Children’s Social Withdrawal Moderates the Associations Between Parenting Styles and the Children’s Socioemotional Development

Background: Social withdrawal in early childhood is a risk factor for later socioemotional difficulties. This study examined the joint effects of children’s social withdrawal and mothers’ and fathers’ parenting styles on children’s socioemotional development. Based on diatheses-stress, vantage sensitivity, and differential susceptibility models, socially withdrawn children were assumed to be more prone to parental influences than others. Methods: Teachers rated 314 children on prosocial skills, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors at three points in time between grades 1–3. Mothers (n = 279) and fathers (n = 182) filled in questionnaires measuring their affection, and their behavioral and psychological control at the same points in time. Teacher reports on children’s level of social withdrawal were obtained at the end of kindergarten. Results: Panel analysis showed that particularly those children who showed signs of social withdrawal were vulnerable to the negative effects of low maternal affection in terms of externalizing behavior. Moreover, among these children, mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control predicted high levels of internalizing problem but, at the same time, mothers’ psychological control predicted also a high level of prosocial behavior and low levels of externalizing problem. Conclusions: The results supported the diathesis–stress model more than the differential susceptibility model. For example, socially withdrawn children were found to be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of low maternal affection. Although maternal psychological control had positive effects on the prosocial skills of socially withdrawn children, and reduced the amount of externalizing problems, it was at the same time associated with an increase in their internalizing problems. In this way, socially withdrawn children seem to be at risk of pleasing their mothers at the cost of their own well-being. unhappy, down-hearted or fearful), and prosocial skills (five items; e.g. Is considerate of other people’s feelings) – were utilized. Mean scores for these subscales were calculated at each of the three time points. The Cronbach’s a at each time point ranged from . 77 to . 81 for externalizing problems, and from . 73 to . 75 for internalizing problems, but remained static at . 85 for prosocial skills. This study aimed to examine the joint effects of children’s social withdrawal and the parenting styles of both their mothers and fathers on their socioemotional development during the first years of elementary school. The results revealed that children showing a relatively high level of social withdrawal were more vulnerable than other children to the negative effects of low maternal affection with respect to externalizing problem behavior. Moreover, although maternal psychological control had positive effect on socially withdrawn children in terms of increased prosocial skills and decreased externalizing problems, these positive changes associated with psychological control did not come without a cost: while the visible behavior of children evidencing social withdrawal behavior improved, their internal-izing problem behavior increased.