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Family Influences on Children’s Mental and Physical Health: Some Contributions of and Challenges to the Emotional Security Theory

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Families and Child Health

Part of the book series: National Symposium on Family Issues ((NSFI))

  • 1998 Accesses

Abstract

In their chapter, Family Discord and Child Health: An Emotional Security Formulation, Davies, Sturge-Apple, and Martin (Chap. 5) link children’s mental health outcomes to emotional and communication patterns expressed between parents. In this chapter, we discuss, from a clinical/interventionist perspective, several unique contributions made by emotion security theory that help to explain the impact family discord has on children’s mental health. We then place this theory within a broader context of research on child health outcomes and discuss some challenges for this theory by exploring the role of compensatory parent influences, differential susceptibility to risk exposure in children, socioemotional development, bidirectional parent–child influences, and extrafamilial influences on children’s mental health. In discussing these challenges, we consider findings from research on factors that influence unintentional childhood injury risk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Barbara A. Morrongiello Ph.D. & Michael Corbett M.A.

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  1. Barbara A. Morrongiello Ph.D.
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  2. Michael Corbett M.A.
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Correspondence to Barbara A. Morrongiello Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Nancy S. Landale , Susan M. McHale  & Alan Booth ,  & 

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Morrongiello, B.A., Corbett, M. (2013). Family Influences on Children’s Mental and Physical Health: Some Contributions of and Challenges to the Emotional Security Theory. In: Landale, N., McHale, S., Booth, A. (eds) Families and Child Health. National Symposium on Family Issues. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6194-4_6

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