There's no one right way to raise a child, but different patterns of parenting are associated with how kids behave. A new study, published on September 30, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One, identified data-driven profiles of parenting practices and investigated how these relate to children's behavioral and emotional problems, generally grouped into internalizing behaviors (e.g., withdrawal, anxiety, depression) and externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, oppositional behavior, attention problems). The research team led by Dr. Xiaoye Xu, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at SUNY Cortland, US, found that several parenting factors, including low supervision and inconsistent discipline, were linked to a higher likelihood that children would exhibit these behaviors.
The researchers assessed these behaviors in more than 2,700 children between the ages of five and 18, using data assembled by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Parents filled out surveys about their approach to parenting and their children's behavior.
Across these responses, the researchers identified three parenting profiles. The first was high positive parenting with better supervision — the term "positive parenting" describes warm, responsive caregiving, such as praising good behavior and engaging supportively with the child. The other two profiles were lower positive parenting with medium supervision, and medium positive parenting with poorer supervision. While these profiles do not represent the full spectrum of parenting approaches, this range let the researchers analyze the effects of positive parenting and level of supervision together.
Externalizing and internalizing behaviors were lowest among children raised with high positive parenting and better supervision. These behaviors were more common in the lower positive parenting with medium supervision profile, and highest among children in the medium positive parenting with poorer supervision profile.
Separately, the researchers also examined each parenting behavior individually rather than as part of a broader profile. This analysis showed that inconsistent discipline — how unpredictably parents enforced rules — was linked to both more internalizing and more externalizing problems, regardless of a family's broader parenting profile. Poor supervision, examined this way, was linked to more externalizing problems specifically, such as aggression and attention difficulties, but was not significantly linked to internalizing problems like anxiety and depression.
The results of this study do not give a full picture of a child's rearing and its possible influences. The data are based on self-report — mostly mothers filled out the survey, with only 52 fathers participating, and other family or community members involved in the child's rearing were not included. The researchers also only had a snapshot of the current parent-child relationship, which makes it difficult to establish cause and effect, as both parenting tactics and child behavior can develop and change in response to one another.
The authors add: "In a large, diverse sample of children across the US, we found that certain patterns of parenting – not just individual behaviors – matter for children's emotional and behavioral wellbeing. Children tended to have fewer emotional and behavioral problems when parents were consistently positive, provided steady discipline, and stayed closely engaged in their day-to-day lives. It's a reminder that small, everyday parenting behaviors can add up to meaningful differences for children."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4rdE7OQ
Citation: Xu X, Shuffrey LC, Leve LD, Sullivan ADW, Towe-Goodman N, Swingler MM, et al. (2026) Parenting profiles and dimensions in relation to children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in the ECHO program. PLoS One 21(9): e0356078. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0356078
Author countries: USA.
Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, under Award Numbers U2COD023375 (Coordinating Center), U24OD023382 (Data Analysis Center), U24OD023319 with co-funding from the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (Measurement Core), U24OD035523 (Lab Core), ES0266542 (HHEAR), U24ES026539 (HHEAR Barbara O'Brien), U2CES026533 (HHEAR Lisa Peterson), U2CES026542 (HHEAR Patrick Parsons, Kannan Kurunthacalam), U2CES030859 (HHEAR Manish Arora), U2CES030857 (HHEAR Timothy R. Fennell, Susan J. Sumner, Xiuxia Du), U2CES026555 (HHEAR Susan L. Teitelbaum), U2CES026561 (HHEAR Robert O. Wright), U2CES030851 (HHEAR Heather M. Stapleton, P. Lee Ferguson), UG3/UH3OD023251 (Akram Alshawabkeh), UH3OD023320 and UG3OD035546 (Judy Aschner), UH3OD023332 (Clancy Blair, Leonardo Trasande), UG3/UH3OD023253 (Carlos Camargo), UG3/UH3OD023248 and UG3OD035526 (Dana Dabelea), UG3/UH3OD023313 (Daphne Koinis Mitchell), UH3OD023328 (Cristiane Duarte), UH3OD023318 (Anne Dunlop), UG3/UH3OD023279 (Amy Elliott), UG3/UH3OD023289 (Assiamira Ferrara), UG3/UH3OD023282 (James Gern), UH3OD023287 (Carrie Breton), UG3/UH3OD023365 (Irva Hertz-Picciotto), UG3/UH3OD023244 (Alison Hipwell), UG3/UH3OD023275 (Margaret Karagas), UH3OD023271 and UG3OD035528 (Catherine Karr), UH3OD023347 (Barry Lester), UG3/UH3OD023389 (Leslie Leve), UG3/UH3OD023344 (Debra MacKenzie), UH3OD023268 (Scott Weiss), UG3/UH3OD023288 (Cynthia McEvoy), UG3/UH3OD023342 (Kristen Lyall), UG3/UH3OD023349 (Thomas O'Connor), UH3OD023286 and UG3OD035533 (Emily Oken), UG3/UH3OD023348 (Mike O'Shea), UG3/UH3OD023285 (Jean Kerver), UG3/UH3OD023290 (Julie Herbstman), UG3/UH3OD023272 (Susan Schantz), UG3/UH3OD023249 (Joseph Stanford), UG3/UH3OD023305 (Leonardo Trasande), UG3/UH3OD023337 (Rosalind Wright), UG3OD035508 (Sheela Sathyanarayana), UG3OD035509 (Anne Marie Singh), UG3OD035513 and UG3OD035532 (Annemarie Stroustrup), UG3OD035516 and UG3OD035517 (Tina Hartert), UG3OD035518 (Jennifer Straughen), UG3OD035519 (Qi Zhao), UG3OD035521 (Katherine Rivera-Spoljaric), UG3OD035527 (Emily S Barrett), UG3OD035540 (Monique Marie Hedderson), UG3OD035543 (Kelly J Hunt), UG3OD035537 (Sunni L Mumford), UG3OD035529 (Hong-Ngoc Nguyen), UG3OD035542 (Hudson Santos), UG3OD035550 (Rebecca Schmidt), UG3OD035536 (Jonathan Slaughter), UG3OD035544 (Kristina Whitworth). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The sponsor, NIH, participated in the overall design and implementation of the ECHO Program, which was funded as a cooperative agreement between NIH and grant awardees. The sponsor approved the Steering Committee-developed ECHO protocol and its amendments including COVID-19 measures. The sponsor had no access to the central database, which was housed at the ECHO Data Analysis Center. Data management and site monitoring were performed by the ECHO Data Analysis Center and Coordinating Center. All analyses for scientific publication were performed by the study statistician, independently of the sponsor. The lead author wrote all drafts of the manuscript and made revisions based on co-authors and the ECHO Publication Committee (a subcommittee of the ECHO Operations Committee) feedback without input from the sponsor. The study sponsor did not review or approve the manuscript for submission to the journal.
