effortful control
Irritable distress

R2 for equation
F for equation

DISCUSSION
Hostility
Variable

An exciting new trend in research on parenting is

the search for factors that amplify or attenuate the
468
TABLE 3. REGRESSION ANALYSES PREDICTING INTERNALIZING BEHAVIOR
Variable
Psychological control
Irritable distress
Psychological control 3 irritable distress
R2 for equation
F for equation
Note: B is the unstandardized coefficient and b is the standardized coefficient.
*p , .05. **p , .10.
influences of parenting among different children.
Results from the present study add further weight
to the assertion that child temperament is an im-
portant moderator of the links between parenting
and child psychopathology. This study is the first
empirical study, to our knowledge, to examine
child temperament as a moderator between paren-
tal psychological control and child adjustment. In
addition, this study replicates important findings
that suggest the relation between parental hostility
and childrens problem behavior is moderated by
child temperament (Belsky et al., 1998; Rubin et
al., 1998). More specifically, results indicate that
irritable distress and effortful control seem to be
important in exacerbating the influence of nega-
tive parenting on the development of emotional
and behavioral problems. This study suggests that
children who are highly irritable are at higher risk
for developing externalizing problems when ex-
posed to maternal hostility, and internalizing prob-
lems when exposed to maternal psychological
control. Children who have difficulty regulating
their emotions and behaviors are also at risk for
developing externalizing problems in the presence
of maternal hostility. In contrast, children who are
not prone to anger and frustration, or who have
well-developed self-regulation capacities, seem
more resistant to the deleterious effects of nega-
tive parenting. Taken together with recent reports
of other parenting by temperament interactions
(Bates et al., 1998; Belsky et al.; Rubin et al.),
these findings suggest that negative parenting does
not affect all children the same way.
This is one of the first studies to assess young
childrens perceptions of maternal hostility and
psychological control. Our research indicates that
children as young as 4 can reliably report on
parental hostility (Sessa et al., 2001), and those as
young as 6 can report on psychological control
(Morris et al., 2001), provided these assessments
are done in a developmentally sensitive manner.
Journal of Marriage and Family
Internalizing
Without Interaction With Interaction
B b B b
.07 .10 .08 .12
.10* .36* .10* .36*
.28* .34*
.15 .26
F(2, 36) 5 3.06** F(3, 35) 5 4.12*
We agree with Boyce et al. (1998) that researchers
have not paid sufficient attention to the childs
subjective experience of the social context in the
study of child adjustment, and we hope that the
findings of this study will reassure other research-
ers that it is possible to do so, even in samples of
young children.
An important finding in this respect is that chil-
drens reports of maternal hostility yielded results
that are highly consistent with studies employing
parent-report or observational assessments of par-
enting. In fact, childrens reports of maternal hos-
tility were somewhat more strongly correlated
with reports of externalizing behavior (r 5 .44)
than is typically found in studies that use other
informants (e.g., the mean correlation between pa-
rental coercion and externalizing problems in a
meta-analysis of 42 parenting studies was r 5 .21;
Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994). Also consistent with
previous research, a small-to-moderate correlation
(r 5 .30) was found between child report of hos-
tility and teacher report of internalizing behavior
(e.g., Messer & Gross, 1995). Contrary to expec-
tations, no significant direct links were found be-
tween child report of maternal psychological con-
trol and teacher report of problem behavior.
The direct links between temperament and
symptomatology found in the current study are
also consistent with previous reports. Consistent
with previous research, effortful control was neg-
atively associated with externalizing behavior
such that children rated lower in effortful control
by their mothers were more likely to exhibit act-
ing out behaviors in school (Eisenberg et al.,
1996; Rothbart et al., 1994). Mother-reported ir-
ritable distress was related to teacher report of
both externalizing and internalizing behavior, con-
sistent with findings that negative emotionality in
childhood is linked to behavioral and emotional
problems in children (e.g., Lengua, West, & San-
dler, 1998).
Child Temperament and Negative Parenting
The findings of this study provide support for
the general proposition that child temperament in-
teracts with family socialization in the develop-
ment of problem behavior (Belsky et al., 1998;
Rubin et al., 1998). Similar to Belsky et al. and
Rubin et al., the current study found that chil-
drens irritable distress moderated the relationship
between hostile parenting from the mother and ex-
ternalizing behavior. These studies all have indi-
cated that negative, hostile parenting has a stron-
ger influence among children who are high in
negative reactivity. The similarity of findings
across all three studies, despite significant meth-
odological differences (e.g., different age groups,
longitudinal vs. concurrent assessments, and dif-
ferent methods of assessing both parenting and
temperament) strengthens confidence in the gen-
eralizability and validity of this finding.
Our results also indicate that irritable distress
moderates the relation between maternal psycho-
logical control and childrens internalizing behav-
ior, again suggesting that children high in irritable
distress are at risk for developing emotional and
behavioral problems. This finding is in accordance
with the notion that children with a predisposition
to strong negative emotional arousal may be more
reactive to intrusive parental control and more
vulnerable to its effects precisely because of its
interference with childrens emotional expression
(see Morris et al., 2001). As expected, the inter-
action between maternal psychological control
and childrens irritable distress was stronger in the
prediction of internalizing than externalizing
problems.
We found a particularly strong moderating ef-
fect of effortful control in the link between ma-
ternal hostility and externalizing behavior. This
finding is in line with Bates et al. (1998), who
found that lax parenting was more likely to lead
to externalizing behavior among children rated as
temperamentally resistant to parental control than
among other children. Both studies suggest that
children who have difficulty regulating their be-
haviors are especially vulnerable to externalizing
problems when exposed to nonoptimal parenting,
whether it is too lax or too hostile. (The absence
of a similar pattern with respect to psychological
control is surprising.) In contrast, effortful control
was not related to internalizing problems in gen-
eral, and did not interact with either maternal psy-
chological control or hostility in the prediction of
internalizing problems. These results suggest that
a predisposition toward low effortful control may
place a child specifically at risk for developing
469
externalizing problems. Children who are low in
effortful control may find it especially difficult to
regulate their emotions and behaviors when they
are negatively aroused. Faced with frequent neg-
ative arousal from a hostile parent, these children
may not have the attentional and/or inhibitory re-
sources to suppress dysregulated displays of anger
and aggression. In contrast, children who are able
to regulate their behaviors and emotions according
to contextual demands may be less likely to act
out, even when faced with hostile parent-child
exchanges.
An important strength of this study is its use
of independent informants for all of the major
constructs. Teachers are an important source of
information about child symptomatology because
they possess a larger comparison base against
which they can judge the behavior of different
children. We also believe that the child is an es-
sential informant of parenting because it is the
childs own experience of parenting behavior that
is likely to have the greatest impact on the childs
subsequent development. Nevertheless, it would
be valuable to replicate the findings of this study
using different informants (see Kagan, 1998).
Multimethod assessments of temperament also
would reduce the likelihood that observed asso-
ciations between temperament and symptomatol-
ogy may be attributable to item-overlap in assess-
ment measures. This issue is always a concern in
cross-sectional research on temperament and child
outcomes. However, Lengua et al. (1998) have
found that temperament and child adjustment re-
main correlated even after the removal of similar
items on temperament and symptomatology ques-
tionnaires. Although there may be minimal con-
tent overlap among irritable distress items and ex-
ternalizing items used in this study, the exclusion
of ADHD symptoms from the externalizing scale
greatly minimizes possible overlap between ef-
fortful control and externalizing behavior.
A possibility that should be addressed is that
children prone to irritable distress might experi-
ence and/or report their parents as more negative
than other children because of temperamental bi-
ases. This is unlikely the case for maternal psy-
chological control because irritable distress and
psychological control are not correlated (r 5 .03).
This possibility cannot be ruled out for maternal
hostility, as irritable distress and child report of
hostility are moderately correlated (r 5 .36). Nev-
ertheless, there are other factors that likely drive
this association. For example, it is known that
children who are irritable or impulsive often elicit
470
more hostile behavior from their parents (Lerner,
1993). This could explain why both high irritable
distress and low effortful control are associated
with reports of more hostile parenting, because
both temperamental styles are likely to elicit more
negative parenting. Also, if this correlation reflects
a general negativistic response style in irritable
children, one would expect correlations between
irritable distress and other dimensions of negative
parenting, like psychological control. Neverthe-
less, the use of the child-report methodology
makes it difficult to definitively rule out possible
effects of temperament on childrens reports of
parenting.
A limitation of this study is its small sample
size, which provides only limited power to detect
small and moderate effect sizes. For this reason,
caution should be taken in assuming that effects
that were not detected in the current study (such
as direct effects of psychological control or the
prediction of internalizing problems) would not be
found with a larger sample. Also, as in most non-
experimental studies of family relationships, the
direction of parent-child effects cannot be deter-
mined and definitive claims about causality cannot
be drawn. It is known that children exert influ-
ences on parenting and to some extent it is likely
that problem behaviors preceded and elicited ma-
ternal negative behaviors in our sample. Further,
this study focused on mothers and not fathers
parenting. For children in the study who interact
with both a mother and father, these findings
would have been more comprehensive if we had
considered the fathers impact on adjustment as
well.
Despite these limitations, this study offers fur-
ther evidence that child temperament moderates
the relation between parenting practices and chil-
drens externalizing and internalizing behavior.
Our suspicion is that children prone to irritability
and poor self-regulation are more susceptible to
many different environmental stressors, of which
negative parenting is just one (see Steinberg &
Avenevoli, 2000). Future research examining di-
verse contextual influences on the development of
child psychopathology will likely benefit from a
greater appreciation of individual differences in
childrens reactivity and self-regulation. This
study also suggests that future research endeav-
oring to examine the childs own subjective ex-
perience of parenting may prove fruitful in in-
creasing our understanding of the development of
child psychopathology. Through its emphasis on
individual differences in child temperament as
Journal of Marriage and Family
well as childrens construction of their environ-
ment, this study represents an attempt to conduct
research that places children at the center. The re-
sults from this study indicate that this is an ap-
proach worth considering in the next generation
of parenting research.
NOTE
This research was supported by the John D. and Cath-
erine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on
Psychopathology and Development.
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