Understanding family processes important for children's mental health and well-being

Parent-child relationships are arguably the most salient early experiences for children’s behavioural and emotional adjustment (Maccoby, 2015), and as such are broadly seen as a key mechanism for children's behavioural change (World Health Organisation, 2009).

However, the majority of research uses one child per family, despite increasing recognition that parent-child relationships can vary within families ways important for children's adjustment (Oliver, 2015; Oliver & Pike, 2017). Moreover, the role of sibling relationships is largely overlooked.

This talk will consider children's differential experiences of parent-child and sibling-child relationships, and their importance for children's behavioural adjustment.