Day-to-Day Dynamic Coupling of Affective Symptomatology in Chinese Mother-Adolescent and Father-Adolescent Dyads

Recent multi-informant family studies separating within- and between-family variances suggest that, on macro timescales (e.g., yearly), familial symptomatology clustering mainly occurs at the between-family level—e.g., more depressed parents have more depressed adolescents, but parents becoming more depressed than usual typically do not predict adolescents becoming more depressed than usual on the next occasion within the same family. It remains unclear, however, whether reciprocity operates on a micro timescale, with fathers rarely considered. Here, we employed a daily diary design and sampled 113 father-adolescent dyads and 132 mother-adolescent dyads. At the within-dyad level, we observed mother-related effects including adolescent-driven effect in depressive symptom coupling, mother-driven effect in negative affect coupling, and reciprocal interplays of anxiety symptoms (mothers becoming more anxious than usual one day predicted adolescents becoming more anxious the next day, and vice versa)—but no father-related effects. Using a novel design, we increased theory’s temporal resolution and interpretation clarity at the appropriate within-dyad level.