This study examined variations in the relationships among child characteristics, parenting stress, and parental involvement. Participants were 100 two‐parent families with preschool‐aged children. Self‐report and interview data were collected to measure parental involvement, as well as perceptions of child temperament and parental stress. Analyses revealed significant, yet somewhat different, associations between child temperament and parental stress for mothers and fathers. More significant associations were found between perceptions of child temperament and involvement for fathers than for mothers. The associations between child temperament and parental stress and involvement differed on the basis of child and parent gender. Results are discussed in terms of future research on father involvement, as well as programs designed to encourage fathers to assume more active parental roles.

This study examined how aspects of triadic-level family interaction relate to preschoolers' externalizing behavior problems. The quality of coparenting, family affective processes, and family structure was assessed at 3 years, and mothers, fathers, and teachers reported on children's externalizing behavior problems at 4 years. High levels of supportive coparenting and more adaptive family structures were associated with fewer externalizing behavior problems, whereas high levels of undermining coparenting and negative affect and less adaptive family structures were associated with more externalizing behavior problems. Moreover, the quality of family affectivity and family structure interacted with coparenting and appeared to influence its effects on the family. This study highlights the importance of focusing on triadic, family-level variables for understanding children's behavior problems.Family systems theory considers the family to be more than just the sum of its parts. It is an organized whole that has stable interaction patterns of its own, which are related to and yet distinct from the interaction patterns of the dyads and other subsystems that compose the family. In turn, although dyadic and other subsystem relationships within the family can be described individually, they can never be completely understood separate from the overarching qualities of the family whole (Cox & Paley, 1997;P. Minuchin, 1988).Although much past research on family relationships focused on dyadic relationships or whole-family functioning in clinical samples, recently there has been an emerging interest in broader levels of the family system (e.g., triadic family processes and family organization), their associations with well-researched dyadic relationships (e.g., marital, parent-child), and the implications of the quality of family relationships for child functioning in nonclinical samples (P.

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