The Executive Subsystem in Middle Childhood: Adult Mental Health, Marital Satisfaction, and Secure‐Base Parenting

Objective To explore interrelations among individual and dyadic levels of the family's executive subsystem among parents with children in middle childhood. Background A robust literature documents links between parental mental health and marital satisfaction, and associations of both with parent–child relationships. Substantially less is known about how executive subsystem processes of mothers and fathers mutually influence one another in middle childhood. Method This community sample comprised married, two‐parent families with at least one child aged 8 to 11 years. All parents completed measures of psychological symptoms, marital satisfaction, and parenting behaviors that provide a secure attachment base for older children. Dyadic data analysis tested spillover, compensatory, and crossover effects. Results Results indicated that both individual and spousal self‐ratings of mental health and marital satisfaction were related to parents' reported secure‐base provision, directly or in interaction with the spouse's ratings (or both). Within and cross‐person moderation by marital satisfaction emerged in associations between mental health and secure‐base provision. Conclusion Findings support the spillover , compensatory , and crossover hypotheses and add to the literature on the executive subsystem and secure‐base parenting during middle childhood. Implications Results lend support to systemic conceptualizations of interdependence in families to guide future research and can inform therapeutic intervention targeting the executive subsystem processes.