Unique effects of socioeconomic and emotional parental challenges on children's executive functions

Socioeconomic disparities undermine the development of children's executive functions (EF), whereas links between parental emotional challenges and EFs have been understudied. In an ethnically-diverse sample of 102 kindergarteners (M age = 5.61 years), linear and quadratic associations emerged between two types of parental challenges and direct assessments of children's EFs. Consistent with previous research, exposure to socioeconomic challenges was associated with lower levels of children's EFs. In contrast, the optimal levels of emotional challenge exposure differed depending on the affective nature of the EFs. Emotional challenges were linked to cool and assessor-rated EFs in a non-linear, inverted U-shaped fashion, whereas hot EFs linearly increased with exposure to emotional challenges. Corroborating the notion of a “steeling effect,” mild-to-moderate parental emotional challenges were related to better EFs in a community sample.