C D M H

Project Title:	Children's Social Relationship Project
Principal Investigator:	Brenda Volling
Contact Person and Information:
Brenda Volling Univeristy of Michigan Department of Psychology 525 E. University Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109 (734) 764-7379 volling@umich.edu
STUDY AIMS:
The study was designed to examine: (1) marital quality, infant temperament, and parent co-regulation as correlates of infant-mother and infant-father attachment at the end of the first year; (2) differences and similarities in dyadic regulation between mother-infant and father-infant interaction; (3) predicting children's emotion regulation and emotion understanding at 16 months from early attachment relationships and family interaction; and (4) predicting 4-year-old children's sibling and friend relationship quality, as well as emotion regulation, from early family interaction patterns at 1 year.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INITIAL SAMPLE:
Selection criteria:
Maritally-intact families with a 12-month-old infant and another child between the ages of 2 and 6 years.
Sample characteristics:
Gender:		50% females
Ethnicity:		93% white
Socioeconomic Status:		Middle class

Currently Funded Waves:

COMPLETED WAVES:
Wave	Age of Subjects	N:
1	12 months	62
2	13 months	62
3	16 months	62
Currently Funded Waves:
4	4 years	57
Future Planned Waves:
None planned

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES:
Infancy

MEASURES
Personal:
	Personality:	Infant/child temperament Children's emotion understanding Children's emotion regulation
	Symptoms and Syndromes:	Screening level of depression symptomatology, Depression symptomatology, anxiety, emotional functioning, distress, likelihood for meeting diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Episode (MDE)
Social
	Family:	Reemployment quality (hours working per week, wage rate, fringe benefits, job satisfaction) financial strain, low level of social skills
	Stresses and Supports:	Social support
	Peers:	Quality of preschool children's friendships and sibling relationships
REPRESENTATIVE FINDINGS:
1) Sibling jealousy in early childhood can be measured in a laboratory-based paradigm. There are developmental differences in how younger and older children cope with sibling jealousy. Temperament is a strong predictor of the younger sibling's jealousy whereas emotion understanding was a better predictor of the older sibling's jealousy. Positive marital relationships were associated with less sibling jealousy by older siblings. 2) Family patterns of differential parental treatment are related to sibling relationship quality and older children's emotion regulation such that father's role as a disciplinarian with the older sibling after the transition to siblinghood is related to better emotional adjustment for the older sibling and better sibling relationship outcomes (i.e., more positive involvement and less conflict).
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:
Volling, B. L., McElwain, N. L., & Miller, A. L. (in press). Emotion regulation in context: The jealousy complex between young siblings and its relations with child and family characteristics. Child Development. Volling, B. L. (2001). Early attachment relationships as predictors of preschool children's emotion regulation with a distressed sibling. Early Education and Child Development,12, 185-207. Miller, A., Volling, B. L., & McElwain, N. L. (2000). Sibling jealousy in a triadic context with mothers and fathers. Social Development, 9, 433-457. McElwain, N. L., & Volling, B. L. (1999). Depressed mood and marital conflict: Relations to maternal and paternal intrusiveness with one-year-old infants. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 20, 63-83. Volling, B. L., & Elins, J. (1998). Family relationships and children's emotional adjustment as correlates of maternal and paternal differential treatment: A replication with toddler and preschool siblings. Child Development, 69, 1640-1656.

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