Abstract
Objective: Most child development research has focused on the mother-child dyad, with little research on whole-family processes or the father-child dyad. There is little is known about the development of prosocial behaviour in toddlers with high externalising behaviour. Findings on this could help to inform intervention work. This pilot study sought to investigate the association between parental overreactive discipline, supportive and undermining coparenting and prosocial behaviour in toddlers with high externalising behaviours. Mothers’ and fathers’ influences were explored separately, to allow comparison. This pilot study also sought to evaluate the appropriateness of the observational coding training and measures used. Design: This pilot study employed a within-groups, cross-sectional design. Participants: The participants were 49 heterosexual parent couples (approximately 70% from a White ethnic group) and their child displaying high externalising behaviour (average age: 21.92 months). Results: The relationships found were mostly non-significant and small. The exploratory findings indicated that maternal discipline and undermining coparenting were associated with prosociality increases, that coparenting predicted prosociality better than discipline and some differences between parents’ socialisation factors. More effects were found for mothers than for fathers. Difficulties were identified with coding training, as well as limitations to the measures’ psychometric properties. Conclusions: The exploratory findings were small and mostly non-significant but some were found in the directions predicted by the hypotheses. Benefits of replicating this work in a larger study include drawing more conclusive theoretical inferences, determining whether parents contribute differently to child prosocial behaviour, and informing clinical practice and intervention design for children with high externalising behaviours. Future work could continue to compare parents’ contributions whilst investigating the influence of whole-family processes and could investigate additional dynamics including from multiple, different subsystems. Several methodological refinements were identified including to help address limitations of the coding training and the measures used.