Although within- and between-family bidirectional associations between parental knowledge and children’s externalizing behavior have been theoretically proposed, studies that unravel these associations simultaneously remain scarce. This study examined these bidirectional associations within and between German families. 3611 families participated across one-year intervals between children ages 8 to 15 (50.6% boys, 34.5% fathers, 89.0% German-born, M_waves = 3.63, SD_waves = 2.00). Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) with linear slopes revealed negative between-family associations between parental knowledge and children’s externalizing behavior, and a negative association between the random linear slopes. Generally, no within-family cross-lagged effects were found, but there were some correlated slopes across families. When teasing apart paternal and maternal knowledge, father-driven but not mother-driven lagged effects of increased knowledge predicting decreased externalizing behavior were found. The findings illustrate the importance of fathers’ knowledge and new directions for within-family studies of parent-child interactions.

尽管理论上已经提出了父母知识与儿童外化行为之间的家庭内部和家庭间双向关联，但同时揭示这些关联的研究仍然很少。本研究考察了德国家庭内部和家庭之间的这些双向联系。3611 个家庭参加了 8 至 15 岁儿童的一年间隔（50.6% 男孩，34.5% 父亲，89.0% 德国出生，M_波 = 3.63，SD_波 = 2.00)。具有线性斜率的随机截距交叉滞后面板模型 (RI-CLPM) 揭示了父母知识与儿童外化行为之间的家庭间负相关，以及随机线性斜率之间的负相关。一般来说，没有发现家庭内部的交叉滞后效应，但家庭之间存在一些相关的斜率。当梳理父亲和母亲的知识时，发现了父亲驱动而非母亲驱动的知识增加预测外化行为减少的滞后效应。研究结果说明了父亲知识的重要性以及亲子互动的家庭内部研究的新方向。