Pathways to Problem Behaviors: Chaotic Homes, Parent and Child Effortful Control, and Parenting Carlos Valiente, Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant and Mark Reiser, Arizona State University Abstract Guided by Belsky’s and Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad’s heuristic models, we tested a process model with hypothesized paths from parents’ effortful control (EC) and family chaos to indices of parenting to children’s EC, and finally children’s externalizing problem behavior. Parents reported on all constructs and children (N = 188; M age = 9.55 years) reported on their EC and externalizing problem behaviors. Consistent with expectations, parents’ EC promoted their positive (and inhibited negative) reactions to children’s negative emotions. In addition, high levels of family chaos predicted low levels of parental positive reactions to children’s emotion. Children’s EC was predicted by high levels of positive re- actions and low levels of negative reactions. As expected, children’s externalizing problem behaviors were negatively related to their EC. Results clarify possible family processes by which children’s EC is enhanced and problem behaviors are reduced. Keywords: parenting, effortful control, externalizing problem behavior The socialization of children’s emotion expression, effortful control (EC) and social functioning is a focal topic for researchers and theorists. As a consequence, numerous articles have been published on the putative impact of the family environment or parents’ behaviors on children’s emotions and problem behaviors (see Bornstein, 2002 for a review). However, few studies have elucidated processes by which these con- structs are linked. For example, what is a plausible mechanism accounting for the association between the home environment and child behavior? This gap in the litera- ture persists despite Belsky’s (1984) discussion of the importance of examining deter- minants of parenting and other (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998) discussions of processes that might explain both parenting and relations between parenting and children’s problem behaviors. The goal of this study was to test a process whereby Correspondence should be addressed to Carlos Valiente, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University,Tempe AZ, 85287-3701. Email: valiente@asu.edu doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00383.x © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.