Background Children of mothers with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at increased risk for developmental problems. However, the mechanisms through which a mother's experience of ACEs are transmitted to her offspring are understudied. The current study investigates potential modifiable mediators (maternal psychopathology and parenting) of the association between maternal ACEs and children's behavioral problems. Methods We utilized data from a pregnancy cohort study (N = 1030; CANDLE study) to investigate longitudinal associations between maternal ACEs, postpartum anxiety, observed parenting behavior, and child internalizing behaviors (meanage = 4.31 years, s.d. age = 0.38) in a racially diverse (67% Black; 33% White/Other) sample. We used structural equation modeling to test for direct associations between maternal ACEs and children's internalizing behaviors, as well as indirect associations via two simple mediations (maternal anxiety and parenting), and one serial mediation (sequence of maternal anxiety to parenting). Results Simple mediation results indicated that maternal anxiety and cognitive growth fostering behaviors independently mediated the association between maternal ACEs and child internalizing. We observed no evidence of a serial mediation from ACEs to internalizing via the effects of maternal anxiety on parenting. Conclusions This study supports and refines extant literature by confirming the intergenerational association between maternal ACEs and child internalizing behaviors in a large, diverse sample, and identifies potential modifiable mediators: maternal anxiety and parenting behaviors related to fostering cognitive development. Findings may inform interventions targeting mothers who have experienced ACEs and suggest that providing support around specific parenting behaviors and addressing maternal anxiety may reduce internalizing behaviors in children.

Parenting practices play a major role in socializing children's developing regulatory abilities, but less is known about how parents' regulatory abilities relate to children's healthy functioning. This study examined whether parents' physiological and emotion regulation abilities corresponded to children's physiological and emotional responding to a structured laboratory-based disappointment task. Ninety-seven 3- to 7-year-olds (56 girls; M = 5.79 years) and one parent participated in a multi-method assessment of parents' and children's regulatory functioning. Direct (coaching children to use reappraisal) and indirect (resting physiology, dispositional use of reappraisal) aspects of parents' regulatory abilities were assessed. As expected, an adaptive pattern of parent regulatory abilities composed of higher resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia, use of reappraisal, and coaching reappraisal was associated with children's physiological reactivity after a disappointment indicative of more effective physiological calming in a recovery context (increased parasympathetic activation). In contrast, parents' regulatory abilities did not relate to changes in children's expressions of emotional distress.

ObjectiveExperiences of stress and adversity, such as intimate partner violence, confer risk for psychiatric problems across the life span. The effects of these risks are disproportionately borne by women and their offspring—particularly those from communities of color. The prenatal period is an especially vulnerable period of fetal development, during which time women's experiences of stress can have long-lasting implications for offspring mental health. Importantly, there is a lack of focus on women's capacity for resilience and potential postnatal protective factors that might mitigate these intergenerational risks and inform intervention efforts. The present study examined intergenerational associations between women's prenatal stressors and child executive functioning and externalizing problems, testing maternal parenting quality and child sex as moderators, using a large, prospective, sociodemographically diverse cohort.MethodsWe used data from 1,034 mother-child dyads (64% Black, 30% White) from the Conditions Affecting Neurocognitive Development and Learning in Early Childhood (CANDLE) pregnancy cohort within the ECHO PATHWAYS consortium. Women's prenatal stressors included stressful life events (pSLE) and intimate partner violence (pIPV). Measures of child psychopathology at age 4–6 included executive functioning and externalizing problems. Parenting behaviors were assessed by trained observers, averaged across two sessions of mother-child interactions. Linear regression models were used to estimate associations between women's prenatal stressors and child psychopathology, adjusting for confounders and assessing moderation effects by maternal parenting quality and child sex.ResultsWomen's exposures to pSLE and pIPV were independently associated with child executive functioning problems and externalizing problems in fully-adjusted models. Maternal parenting quality moderated associations between pSLE and both outcomes, such that higher parenting quality was protective for the associations between women's pSLE and child executive functioning and externalizing problems. No moderation by child sex was found.DiscussionFindings from this large, sociodemographically diverse cohort suggest women's exposures to interpersonal violence and major stressful events—common for women during pregnancy—may prenatally program her child's executive functioning and externalizing problems. Women's capacity to provide high quality parenting can buffer this intergenerational risk. Implications for universal and targeted prevention and early intervention efforts to support women's and children's wellbeing are discussed.

Parents and children mutually influence each other's behavior, but little work has examined how parent-child dyads influence one another's physiological responding under conditions of emotional challenge. This is important to examine because physiological substrates underlie the development of self-regulation. We examined this in 97 parent-child dyads who participated in a frustrating laboratory challenge that first perturbed the affective state of the dyad and then allowed recalibration. Children were between 3 and 7 years of age (M = 5.80 years, SD = 1.25 years; 41 boys). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP) were assessed con-

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