Anti-social behavior patterns in children have been studied mainly in relation to negative socialization experiences (e.g. punitive and erratic parental practices). This study focuses on early proactive parenting practices and affective styles that may minimize the need for reactive, coercive control. Parent-child and family interaction patterns are assessed in families with 4-5 year old children who vary in risk for conduct problems. Assessment contexts include both naturalistic conditions and structured dyadic and triadic tasks. Child functioning and family processes are assessed again two years later. It is hypothesized that proactive parenting practices, in conjunction with regulated and positive parental affect will (a) facilitate the development in children of critical social skills, regulation of affect, and appropriate compliance and (b) distinguish over time those children who begin to outgrow their problems from those who continue to be oppositional, defiant and disruptive. Preliminary analyses indicate that some proactive parenting measures are correlated with fewer child problems assessed at a later time point. The role of biologically based measures of children's reactivity to stress as moderators of effective parenting, independently assessed in other contexts (e.g. ACTH, cortisol), also will be examined. Thus the broader goal is to identify combinations of environmental and biological processes that predict decrease and remission of problem behaviors over time, in order to inform strategies for early intervention.
