CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 21Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentAttachment and Relationship DynamicsFamily Dynamics and Relationships

Mother–child role confusion, child adjustment problems, and the moderating roles of child temperament and sex

Open access
Zvara, Bharathi J., The Family Life Project Key Investigators, Macfie, Jenny, Cox, Martha, Mills-Koonce, Roger·2018·Developmental Psychology
DOI 10.1037/dev0000556PMC PMC6196728
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Role confusion is a deviation in the parent-child relationship such that a parent looks to a child to meet the parent's emotional needs and abdicates, in part, the parental role in exchange for care, intimacy, or peer support from the child. In addition, a child may initiate role-confused behavior in order to gain closeness to a parent who is otherwise preoccupied by his or her own needs. The current study examined associations between mother-child role confusion at age 5 (we coded role confusion from filmed free-play mother-child interactions) and teacher reports of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and peer problems, at Grade 1. The sample (N = 557) is from a longitudinal study of families in rural communities, the Family Life Project. Mother-child role confusion predicted internalizing symptoms and peer problems (but not externalizing symptoms) above and beyond other dimensions of maternal parenting (sensitivity and harsh intrusiveness), demographic factors, and prior levels of outcome variables. However, some effect sizes were small, making replication desirable. Temperament and child sex were important moderators: girls with difficult temperaments and boys with easy temperaments were more vulnerable to internalizing symptoms (but not externalizing symptoms or peer problems) in the context of role confusion. We discuss the singular importance of role confusion, a construct that has been largely unrecognized by developmental psychologists until recently, for behavioral outcomes of children as they transition into middle childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/dev0000556

Cites

71 of 71 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Parentification as an overall construct was positively linked with externalizing problems in four studies, yet an almost equal number of studies (n = 3) found null results.

    “Parentification as an overall construct was positively linked with externalizing problems in four studies [77,82,95,104], yet an almost equal number of studies (n = 3) found null results [76,113,161].”

    From Parentification Vulnerability, Reactivity, Resilience, and Thriving: A Mixed Methods Systematic Literature Review (2023) · cites this paper as [113]

    The Results (Testing of Hypotheses) report no association between mother–child role confusion and externalizing behavior after accounting for other parenting domains, supporting this paper’s inclusion among the null-result studies. But the Method (Measures) defines role confusion more broadly than parentification, encompassing children acting as a parent, partner, or playmate; it does not establish a null result for parentification as an overall construct. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Eron LD (1990). Understanding aggression. Bulletin of the International Society for Research on Aggression, 12, 5– 9.
  2. Howes PW, & Cicchetti D (1993). A family/relational perspective on maltreating families: Parallel processes across systems and social policy implications. In Cicchetti D & Toth SL (Eds.), Child abuse, child development, and social policy (pp. 249– 300). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
  3. Jurkovic GJ (1998). Destructive parentification in families: Causes and consequences. In L’Abate L (Ed.), Family psychopathology: The relational roots of dysfunctional behavior (pp. 237– 255). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  4. Mize J, Pettit G & Meece D (2000). Explaining the link between parenting behavior and children’s peer competence: A critical examination of the ‘mediating-process’ hypothesis. In Kerns K, Contrearas JM & Neal-Barnett A (Eds.), Family and Peers: Linking Two Social Worlds (pp. 137– 168). Westport, CT Praeger.
  5. Rothbart MK, & Bates JE (2006). Temperament. In Eisenberg N, Damon W, & Lerner RM (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 99– 166). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
  6. Zahn-Waxler C, & Robinson J (1995). Empathy and guilt: Early origins of feelings of responsibility. In Tangney JP & Fischer KW (Eds.), Self-conscious emotions: The psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride (pp. 143– 173). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Zvara, B. J., The Family Life Project Key Investigators, Macfie, J., Cox, M., & Mills-Koonce, R.
ORCID
Venue
Developmental Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2018-10
Volume
54
Issue
10
Pages
1891-1903
ISSN
  • 0012-1649 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-0599
DOI
10.1037/dev0000556
PMC
PMC6196728
OpenAlex
W2888828147
Cited by
21
References
71
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2
FWCI
2.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Developmental Psychology (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (PO1-HD-3966)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
Keywords
parent-child relationship, child adjustment, internalizing problems, externalizing problems, peer problems, child temperament, child sex differences, maternal care, parenting sensitivity, middle childhood, Family Life Project
MeSH terms
Problem Behavior, School Teachers, Child, Child Behavior, Psychology, Child, Child, Preschool, Emotions, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Mothers, Sex Factors, Social Adjustment, Temperament, Parenting

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review