PERC Seminar: Family processes and children’s psychological adjustment

Conduct problems -- a range of childhood oppositional and disruptive behaviours -- confer risk for short- and long-term psychological, social, academic and other difficulties, and, at their extreme, are the primary predictor of long-term mental health difficulties. Parent-child relationships are arguably the most salient early experiences for children’s behavioural and emotional adjustment, and as such are broadly seen as a key mechanism for children's behavioural change (World Health Organisation, 2009). However, the majority of basic and intervention research uses one child per family, despite increasing recognition that parent-child relationships can vary within families ways important for children's adjustment. This talk will consider parent-child and sibling-child relationships, and their importance for children's behavioural adjustment.