Parenting Behaviors over Time and their Effects on Children’s and Young Adults’ Emotion Regulatory Brain Structure

Objective: Parenting behaviors significantly impact children's development, including thematuration of emotion regulation (ER) skills and associated brain regions (e.g., amygdala,hippocampus and prefrontal cortex [PFC]). Adaptive and maladaptive parenting behaviorshave been associated with ER brain structures of children/adolescents; however, longitudinalstudies of parenting behaviors with links to neural correlates remain scarce. Methods: Datafrom two cohorts are analyzed with parenting measures and neuroimaging during childhood(cohort 1; N=40) and repeated-measures parenting reports from childhood to adolescence (7-17 years of age) and neuroimaging at age 22 (cohort 2; repeated-measures report for N=1482;neuroimaging for n=134). Changes in parenting behaviors, parent-child alignment onparenting-behaviors reports at age 11, and associations between early parenting behaviors andER brain structures (volume/cortical thickness) during childhood (cohort 1) and during youngadulthood (cohort 2) were assessed using linear mixed effect models, regressions andcorrelational analyses. Results: Adaptive parenting behaviors (involvement, positiveparenting) and most maladaptive behaviors (inconsistent discipline, corporal punishment)decreased, while poor monitoring increased with children’s age. Parents’ and children’s reportsat age 11 were positively correlated. Positive parenting behaviors during childhood wereassociated with larger amygdala volume in children but smaller amygdala volume in a separate,matched young adults cohort. Corporal punishment was associated with reduced leftdorsolateral PFC thickness in children. Conclusion: In line with past evidence, adaptiveparenting behaviors were positively associated with ER brain structures, while maladaptiveparenting behaviors (i.e., corporal punishment) had opposite effects. Our findings indicate thateven in community samples variations in positive parenting matter. Supportive parentingbehaviors tend to foster healthy brain development. Such findings support the need for earlyfamily programs enabling children to thrive.