JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 1 0, 487-503 (1989) Stressful Experiences, Temperament, and Social Support: Impact on Children's Behavior Symptoms DONALD WERTLIEB Institute for Health Research, Harvard Community Health Plan and Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study, Tufts University CAROL WEIGEL Institute for Health Research, Harvard Community Health Plan MICHAEL FELDSTEIN Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health Plan A long tradition of research has documented an important set of relationships between stressful life events and mental health. Recent understandings of these rela- tionships have emphasized the importance of moderating variables such as tem- perament and social support. Most recently, developmental aspects of this rela- tionship am being explored and described with an aim of identifying stress and illness relationships over the life course of children and families. This paper is a report from a longitudinal study of stress and illness in a sample of 166 families with school-age children. Recent analyses have yielded several series of multiple regression models which document the expected relationships between stress and behavior symptoms and which, in separate models, provide evidence for both main elfects and moderating influences of temperament and social support an these relationships (Werllieb, Weigel, & Feldstein,1987; Wertlieb, Weigel, Springer, & Feldstein, 1987). To better understand the stress mediation process, this study simul- taneously considers multiple modemtars and tests the hypothesis proposed by Lemer and East (1984) that "not only does temperament moderate other intrain- dividual moderators of stress reactions, but it interacts.., with key contextual mod- emtars such as social support: (p. 158) A main-effects multiple regression model with R 2 = .32 (p < .0001) demon- ,str,~|ed the independent roles of social support and temperament in the stress- This research was supported in part by the Institute for Health Research, a joint program of Harvard Community Health Plan and Harvard University; the W.T. Grant Foundation grant #82083500; and the National Institute of Mental Health grant #MH37970, Donald Wertlieb, Prin- cipal Investigator. Other members of the research team include Annette Demby, Alexandra Harrison and Todd Holzm . We thank Janet Dowe and Rose Chiccariello for preparation of the manuscript. We are also grateful to the W.T. Grant Foundation Consortium of Researchers in Stress-Buffering Processes (CRISP). Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Donald Wertlieb, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155. 487