“Timescales, Timing, Dosage, and Both Parents: A Multi-Informant, Multi-Study Investigation of Intergenerational Psychopathology Transmission”

This study examines day-to-day emotional dynamics between Chinese parents and adolescents using a 21-day daily diary design and dynamic structural equation modeling. Analyzing 113 father–adolescent and 132 mother–adolescent dyads, the authors separate within- and between-family emotional processes. Results show that, at the within-family level, maternal anxiety and negative affect predict adolescents’ next-day symptoms, whereas no such effects emerge for fathers. Contemporaneous cofluctuations appear only in mother–adolescent dyads. Effects are highly heterogeneous across families, and hypothesized parenting mediators are unsupported. Findings suggest that intergenerational transmission operates at micro timescales and is stronger for mothers.