Narrative coherence across the transition to parenthood: Primiparous parents' representations of their child in relation to parental sensitivity.

Narrative coherence reflects parents' ability to provide a believable, clear, relevant, and internally consistent story about their child. Parents demonstrating more narrative coherence have been theorized to show higher parental sensitivity, but this has not been examined in a normative sample, nor across the transition to parenthood, and only once in fathers. The aim of this study was to examine stability and change in narrative coherence across the transition to parenthood in mothers and fathers, as well as the relation between pre- and postnatal narrative coherence and postnatal parental sensitivity.

Crossing boundaries: A pilot study of maternal attitudes about child maltreatment in nine countries.

Background: Definitions of child maltreatment vary widely between studies, and even more so between different cultural contexts.

Objective: In this pilot study, we examine between-country variations in maternal notions about what constitutes child maltreatment.

Participants And Setting: The sample consisted of 466 mothers recruited in Chile, China, Greece, Iran, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, and Uruguay.

Fathers: The interplay between testosterone levels and self-control in relation to parenting quality.

In this study, we examined the potential interaction effect between fathers' basal testosterone levels and their ability to control their impulses in relation to their quality of parenting. Participants included 159 fathers and their preschoolers. Evening and morning salivary samples were analyzed with isotope dilution-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (ID-LC-MS/MS) to determine basal testosterone (T) levels.

The association between overweight and internalizing and externalizing behavior in early childhood.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine bidirectional associations between overweight and behavior problems during early childhood taking into account the adiposity rebound, which is the turning point in the nonlinear development of Body Mass Index in early childhood.

Methods: Longitudinal data from 6624 Dutch children in the Generation R Study were used to analyze the association between measured overweight and scores on the internalizing and externalizing scale of the Child Behavior Checklist between one-and-a-half, three and six years. The adiposity rebound was determined for each child by estimating the lowest point in their growth curve.

Diurnal testosterone variability is differentially associated with parenting quality in mothers and fathers.

Previous studies on the relation between testosterone (T) levels and parenting have found ample evidence for the challenge hypothesis, demonstrating that high T levels inhibit parental involvement and that becoming a parent is related to a decrease in T levels in both mothers and fathers. However, less is known about the relation between T levels and more qualitative aspects of parenting. In the current study we examined basal T levels and diurnal variability in T levels in relation to mothers' and fathers' parenting quality.

Robust patterns and individual variations: stability and predictors of infant behavior in the still-face paradigm.

In the present study we examined key issues regarding infant behavior in the still-face paradigm (SFP) in terms of individual variations, stability, and predictors. The sample consisted of 115 mothers and infants, with assessments at ages 3 and 6 months, including observations of maternal and infant behavior in the SFP, and parent reports of infant temperament. Both robust patterns and individual variations in infant SFP behaviors were found, with only a minority of infants showing the expected patterns for negative affect and gaze.