Abstract:
Anxiety and depression symptoms in the early childhood have been investigated extensively in current times. Studies have point out that these symptoms have a multifactorial nature, with environment factors, such as the characteristics of the familiar functioning, as the researchers’ target. Therefore, this study evaluated the correlation and the predictive power of parenting and co-parenting factors on clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression in the children. The participants, 50 individuals who lived in cohabitation with their partners and that had at least one child aged between 7 and 11 years old, filled in a form composed of six scales; which evaluated the parenting, the coparenting, and the offspring symptomatology. The results revealed low and moderate correlations between the parenting and coparenting variables and the emotional and behavioral symptoms of the children. The coparental familiar conflict and the behavior monitoring were predictors of 16% of the generalized anxiety symptom in the offspring, and the familiar triangulation of 17% of the depression symptoms. It shows, as the literature suggests, that the children are vulnerable to the quality of the functioning of the parental and coparental subsystems.
Keywords:
Coparenting; Parenting; Children; Depression; Anxiety