Children Changing in Context: Child Temperament and Personality Development as Interrelated with Parenting in the Etiology of Adjustment Problems

Abstract

The overall aim of this dissertation was to examine how child temperament and personality change, what the role of parenting is in explaining these changes, and how child temperament/personality and parenting together predict child internalizing and externalizing problems. In this dissertation, we took both a person-, and a variable-centered approach to the study of temperament and personality. Taking a person-centered approach, we showed that the personality types often found in research on personality in older children (i.e., a resilient/well-adjusted type, an overcontrolled type that experiences internalizing problems, and an undercontrolled type that exhibits externalizing problems) are also present in temperament configurations in toddlerhood, and that they can be obtained from multiple informants’ reports of personality in childhood. Additionally, we showed that, although temperament traits are only moderately stable in toddlerhood, temperament types are highly stable at this age already. Taking a different person-centered approach, we identified a small group of children whose personality configurations became increasingly extreme across development. Although personality types usually do not add much predictive value over dimensions, the probability of belonging to this increasingly extreme group was predictive of internalizing and externalizing problems, above and beyond levels of the personality dimensions. Taking a variable-centered approach, we showed that children’s mean-level personality development was temporarily aimed at becoming less mature: mean levels of extraversion, benevolence, conscientiousness, emotional stability and imagination decreased across the transition to adolescence, with levels of benevolence, conscientiousness and imagination increasing again from mid-adolescence onwards. Although changes were small, we found that decreases in extraversion and emotional stability were predictive of internalizing problems, and that decreases in benevolence, conscientiousness and emotional stability were predictive of externalizing problems. Results of our studies further showed that inter-individual differences in temperament and personality (change) were associated with parenting, with more associations found for warm/supportive parenting than for hostile/overreactive parenting. Child temperament/personality was more important in determining parenting behavior (“child effect”), than vice versa (“parent effect”). However, most evidence was found for associated change (“parallel processes”), indicating that if either the child or the parent changes, the other changes in order to adjust. Finally, we investigated how child temperament and personality are interrelated with parenting in the etiology of internalizing and externalizing adjustment problems. We found that, in addition to being associated with temperament and personality change, overreactive parenting predicted heightened adjustment problems in children, both independently and in interaction with child personality. Additionally, we investigated parent-child interaction processes as they unfold in real-time, and found that when mother-child interaction was characterized by a high degree of variability in affective expressions, children experienced more internalizing and externalizing problems. In conclusion, the findings of this dissertation indicate that children’s temperament/ personality configurations are highly stable, but that mean-level changes in dimensions occur. Inter-individual differences in changes in temperament/personality and parenting are associated, and together are important in determining a child’s risk for internalizing and externalizing adjustment problems.