The interplay between family routines and aggressive parenting in predicting externalizing problems during the transition to primary school

Abstract

The transition to primary school is a critical period when individual differences in children's behavioral adjustment become increasingly evident and predict long-term academic and psychosocial outcomes. This study sought to understand the interplay between two aspects of family functioning-family routines and aggressive parenting behaviors-in predicting children's externalizing problems from preschool to the first grade and to test whether at-risk patterns of the two factors were related to lower parental cognitive flexibility. Based on three waves of data from a prospective longitudinal study of rural families in the United States (N = 999), results of mixed-effect models suggested that children from households with higher levels of routines were reported by parents as showing lower levels of behavior problems, but such between-person associations were weakened if parents engaged in more aggressive parenting behaviors. Aggressive parenting also moderated within-person associations between family routines and parent-reported child attention problems, such that the risk for increasing attention deficit and hyperactive disorder symptoms at waves of relatively lower routines was exacerbated when parents were concurrently engaging in more aggressive parenting. Parents with better cognitive flexibility, which supports the ability to shift across and effectively manage various demands, were less likely to engage in aggressive parenting behaviors while maintaining more stable family routines. The findings highlight the benefits of maintaining a structured and organized, yet not harshly reactive, home environment for mitigating the risk of externalizing problems during the transition to school. Attention is also warranted to parental cognitive skills that may help sustain such contexts and thus support children's behavioral adjustment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).