TROUBLE IN THE 2ND YEAR - 3 QUESTIONS ABOUT FAMILY-INTERACTION

3 questions regarding family interaction in the second year of life ar e addressed in this report on 69 families rearing firstborn sons. Ques tion 1 concerns the identification, via cluster analysis, of families having difficulty managing their child, using codings of narrative rec ords of family interaction when children were 15 and 21 months of age. Parents in families identified as ''troubled'' at each age tried to c ontrol their toddlers most often, were least likely to rely upon contr ol-plus-guidance management strategies, had children who defied them m ost frequently, and experienced the greatest escalation of negative af fect in these control encounters. Families identified as ''troubled'' at both 15 and 21 months had children who received the highest ''exter nalizing'' problem scores at 18 months and mothers who experienced the most daily hassles during the second year. Question 2 concerns the an tecedents of ''trouble in the second year.'' Discriminant function ana lyses indicated that membership in the groups of families that appeare d troubled at both ages of measurement (n = 15), at only one age (n = 28), or never (n = 26) could be reliably predicted (hit rate = 71%) us ing a set of 9 measurements of parent personality, child emotionality/ temperament, marital quality, work-family relations, and social suppor t, suggested by Belsky's model of the determinants of parenting, and s ocial class. Question 3 concerns the proposition that extensive nonmat ernal care in the first year is a risk factor for troubled family func tioning in the second year. As hypothesized, prediction analysis showe d that families at moderate and high contextual risk (based on 10 ante cedent variables pertaining to Question 2) were significantly more lik ely to experience trouble in the second year when children experienced 20 or more hours per week of nonmaternal care in their first year, an d these results could not be attributed to ''selection effects.''