This study used data from 12 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States; N = 1,298) to understand the cross-cultural generalizability of how parental warmth and control are bidirectionally related to externalizing and internalizing behaviors from childhood to early adolescence. Mothers, fathers, and children completed measures when children were ages 8 to 13. Multiple-group autoregressive, cross-lagged structural equation models revealed that child effects rather than parent effects may better characterize how warmth and control are related to child externalizing and internalizing behaviors over time, and that parent effects may be more characteristic of relations between parental warmth and control and child externalizing and internalizing behavior during childhood than early adolescence.

Current research on stepfamily well-being often overlooks the perspective of children, and deals primarily with factors as reported by the adults involved. The authors examine a number of family role characteristics, parental subsystem characteristics, and resources that might influence how children perceive the quality of their stepfamily relationships. A sample of 1,088 children in households with a mother and stepfather, ages 10 to 16 years, in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort-Children and Young Adult Sample, is used for the analyses. Results indicate that open communication between children and their mothers, low amounts of arguing between mothers and stepfathers, along with agreement on parenting, and gender, all affect the closeness children report having with their stepfathers. Conclusions, limitations, and clinical implications are discussed.

Stepfamilies are an increasingly common family form, marked by distinct challenges, opportunities, and complex networks of dyadic relationships that can transcend single households. There exists a dearth of typological analyses by which constellations of dyadic processes in stepfamilies are analyzed holistically. Factor mixture modeling, a form of latent variable mixture modeling, is employed to identify population heterogeneity with respect to features of mother-child, stepfather-child, nonresident father-child, and stepcouple relationships using a representative sample of 1,182 adolescents in mother-stepfather families with living nonresident fathers from Wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Results favor a four-class factor-mixture solution with class-specific factor covariance matrices. Class 1 (n = 302, 25.5%), the residence-centered pattern, was marked by high-quality residential relationships. Class 2 (n = 307, 26%), the inclusive pattern, was marked by high-quality relationships across all four dyads, with an especially involved nonresident father-child relationship. Class 3 (n = 350, 29.6%), the unhappy couple pattern, was marked by very low stepcouple relationship quality. Class 4 (n = 223, 18.9%), the parent-child disconnection pattern, was marked by distant relationships between youth and all three parental figures. The residence-centered and inclusive patterns encompassed some positive correlations between dyadic relationships, whereas the unhappy couple and parent-child disconnection patterns encompassed some negative correlations between dyadic relationships. The patterns present with differences across socio-demographic and substantive covariates, and highlight important opportunities for the development of new and innovative interventions, particularly to meet the needs of stepfamilies that reflect the parent-child disconnection pattern.

Stepfamily scholars have emphasized the importance of including stepchildren in the analysis and discussion of stepfamily life. This systematic review synthesized recent research examining predictors=correlates of stepparent-child relationship quality from the viewpoint of stepchildren in the United States. Five bibliographic databases were searched, resulting in 631 potentially relevant studies for review. Manual searches of three prominent family studies journals were also conducted. Screening and eligibility assessment based on a priori inclusion criteria yielded a final sample of 23 studies, including published studies and reports found in the ''gray'' literature. Significant predictors=correlates associated with stepchildren's perceptions of stepparent-child relationship quality were grouped into the following conceptual domains: individual characteristics, family characteristics, features of (step)parent-child interactions, and stepcouple dynamics. Limitations, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Relationship satisfaction and stability are two commonly studied outcomes in marriage and family research. Majority of studies address socio demographic variability and differences across union type in these outcomes. We extend this literature by addressing how the amount of effort one puts into their relationship is associated with stability and satisfaction. Specifically, we focus on how effort impacts these measures of quality in four union types: premarital cohabitation, first marriage, post-divorce cohabitation, and second marriage following divorce. Furthermore, we make union type comparisons in the strength of effort's association with satisfaction and stability. Using data from 8,006 respondents in the Relationship Evaluation Survey, our results show that effort was strongly and positively associated with satisfaction and stability in all four unions. Although effort is more strongly associated with satisfaction in first marriage than cohabiting relationships, no union type differences in the role of effort on stability were observed. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.