Breaking Down the Coercive Cycle: How Parent and Child Risk Factors Influence Real-Time Variability in Parental Responses to Child Misbehavior

OBJECTIVE: Parent-child coercive cycles have been associated with both rigidity and inconsistency in parenting behavior. To explain these mixed findings, we examined real-time variability in maternal responses to children's off-task behavior to determine whether this common trigger of the coercive cycle (responding to child misbehavior) is associated with rigidity or inconsistency in parenting. We also examined the effects of risk factors for …