Children's coping strategies and coping efficacy: relations to parent socialization, child adjustment, and familial alcoholism

Dev Psychopathol. 2006 Spring;18(2):445-69. doi: 10.1017/S095457940606024X.

Abstract

The relations of children's coping strategies and coping efficacy to parent socialization and child adjustment were examined in a sample of school-age children that included families in which some of the grandparents and/or parents had an alcoholism diagnosis. Parents and older children reported on the children's coping strategies; parents reported on their parenting behavior; and teachers reported on children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Measures of parent socialization were associated with parents' and children's reports of active coping strategies and parents' reports of both support-seeking coping and coping efficacy. Some of these relations were moderated by familial alcohol status. Children higher in parent-reported active/support-seeking coping and coping efficacy were rated lower in teacher-reported externalizing and internalizing adjustment problems. The findings were consistent with the view that active/support-seeking coping and coping efficacy mediated the association of parent socialization to children's psychological adjustment and that this relation was sometimes moderated by parental alcohol status.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Adaptation, Psychological*
  • Alcoholism / psychology*
  • Avoidance Learning
  • Child
  • Family
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Mother-Child Relations
  • Parent-Child Relations*
  • Psychology, Child*
  • Social Adjustment
  • Social Support
  • Socialization*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires