Understanding family functioning, particularly the risk and protective factors that may contribute to adaptive versus maladaptive family processes, is critical to promote child and family well-being and resilience. Guided by family systems theory and the family stress model, this study longitudinally investigated parents' and toddlers' individual-level challenges and parental internal resources as potential predictors of subsequent perceived family functioning (i.e., general family functioning and family conflict), while accounting for earlier couple functioning. First-time mothers' and fathers' reports of psychological distress, perceived child behavior problems, intrapersonal resources (i.e., coping, emotion regulation, and empathy), and couple functioning (i.e., relationship satisfaction and intimate partner violence victimization) were assessed when their child was 18 months and 4 years of age. Using autoregressive path models, results suggested that greater maternal distress and paternal perceptions of toddler behavior problems predicted later reports of perceived family dysfunction, whereas parental intrapersonal resources predicted more adaptive perceived family functioning. Overall, findings indicate mutual or bidirectional influence within the family, consistent with the family systems principle of reciprocal causality. Clinical implications are discussed, including the need to bolster parents' existing strengths as well as providing prevention and early screening of depressive symptoms among parents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

儿童和父母因素可预测母亲和父亲感知的家庭功能。


了解家庭功能，特别是可能导致适应性与适应不良家庭过程的风险和保护因素，对于促进儿童和家庭的福祉和复原力至关重要。在家庭系统理论和家庭压力模型的指导下，本研究纵向调查了父母和幼儿的个人层面的挑战和父母的内部资源，作为随后感知的家庭功能（即一般家庭功能和家庭冲突）的潜在预测因素，同时考虑了早期的夫妇运作。首次为人父母者的心理困扰、感知到的儿童行为问题、个人资源（即应对、情绪调节和同理心）和夫妻功能（即关系满意度和亲密伴侣暴力受害）的报告均在他们孩子当时18个月零4岁。使用自回归路径模型，结果表明，母亲更大的痛苦和父亲对幼儿行为问题的看法预示着后来报告的感知到的家庭功能障碍，而父母的内部资源则预示着更具适应性的感知到的家庭功能。总体而言，研究结果表明家庭内部存在相互或双向影响，符合家庭系统的相互因果关系原则。讨论了临床意义，包括需要增强父母现有的优势，以及为父母提供抑郁症状的预防和早期筛查。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。