The proposed investigation explores major issues in the development of early family relationships and the contextual conditions that maintain or deflect developmental trajectories during the period when a toddler's developmentally normative quest for autonomy can be expected to stress the family system and create conflict among family members. Specifically, this investigation will 1) chronical stability and change in conflicted and harmonious interpersonal exchanges in the family during the child's second and third year of life; 2) identify family systems in which the incidence and intensity of aversive interactions between family members increase, decrease, or remain stable across this developmental period; 3) assess those 'antecedent setting conditions"""""""" which characterize the social ecology of the family prior to the onset of the """"""""terrible twos""""""""; and 4) determine whether """"""""conditions of proximal stress"""""""" (e.g., daily hassles and mood) influences family interaction processes on a day-to-day basis contributing to continuity/discontinuity in the process of individual, relationship, and family development. The proposed research involves a prospective longitudinal study of 150 families rearing sons from the time the body are one year of age through their third birthdays. Interview and observational data will be gathered regarding """"""""antecedent setting conditions"""""""" at the end of the infants first year of life. A pair of two hour home observations will be conducted at four evenly spaced intervals during the child's second the third years of life, with parental daily hassles and mood assessed prior to the onset of each observation. Finally, individual differences in the functioning of children will be assessed when children are 36 months of age. Findings from this investigation will increase our understanding of family relationships across a particularly salient developmental period and potentially add to growing models of developmental psychopathology.
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