Explicating Child-Driven Patterns of Parent-Child Responsivity in Fragile Families: A Longitudinal Approach.

It has been well-established that development occurs in the context of a transactional framework, with bidirectional parent-child interactions influencing both proximal and distal outcomes. In particular, child vocabulary development is sensitive to parenting qualities including warmth, sensitivity, and control as well as parental stimulation including language input and access to learning enrichment activities. Similarly, these parenting qualities are influenced by and influence children's development of pro-social behaviors. Given the foundational role of both language and pro-social skills for academic achievement and the establishment of healthy relationships across the lifespan, a comprehensive understanding of the magnitude, stability, and reciprocity of such interactions across childhood has the potential to better inform early intervention and prevention practices and highlight risk and resilience factors. This study investigated the concurrent and successive transactional relationships between child pro-social behavior, child emergent language, and parenting qualities within a large, longitudinal sample. This study utilized Waves 3, 4, and 5 of the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study (FFCWBS), corresponding to focal child age 3, 5, and 9 years, respectively. A series of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with full-information likelihood (FIML) estimation (