The Executive Subsystem in Middle Childhood: Adult Mental Health, Marital Satisfaction, and Secure-Base Parenting

Objective To explore interrelations among individual and dyadic levels of the family's executive subsystem among parents with children in middle childhood. Background A robust literature documents links between parental mental health and marital satisfaction, and associations of both with parent-child relationships. Substantially less is known about how executive subsystem processes of mothers and fathers mutually influence one another in middle childhood. Method This community sample comprised married, two-parent families with at least one child aged 8 to 11 years. All parents completed measures of psychological symptoms, marital satisfaction, and parenting behaviors that provide a secure attachment base for older children. Dyadic data analysis tested spillover, compensatory, and crossover effects. Results Results indicated that both individual and spousal self-ratings of mental health and marital satisfaction were related to parents' reported secure-base provision, directly or in interaction with the spouse's ratings (or both). Within and cross-person moderation by marital satisfaction emerged in associations between mental health and secure-base provision. Conclusion Findings support the spillover, compensatory, and crossover hypotheses and add to the literature on the executive subsystem and secure-base parenting during middle childhood. Implications Results lend support to systemic conceptualizations of interdependence in families to guide future research and can inform therapeutic intervention targeting the executive subsystem processes.