Relationships with parents and peers are crucial for children's socialization, but how parent–child and peer relationships mutually affect each other is not well understood. Guided by spillover theory, we zoomed in on the bidirectional interplay between parental rejection and warmth on the one hand and peer victimization on the other, and examined whether children's maladjustment symptoms mediated hypothesized cross-domain spillover effects. Data stem from five waves of the longitudinal KiVa study among 9,770 children (50% boys; mean age = 9.16, standard deviation = 1.29). Results from random intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that higher parental rejection and lower parental warmth predicted increases in peer victimization and vice versa across waves, thus supporting the bidirectional model. Moreover, spillover from parent–child rejection and warmth to peer victimization was partially driven by children's depressive symptoms and bullying perpetration. Vice versa, spillover from peer victimization to parent–child rejection and warmth was partially driven by children's social anxiety, depressive symptoms, conduct problems, and bullying perpetration. Thus, children might get caught in persistent problems in two important social domains, and these two domains influence each other through children's maladjustment. Family and school interventions should be integrated to prevent a downwards spiral.

Children placed in permanent care often display a range of challenging behaviours that can affect the quality of carer-child relationships. The current study examined the relationship between children's emotional and behavioural difficulties and the quality of carer-child relationships in permanent care (N = 46). Permanent carers of children ages 3 to 12 completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1999) and Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS; Pianta, 1992). Results indicated that child emotional and behavioural difficulties were related to carer-child relationships. The SDQ scales Conduct Problems and Pro-Social Behaviour were the strongest predictors of relationship quality. The findings of the study suggest that fewer conduct problems and more pro-social behaviour is important for positive carer-child relationships.

A 20-event, 7-point scale on the stressfulness of selected unpleasant experiences was administered to 364 children in Grades 4 to 6 in an American intermediate school. Independently, a parallel questionnaire was given to their parents to indicate (a) how upsetting they would find each event themselves, (b) what they estimate their own children's ratings to be, and (c) whether they think their children have actually experienced each event. The parent-child agreements among the 239 responding pairs were quite close on (1) the scale values (the median upsettingness ratings) with an r of .96, (2) the discriminal dispersions (the interquartile ranges of ratings) with an r of .79, and (3) the incidences with an r of .96. The striking contrasts with the earlier comparisons with professional judgements invite a reassessment of parents as dependable observer-reporters.