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Family Processes and Child Psychopathology: A Between- and Within-Family/Child Analysis

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Abstract

A vast array of family processes is linked to child mental development, among which (1) low parental acceptance and (2) high family conflict are known as transdiagnostic risk factors for child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. In contrast to most prior research adopting cross-sectional or lagged designs, the current study applied fine-grained multilevel modeling to elucidate the complex relationships among parental acceptance, family conflict, and child psychopathology, considering the nesting structure of children within families and longitudinal changes within children. We focused on preadolescents from the two-wave Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N = 4,953; aged 9–12) and accounted for parental psychopathology and sex differences. Our findings suggest that consistent between-family and between-child differences in parental acceptance play a transdiagnostic role for both child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, whereas family conflict is only significantly associated with externalizing psychopathology. Additionally, short-term within-family and within-child improvements in parental acceptance and family conflict across one year were associated with decreased externalizing, but not internalizing, psychopathology. These findings support the potential importance and feasibility of targeting these family process factors for child externalizing problems outside of an intensive treatment setting. We further discussed how such findings serve as a foundation for future research on family processes and child internalizing problems. The varying results across different grouping levels highlight the importance of decomposing within- from between-family/child effects in future studies on family processes and child psychopathology.

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Data Availability

The current study is based on a de-identified open dataset—the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The usage did not require IRB approval. See:https://nda.nih.gov/abcd.

Code Availability

The current analyses were conducted based on open-source R packages.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Sin-Ying Lin, Jessica L. Schleider & Nicholas R. Eaton

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ABCD research sites obtained ethical approvals through a central Institutional Review Board (cIRB) at the University of California, San Diego, except that the site at Washington University in St. Louis utilized their local IRB approval. NIH-recognized research institutions can access the de-identified ABCD data with federal-wide assurance. According to the IRB of Stony Brook University, the current use of the ABCD data for secondary analysis is exempt from IRB review.

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Lin, SY., Schleider, J.L. & Eaton, N.R. Family Processes and Child Psychopathology: A Between- and Within-Family/Child Analysis. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 49, 283–295 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00749-x

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