Temperament and parenting: implications for understanding developmental pathways to conduct disorder

This article reviews research linking a number of temperamental vulnerabilities that can place a child at risk for developing severe conduct problems. One primary focus of this article is on how certain temperamental vulnerabilities can disrupt normal developmental processes during early childhood, such as the development of emotional regulatory abilities and the development of the affective components of conscience, to place a child at risk for acting in an antisocial and aggressive manner. A second focus of the paper is on how the quality of parenting that a child experiences interacts with the child's temperament to either increase or decrease the child's risk for problem behavior. Identifying those parent factors that can enhance the development of children at risk for conduct problems due to temperamental vulnerabilities could be very important for enhancing interventions for children with severe behavior problems.