Effects of Parenting Environment on Child and Adolescent Social-Emotional Brain Function

Abstract

The caregiving environment that children and adolescents experience is critically important for their social-emotional development. Parenting may affect child social-emotional outcomes through its effects in shaping the child’s developing brain. Research has begun to investigate effects of parenting on child and adolescent brain function in humans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Here we review these initial studies. These studies find associations between parenting behavior and child and adolescent functional activation in neural networks involved in emotional arousal, emotion regulation (ER), reward processing, cognitive control, and social-emotional information processing. Findings from these studies suggest that higher negative parenting and lower positive parenting are generally associated with heightened activation in emotional arousal networks in response to negative emotional stimuli in youth. Further, findings indicate that lower positive parenting is associated with higher response in reward processing networks to monetary reward in youth. Finally, findings show that lower positive parenting predicts lower activation in cognitive control networks during cognitive control tasks and less adaptive neural responses to parent-specific stimuli. Several studies found these associations to be moderated by child sex or psychopathology risk status and we discuss these moderating factors and discuss implications of findings for children’s social-emotional development.

Parenting as a topic of inquiry has attracted the attention of scientists for decades due to the powerful relationship between the parenting environment and child outcomes. Indeed, across theories of parenting, positive parenting, characterized by high levels of parent warmth, involvement, and sensitivity (e.g., Baumrind 1967) may act as a protective factor and may promote adaptive child social, emotional, and cognitive development. Positive parenting longitudinally predicts positive child social-emotional functioning, including children’s development of understanding of social interaction and prosocial behaviors, as well as positive cognitive, academic, and physical health outcomes across the developmental span (Amato and Fowler 2002; Beckwith et al. 1992; Malonda et al. 2019; Morris et al. 2017). In contrast, negative parenting, characterized by high levels of harsh or inconsistent discipline, may be considered a social stressor to children and, similar to other social stressors (e.g., neighborhood stress, peer victimization), negative parenting may lead to problems in children’s social-emotional development (e.g., development of prosocial behaviors and empathy, social reward learning) and in their cognitive and physical development (Amato and Fowler 2002; Malonda et al. 2019; Morris et al. 2017). In addition to a large number of longitudinal studies, experimental studies that randomly assign parents to parenting interventions find that changing parenting behavior experimentally can lead to changes in child social-emotional behavior (e.g., Webster-Stratton and Herman 2008). This work suggests that parenting is not merely correlated with child behavior, but plays a causal role in shaping child social-emotional development. In sum, parenting, which is itself a social context (and can be a social stressor), has been shown to play a critical role in shaping children’s social-emotional development. Further, parenting affects youth both in childhood and in adolescence. Although parent-child relationships change as youth enter adolescence, research still finds that parenting behavior during adolescence predicts adolescent outcomes (Steinberg 2001).

Despite our growing understanding of the nature of relationships between parenting and youth outcomes, the mechanisms by which parenting affects child outcomes are not yet fully understood. There are several theories of how parenting exerts its influence on children. Parenting may exert its influence by genetic transmission of psychological and other functioning, through modeling behaviors for the child that they imitate, or, as has recently gained attention, by environmental shaping of the child brain. The current review will focus on effects of the parenting environment as one important social environment that can shape child and adolescent brain development. We aim to inform future directions and clinical implications for this exciting field with important implications for prevention of adverse child outcomes. We will also describe potential moderators of effects of parenting on child brain function, since parenting may operate differently depending on child gender, child temperament, and/or socio-cultural context (Rodriguez et al. 2009).

1. Parenting and Child and Adolescent Brain Function

As described above, a large literature has documented that the parenting environment affects children and adolescents’ social, emotional, and cognitive development and their risk for negative social-emotional and health outcomes. Recently, researchers have begun to explore whether parenting affects child development through its effects on the developing brain. Understanding neural systems affected by parenting is important because it can inform our understanding of typical and atypical brain development and can lead to neurobiological targets for intervention, including parenting interventions (Tan et al. 2020). Theory, animal research (Rilling and Young, 2014), and recent research in humans suggest that parenting may influence child and adolescent brain development across several neural networks, including emotional arousal and emotion regulation (ER), reward processing, social-emotional information processing, and cognitive control-related networks.

The parenting social environment can affect child brain development in several ways. Negative parenting may act as a social stressor on the child and can lead to alterations in child brain development similar to other social environmental stressors such as poverty (Lupien et al. 2009). In contrast, positive parenting can act as a social environmental condition that promotes feelings of safety and adaptive brain development. Negative parenting may also reflect parents’ own stress reactivity or shared stressors in the family environment that may affect child brain development. Indeed, studies have found that mothers’ higher negative emotion and stress levels are associated with their adolescents’ heightened neural responses to negative emotional stimuli in emotion processing and ER regions including amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) (Turpyn et al. 2018; Niehaus et al. 2019). And studies find that parental social responses may be a critical pathway for shaping social reward learning in youth. For example, parental depression is associated with altered striatal response to reward in children and adolescents (e.g., Morgan et al. 2019).

Below we review findings from the emerging human studies of associations between negative and positive parenting behavior and child neural functional activation to negative emotional stimuli, rewarding stimuli, personalized parent-specific stimuli, and cognitive control tasks. We limited our review to studies of normative variations in parenting, as there are other reviews of child maltreatment and brain development (e.g., Teicher and Samson 2016). We also limited our review to fMRI studies of neural function since we are particularly interested in effects of parenting on patterns of neural activation. Thus, we did not review studies on parenting effects on brain structure (e.g., Whittle et al. 2014). And we did not review studies on peripheral physiology or EEG measures, although these studies find effects of parenting on youth physiological responses (e.g., Chaplin et al. 2012). For another review of parenting behaviors related to emotion socialization and brain function and structure, see Tan et al. (2020).

In addition to the above, our inclusion criteria for the present review were that studies (1) were an original empirical article; (2) included a measure of parenting collected before the child was 18; (3) examined associations between the parenting measure and youth fMRI activation or functional connectivity in a task. To find published work, we conducted a literature search using the following key terms in PubMed: (fMRI[Title/Abstract])AND (parent*[Title/Abstract] OR caregiv*[Title/Abstract] OR mother[Title/Abstract] OR father[Title/Abstract] OR paternal[Title/Abstract] OR maternal[Title/Abstract])) AND (child OR youth OR adolescent) and filtered for Journal Articles. This search yielded 332 results, which were scanned for relevant titles and abstracts. Of those 332, 25 studies met our inclusion criteria. Findings from those studies are reviewed below, organized by task type: negative emotion tasks, reward tasks (including monetary and social reward tasks), parenting-specific tasks, and cognitive control tasks.

2. Empirical Studies: Negative Emotion Tasks

Several studies have found associations between parenting and youth’s neural activation while processing negative emotional stimuli in neural networks involved in emotional arousal and emotion regulation (ER). Study information can be found in Table 1. Emotional arousal-related networks involve interconnected regions that support detecting and appraising salient stimuli and include amygdala (and other limbic regions), anterior insula, and subgenual (sg) and perigenual (pg) ACC (Lindquist et al. 2012; Menon 2011). ER-related networks include prefrontal regions such as dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC (dlPFC, vlPFC), ventromedial PFC (vmPFC)/orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and dorsal ACC (dACC), which support explicit ER (intentional down-regulation of emotion, e.g., re-appraisal) and/or implicit ER (automatic regulation of emotion, e.g., unintentionally shifting attention away from emotional stimuli) (Niendam et al. 2012; Phillips et al. 2008).

Table 1.

Summary of study characteristics and findings for parenting and child neural responses

Study	N	Age Par. Meas.	Age at MRI	Sample (Youth) Char.	Parent sexa	Par. construct	Par. Meas.	MRI task	MRI contrasts	Main finding
Negative emotion studies
Romund et al. (2016)	83	14–16	13–16	Community	1	Pos Par	Child report	Emo. Face matching	Fear > neutral faces	– Lower Pos parenting associated with higher L amygdala response (ROI)
Guyer et al. (2015)	39	7	M = 17.89	High and low behavioral inhibition (BI)	1	Neg & Pos Par	Parent report	Peer rejection	Peer rejection > acceptance	– For all youth, low pos parenting associated with higher R caudate (ROI)  – For youth with high BI, neg parenting associated with lower R vlPFC (ROI)
Butterfield et al. (2019)	120	9–14	9–14	Half with anxiety disorder	1	Pos coping socialization	Observed (P-C anxiety discussion)	View threat words	Threat words > baseline period	– In healthy youth, lower pos parenting is associated with higher L/R anterior insula & pACC. In anxious youth, lower pos parenting associated with lower L/R anterior insula & ACC (ROI)
Farber et al. (2019)	232	M = 13	M = 13	Half with relative with MDD	2	Warm family envir.	Child report	Emo. Face matching, shape matching	Angry face > shapes	– Lower pos parenting associated with lower L amygdala response (ROI)
Pozzi et al. (2020)	86	8–9	9–11	Low-income	1	Neg affect	Observed (P-C discussion)	Emo. Face matching, shape matching	Fear & angry faces > shapes	– Maternal neg affect associated with increased R amygdala response (ROI)  – For girls only, maternal neg affect associated with decreased lingual gyrus response (WB)
La Buissonniere-Ariza et al. (2019)	84	2–9	13–16	High and low anxiety	1	Neg Par	Parent report	Face paired with fear stimulus (CS+), and unpaired fair (CS−)	CS+ > CS−	– Lower neg parenting associated with deactivation in CS+ > CS− for L amygdala and L anterior hippocampus (ROI)
Gard et al. (2017)	167	2	20	Low-income, all boys	NS	Neg Par	Parent report, observed (at home)	Emo. Face matching, shape matching	Fear face > shapes; angry face > shapes	– Neg parenting associated with lower R amygdala response (ROI)
Chaplin et al. (2019)	66	12–14	12–14	Community	1	Neg Par	Observed (P-C discussion)	Neg and neutral emotional images	Neg > neutral image	– For girls, neg parenting associated with higher R sgACC & R pACC (ROI) -For boys neg parenting associated with lower L/R anterior insula, L pACC, & L dACC (ROI)
Kopala-Sibley et al. (2020) b	65	3	10–11	Community, oversampled for high neg emo and high BI	1	Neg Par	Observed (P-C interaction) & mother report	Emotional faces	Sad face> neutral face	– Neg parenting associated with more neg connectivity between amygdala and insula, operculum, and mPFC
Reward studies
Holz et al. (2018)	172	3 months	25	Community	1	Pos Par	Observed (P-C interaction)	Monetary reward (MID)	Monetary > verbal anticipation; win > no win	– For children with familial risk, low pos parenting associated with lower caudate (ROI), SMA, cingulum, and MFG (WB) to reward anticipation. For children with no risk, low pos parenting associated with higher caudate (ROI), SMA, cingulum, and MFG (WB) to reward anticipation  – For children with familial risk, low pos parenting associated with higher caudate to reward receipt (ROI), and higher caudate mediated relationship between pos parenting and youth ADHD diagnoses
Qu et al. (2015) b	24	15–17 (T1) & 16–18 (T2)	15–17 & 16–18	Community	2	Pos Par	Child report	BART	T2 cash out > T1 cash out	– Increases in pos parenting associated with decreased VS and dlPFC over time (WB)  – Increases in pos parenting associated with decreased risk taking through decreased VS over time (WB)
Chaplin et al. (2021)	71	12–14	12–14	Community	1	Pos Par	Observed (P-C discussion)	Monetary reward (card guessing)	Win> neutral	– Low pos parenting associated with higher activation in the bilateral NAcc (ROI) in boys only, which predicted increased substance use 1 year later
Morgan et al. (2014)	120	18/24 months and 10/11 years	20	Community, low income, all boys	1	Pos Par	Observed (P-C interaction)	Monetary reward (card guessing)	Reward anticipation > baseline; reward outcome> baseline; loss anticipation > baseline; loss outcome> baseline	– Lower pos parenting at 18–24 months associated with greater mPFC in reward anticipation, and lower pos parenting at 10–11 years associated with greater mPFC to reward outcome (ROI)  – For boys exposed to maternal depression only, lower pos parenting at 18–24 months associated with higher mPFC to reward anticipation and higher striatum to reward win and anticipation, and lower pos parenting at 10–11 associated with lower caudate to reward anticipation (ROI)
Casement et al. (2014)	120	11–12	16	Community, all girls, oversampled for MDD	1	Pos Par	Parent report	Monetary reward (card guessing)	Reward anticipation > baseline	– Lower pos parenting associated with higher dorsal and rostral mPFC, VS and amygdala (ROI)  – High mPFC and VS response mediated the low pos parenting to higher child depression relationship (ROI)
Morgan et al. (2017)	122	10, 11, & 12	20	Community, low-income, all boys	1	Neg Par	Observed (P-C discussion)	Monetary reward (card guessing)	Win > baseline	– When neg parenting was high, maternal rumination at age 6 was associated with lower vACC at age 20 (ROI)
Tan et al. (2014)	40	11–17	11–17	Oversampled for MDD	1	Neg affect	Observed (P-C discussion)	Chatroom task	Peer acceptance > baseline	– Maternal neg affect associated with lower amygdala, L anterior insula, sgACC, and L NAcc (ROI)
Miller et al. (2020)	21	8–12	8–12	Community	2	Neg Par	Child report	Social feedback processing	Smiling > angry faces; win > loss	– No significant relationship between contrasts and child attachment (WB/ROI)
Kopala-Sibley et al. (2020) b	65	3	10–11	Community, oversampled for high neg emo and high BI	1	Neg & Pos Par	Observed (P-C interaction) & mother report	Monetary reward (door choice)	Win> loss	– Higher neg parenting associated with more neg connectivity between the VS and R posterior OFC and IFG (PPI)  – Higher pos parenting associated with more pos connectivity between the ACC and R/L insula, operculum and R striatum/pallidum (PPI)
Parenting specific studies
Butterfield et al. (2020)	30	9–14	11–16	Clinical sample; anxiety disorders	1	Pos Par	Child report	Audio clips of parent saying critical and neutral statements	Criticism > neutral	– Lower pos parenting at T1 associated with higher L amygdala, bilateral insula, sgACC, ACC at large, and vlPFC 2 years later (ROI)  – Lower pos parenting associated with higher adolescent anxiety and depressive symptoms through higher sgACC response.
Lee et al. (2015)	28	9–17	9–17	Community 71.4% girls	1	Pos Par	Child report	Audio clips of parenting saying critical and neutral statements	Criticism > neutral	– Lower pos parenting associated with higher TPJ, IPL, PCC and precuneus (ROI)
Sequeira et al. (2019)	38	11–17	13–19	All have anxiety disorders	1	Pos Par	Child report	Audio clips of parent saying praise and neutral statements	Praise > neutral	– No significant result between pos parenting and ROIs
Van der Cruijsen et al. (2019)	93	11–21	11–21	Community	1	Parent pos and neg traits, Pos and neg Par	Child report& observed (P-C discussion)	Trait words rating for self and mother, and control word sorting	Self > control; mother > control; mother > self; self > mother	– Parents with more neg traits associated with higher mPFC and vlPFC in self>mothers (WB)  – Lower pos parenting associated with lower putamen in mothers>self (WB)
Whittle et al. (2012)	30	4.5 years earlier	M = 17.35	Community, range of depression	1	Neg Par	Observed (P-C discussion)	Own and other parent emotion video clips	Own & other Pos > Neu; own & other Neg > Neu; [own Neg-Neu] > [other Neg-Neu]; [own Pos-Neu > [other Pos-Neu]	– No association between the contrasts and observed parenting (WB)  – Depressive symptoms associated with lower pACC to own mother pos affect compared to another mother and lower right putamen during pos affect collapsed across own and other mother
Gee et al. (2014)	53	4–10; 11–17	4–10; 11–17	Community ethnically diverse (63% minority)	1	Pos Par	Child report	Pictures of own and other mother in positive or neutral expressions	Own mother Pos & neu > other mother Pos & neu	– Higher pos parenting associated with negative amygdala to PFC connectivity (PPI)
Cognitive control studies
Marusak et al. (2018)	27	9–16	9–16	Community low-income	2	Neg & Pos Par	Child report	Emotional conflict: match happy or fear faces w diff words (incongruent) or same word (congruent)	Incongruent > congruent	– Neg parenting associated with lower F anterior insula (ROI)  – Lower pos parenting associated with lower SFG (WB)
Lauharatanahirun et al. (2018)	167	T1 M = 14.3; T2 M = 15.05	T1 M = 14.3; T2 M = 15.05	Community Low-income	2	Pos Par	Child report	Lottery choice task	Magnitude of risk (no contrast)	-When household chaos was low, lower pos parenting associated with lower insula (WB & ROI)
Qu et al. (2015) b	24	15–17 (T1) & 16–18 (T2)	15–17 & 16–18	Community	2	Pos & Neg Par	Child report	BART	T2 pumps > T1 pumps	– Longitudinal increases in pos parenting associated with longitudinal increases in corpus callosum and occipital lobe (WB)
Kim-Spoon et al. (2017)	167	13–14	13–14	Community	2	Pos Par	Child report	Multi-source interference task	Interference > neutral	– When household chaos was low, lower pos parenting associated with higher cognitive control region latent factor (ROI)

Ages reported in years unless otherwise specified

Par Parenting, Meas Measured, Char Characteristic, MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neg negative, Pos positive, Emo emotion, Y Yes, N No, NS Not Stated, P-C Parent Child, L left, R right, CS Conditioned Stimulus, WB Whole-Brain analysis, ROI Region of Interest analysis, PPI Psychophysiological Interaction, T1 Timepoint 1, T2 Timepoint 2, MDD Major Depressive Disorder, Envir environment, sgACC subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex, pACC perigenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex, dACC dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex, vlPFC ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex, SMA Supplementary Motor Area, MFG Middle Frontal Gyrus, NAcc Nucleus Accumbens, mPFC medial Prefrontal Cortex, VS Ventral Striatum, dlPFC dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, OFC Orbitofrontal Cortex, IFG Inferior Frontal Gyrus, ACC Anterior Cingulate Cortex, vACC ventral Anterior Cingulate Cortex, TPJ Temporoparietal Junction, IPL Inferior Parietal Lobule, PCC Posterior Cingulate Cortex, SFG Superior Frontal Gyrus

^a1 = mothers only sample or 90% or greater mothers, 2 = both mothers and fathers

^bThe same study presented under the two constructs the study explored

2.1. Positive Parenting

A few studies have examined positive parenting, including parental warmth, involvement, and sensitivity, and youth neural responses to negative emotional stimuli. Romund et al. (2016), in healthy 13–16-year-olds, examined adolescent-reported maternal positive parenting (warmth). They found that lower maternal positive parenting correlated with adolescents’ higher L amygdala activation while matching fear faces (versus matching neutral faces). In addition, Guyer et al. (2015) found that lower reported positive parenting at age 7 predicted increased R caudate response to peer rejection at age 17 in a sample of youth high and low in behavioral inhibition. R caudate is a striatal region involved in positive and also negative emotional arousal. Taken together, these two studies suggest that lower positive parenting is associated with higher responses in emotional arousal-related regions to negative stimuli. Butterfield et al. (2019), in healthy and clinically anxious 9–14-year-olds, examined observed positive parenting (parents’ coping socialization statements) during parent-adolescent anxiety discussions, with mostly mothers. In the healthy youth, consistent with Romund et al. and Guyer et al., lower positive parenting was associated with higher L and R anterior insula and pgACC response to threat words (versus a baseline period).

However, Butterfield and colleagues found that lower positive parenting was associated with lower activation in these emotion arousal regions in the anxious youth. Notably, in the anxious adolescents, higher activation was adaptive; it was associated with less disengaged coping in their daily lives. Similar to this, Farber et al. (2019) found that lower positive parenting (warmth in the family environment) was associated with lower L amygdala response to matching angry faces in 13-year-olds, half with a relative with depression. Thus, lower positive parenting may be associated with heightened responses to negative emotional stimuli in typically developing youth, but with lower responses in youth with (or at risk for) internalizing disorders. Perhaps youth with internalizing disorder risk have a tendency to respond to negative stimuli with high arousal in general, even when they experience positive parenting. Or, parents of youth with internalizing disorders that may appear positive and warm are actually over-controlling, leading high positive parenting scores to correlate with high negative emotional arousal in youth with internalizing symptoms (Borelli et al. 2015).

2.2. Negative Parenting

A number of studies have examined negative parenting (including harsh parenting, criticism, and high negative affect during parenting) and child neural responses to negative emotional stimuli. In one study, Pozzi et al. (2020), in a low-income sample, examined observed maternal negative affect during parent-child conflict and positive discussions. They found that higher maternal negative affect at age 8–9 predicted, 18 months later, children’s increased right (R) amygdala activation in an emotion matching task while matching angry and fear faces (versus matching shapes). La Buissonniere-Ariza et al. (2019), in youth who were high and low in anxiety symptoms, examined mothers’ self-reported negative parenting from ages 2 to 9 years predicting children’s neural response to a fear conditioning task at age 13–16. They examined responses to a neutral face that was paired with fear stimuli (CS+) versus an unpaired neutral face (CS−). They found that lower negative parenting predicted deactivation to CS+ versus CS− in left (L) amygdala and L anterior hippocampus. Taken together, these two studies both suggest an association between more negative parenting and higher response to negative emotional stimuli in amygdala and also in hippocampus (a limbic structure that is involved in processing negative emotion along with other cognitive processes). In contrast to these studies, Gard et al. (2017), in a sample of low-income boys, examined negative (harsh) parenting via home observation and parent interview at age 2 predicting youth MRI responses at age 20. This study of young adult males’ neural responses found, in contrast with the above studies with male and female adolescents, that higher negative parenting at age 2 predicted lower R amygdala activation while matching fear and angry faces (versus shapes) in the young adult males. This divergent finding may be due to the older age or the sex of the sample. In terms of age, children may initially respond to negative parenting environments with heightened reactivity to negative emotion, but eventually over repeated exposure to negative parenting, this reactivity may wear down, leading to a more blunted response. This is consistent with some literature on HPA axis functioning and social environmental stress (Koss and Gunnar 2018).

Consistent with a sex differences hypothesis, Chaplin et al. (2019) found that adolescent sex moderated the association between negative parenting and adolescent neural response to negative stimuli. In a community sample of 12–14 year olds, Chaplin and colleagues examined associations between observed maternal negative parenting during parent-adolescent challenging discussions and adolescents’ neural responses to negative emotional images (versus neutral images). They found that higher negative parenting was associated with higher R sgACC and pgACC responses to negative emotional images for girls, but lower L and R anterior insula, pgACC and dACC and R amygdala responses for boys. This is similar to the Gard and colleagues’ study that found that negative parenting predicted blunted amygdala responses in a male-only sample. Taken together, these findings may suggest that negative parenting predicts heightened responses to negative emotional stimuli in emotional arousal-related regions for girls, but is associated with blunted responses in these regions for boys. One other study of parenting and child neural responses also found sex differences. Pozzi et al. (2020) study, described above, found that maternal negative affect predicted decreased lingual gyrus (a region involved in early perceptual processing of faces) responses to anger and fear face matching for girls, but not boys. This may suggest that negative parenting leads to heightened arousal for girls in networks involved in processing of the salience of emotion (e.g., ACC), perhaps at the cost of perceptual processing of facial features.

In addition to moderation by sex, one study (Guyer et al. 2015) found moderation by behavioral inhibition. They found that higher mother-reported harsh/punitive parenting when youth were toddlers predicted decreased R vlPFC response in adolescence for youth with high behavioral inhibition (Guyer et al. 2015), suggesting that negative parenting may lead to lower emotion regulatory system responses to negative social-emotional stimuli, particularly for those at risk for anxiety.

2.3. Functional Connectivity

One other consideration for how parenting relates to child brain responses to negative emotional stimuli is how neural responses in these networks are interconnected. Three studies examined functional connectivity of the amygdala to other regions during negative emotional stimuli processing. Two studies found that higher negative parenting was associated with more negative connectivity between amygdala and emotion processing and ER regions in childhood and early adolescence (Kopala-Sibley et al. 2020; La Buissonniere-Ariza et al. 2019). Given that, in typical development, amygdala connectivity to PFC becomes more negative over time into adulthood, this indicates that youth with high negative parenting showed a more “mature” pattern of connectivity, which is consistent with studies of children who have experienced other forms of social stress, such as maltreatment (Tottenham 2012). However, one other study (Pozzi et al. 2020) found negative parenting to predict increased amygdala to parietal lobule positive connectivity for 10-year-old boys versus girls. This may suggest that the pattern of negative parenting predicting greater negative connectivity may be more common for girls than boys. Future studies should further examine sex differences in parenting effects on connectivity.

2.4. Summary and Implications

In sum, most studies found that lower positive parenting and higher negative parenting correlated with (and, in some studies, longitudinally predicted) higher reactivity to negative emotional stimuli (and possibly more negative connectivity) in neural networks involved in emotional arousal in children and adolescents. This is consistent with negative parenting (and a lack of positive parenting) being a social environmental stressor and leading to heightened arousal in response to negative stimuli. However, higher negative parenting correlated with blunted neural responses to negative stimuli for older youth (Gard et al. 2017), for boys (Chaplin et al. 2019; Gard et al. 2017), and for youth with anxiety or at risk for depression (Butterfield et al. 2019; Farber et al. 2019). In terms of age differences, as noted above, children may initially show a high neural reactivity to the stress of negative parenting, but over time, these responses may wear down and become blunted by later adolescence.

Clinical Implications

In terms of sex differences, our review suggests that girls may respond to social environmental stressors (including maladaptive parenting) by showing heightened emotional reactivity, whereas boys may show a more blunted emotional response (Chaplin and Aldao 2013; Hankin et al. 2007). One clinical implication of this is that girls’ heightened neural responses to negative stimuli may contribute to their greater risk for internalizing disorders. Indeed, the Chaplin et al. (2019) study found that higher anterior insula, pgACC, and dACC responses to negative emotional stimuli were associated with higher depressive symptoms and substance use for girls. The two studies with adolescents with or at risk for internalizing problems (Butterfield et al. 2019; Farber et al. 2019) found that these youth showed a pattern of high reactivity to negative emotional stimuli (although they surprisingly found that to be the case even when they experienced high positive parenting), further supporting heightened neural reactivity as a marker of risk for internalizing problems. Whereas girls’ heightened reactivity to negative emotional stimuli may lead to internalizing symptoms, boys’ under-reactivity to negative emotional stimuli may contribute to their greater risk for externalizing symptoms, given that blunted amygdala responses to negative stimuli have been shown to predict externalizing behaviors (Jones et al. 2009). Consistent with this, the Gard et al. (2017) study found that lower amygdala responses predicted higher antisocial behavior in their sample of male young adults.

3. Empirical Studies: Reward Tasks

A number of studies have examined associations between parenting and youth’s functional brain response to reward receipt or the anticipation of reward. While the majority of this research has used fMRI paradigms using monetary reward feedback, two studies used peer acceptance or feedback, which were included here as a measure of social reward. This research has broadly identified parenting predicting responses to reward in networks involved in reward processing (striatum, medial PFC (mPFC)), emotional arousal (insula, ventral ACC (vACC includes sgACC and pgACC), amygdala), and prefrontal regions involved in regulation of reward responses and decision making (dlPFC).

3.1. Positive Parenting

Several studies have found associations between lower positive parenting and heightened response in brain regions associated with reward processing to reward. Holtz et al. (2018), in a sample of youth who were currently healthy, assessed observed maternal stimulation (trying to gain the infant’s attention or make contact with their infant), which is one aspect of positive parenting, during a parent–infant interaction task at age 3 months. They found that lower positive parenting (stimulation) predicted higher response in reward processing regions (caudate head), as well as the supplementary motor area, cingulate cortex (ACC and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)), and middle frontal gyrus during reward anticipation when youth were 25. Consistent with this, using a longitudinal design, Qu et al. (2015), in a community sample, assessed the relationship between youth report of positive parenting (parental support and youth’s disclosure to parents) and youth’s brain response to reward during a risk-taking task at Time 1 (age 15–17) and again 1 year later at Time 2 (age 16–18). The authors found that increases in positive parenting from Time 1 to Time 2 were associated with decreases in R ventral striatum from Time 1 to Time 2 during receipt of reward. Further, these neural decreases mediated the relationship between increases in positive parenting and decreases in adolescent task-based risk taking. Qu et al. (2015) also found that increases in positive parenting from Time 1 to Time 2 were related to decreases in the R dlPFC response from Time 1 to Time 2 to reward receipt. There is some evidence that the dlPFC is involved in modulating striatal activation during reward processing (Staudinger et al. 2011), so this finding is perhaps consistent with the lack of striatal response. Taken together, these studies found that lower positive parenting is related to higher activation in reward processing regions during monetary reward receipt and anticipation.

Three other studies also found that lower positive parenting predicted higher neural response to reward. Chaplin et al. (2021), in a community sample, measured maternal involvement (one aspect of positive parenting) during a parent-adolescent discussion task with 12–14 year olds and found lower positive parenting correlated with higher activation in the bilateral Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc), a striatal region involved in reward processing, to monetary reward receipt. Follow-up analyses indicated that this finding was significant for boys, but not for girls. Further, for boys, this higher NAcc activation to reward receipt predicted increased substance use 1 year later. Similar to this, Morgan et al. (2014), in a low-income sample of all boys, examined maternal positive parenting (observed warmth during a parent–child interaction task) during early childhood and adolescence predicting MRI responses to reward at age 20. They found that less positive parenting (maternal warmth) during childhood and adolescence predicted greater response in the mPFC during anticipation and reward receipt, respectively, in this sample of boys. Taken together, these studies may suggest that associations between a lack of positive parenting and higher neural response to reward are stronger for boys than girls. However, counter to this, Casement et al. (2014), in a sample of all girls oversampled for girls with depression, found that lower positive parenting (mother report of maternal warmth) at age 11–12 predicted higher response in reward processing and emotional arousal regions, including the ventral striatum, dorsal and rostral mPFC, and amygdala during monetary reward anticipation when girls were 16 years old. They also found that greater mPFC and ventral striatum activation mediated the relationship between low positive parenting and youth depressive symptoms. Further research should examine moderation by sex to determine if there are reliable sex differences in effects of positive parenting on youth’s development of reward processing neurobiology.

Two studies found that associations between low positive parenting and youth brain response to reward were moderated by parental psychopathology. First, Morgan et al. (2014) found that, in a sample of low-income boys, for those who were exposed to maternal depression, while low positive parenting (maternal warmth) during childhood (age 18 and 24 months) predicted higher activation in mPFC during reward anticipation and striatum during reward anticipation and receipt at age 20, low positive parenting during adolescence (age 10 and 11) actually predicted lower activation in caudate to reward anticipation. A second study, Hotz et al. (2018) (reviewed above), in a sample of youth with maternal psychiatric diagnoses before age 11 who are currently healthy, also found that, among youth exposed to parental psychiatric diagnosis, lower maternal positive parenting at age 3 months was associated with both lower and higher activation to reward at age 25. They found that, in youth with a parental psychiatric diagnosis prior to youth age 11, low positive parenting was associated with lower activation in a reward processing region (caudate head), as well as in the supplementary motor area, cingulum, and middle frontal gyrus during reward anticipation and greater reward response (caudate head) during reward receipt. Further, they found that greater reward response during receipt mediated the relationship between low positive parenting and greater youth ADHD severity. Taken together, this suggests that the findings above on lower positive parenting predicting higher neural responses to reward may be reversed for some youth who have been exposed to parental psychopathology. It may be that, for some youth, low positive parenting leads to heightened reward system response, which may lead to risk for risk taking and externalizing behaviors, but for those at risk for depression, a lack of positive parenting may lead to a blunted reward system response, which may then lead to risk for depression (Forbes et al. 2006).

3.2. Negative Parenting

Two studies have found associations between higher negative parenting and lower neural response to reward in emotional arousal and reward processing regions. Morgan et al. (2017), in a sample of low-income boys, found a significant interaction between maternal negative parenting (observed disengagement) when youth were 10–12 and maternal rumination in predicting youth response to monetary reward, such that a combination of negative parenting and rumination predicted lower activation in a region involved in emotional arousal (vACC) to reward receipt in boys aged 20. This might suggest that youth experiencing negative parenting and maternal rumination are responding less to positive events (i.e., winning a reward). Tan et al. (2014), in a sample of 11–17 year olds who were oversampled for depression, found that higher observed maternal negative affect during a parent–youth interaction (which is one form of negative parenting) was associated with lower response in regions related to reward processing and emotional arousal (L NAcc, sgACC, amygdala, L anterior insula) during a social reward (peer acceptance). Considering that negative parental affect provides youth negative social feedback, this pattern might prevent youth from recognizing and responding to social reward. Notably, lower neural response to reward has been associated with risk for depression (Forbes et al. 2006); therefore, youth who experience high negative parenting, possibly in combination with parental modeling of maladaptive ruminative coping strategies (or in combination with their own higher depression – Tan et al. 2014) may be at risk for lower neural responsivity and subsequent increases in depression.

Finally, it is notable that we found one study that failed to find a significant association between negative parenting and neural response to reward. Miller et al. (2020), in a community sample of 8–12 year olds, did not find an association between youth-reported parent-youth poor attachment quality (which measured attachment anxiety and avoidance), and youth brain response to positive social feedback. The Miller et al. study was different from others in that it measured attachment, which does not solely reflect negative parenting but also characteristics of the child.

3.3. Functional Connectivity

One study examined parenting and functional connectivity during reward processing. Kopala-Sibley et al. (2020), in a community sample oversampled for high negative emotion and behavioral inhibition, assessed for observed maternal negative parenting (maternal hostility) and mother-reported positive parenting (appropriate rules and restrictions) during childhood (age 3) and youth’s functional connectivity during monetary reward processing at age 10–11. They found that higher negative parenting predicted more negative connectivity between reward regions (L ventral striatum) and the R posterior orbital frontal cortex and R inferior frontal gyrus, while greater positive parenting predicted more positive connectivity between the ACC and the bilateral insula/operculum and the R anterior striatum/pallidum. Negative parenting may lead to a lower capacity of prefrontal regions to effectively modulate striatal response to reward.

3.4. Summary and Implications

In summary, research shows that low positive parenting is generally associated with youth’s higher responses in reward processing regions to monetary reward anticipation and receipt among early to late adolescents (Casement et al. 2014; Chaplin et al. 2021; Holtz et al. 2018; Morgan et al. 2014; Qu et al. 2015), although it can predict blunted responses to reward in some at-risk youth with parental psychopathology (Holtz et al. 2018; Morgan et al. 2014). This suggests that, generally, a lack of warmth and engagement from parents may lead to an over-sensitive reward system, perhaps especially for monetary reward. For negative parenting, two studies found that higher negative parenting was associated with lower responses in reward processing and emotional arousal regions to monetary and social reward (Morgan et al. 2017; Tan et al. 2014). Thus, a lack of positive parenting may lead to higher sensitivity to monetary reward for most youth, whereas harsh negative parenting may lead to blunted responses to monetary or social reward. So, interestingly, these two forms of parenting may lead to different outcomes.

Clinical Implications

Parenting effects on reward system function may have important implications for youth’s risk for psychopathology. Three studies found that lower positive parenting predicted higher response to reward in reward processing regions and that, in turn, this higher responsivity predicted greater substance use (for boys- Chaplin et al. 2021), greater risk-taking behavior (Qu et al. 2015), and greater ADHD severity among boys with a history of parental psychiatric diagnosis (Holtz et al. 2018). This is consistent with other research finding that heightened response to reward in adolescence is associated with risk for externalizing symptoms and risk behaviors (Bjork et al. 2010). In terms of internalizing disorders, one study found that a combination of negative parenting and maternal rumination (which is associated with depressive symptoms) predicted blunted response to monetary reward (Morgan et al. 2017) and two studies found that lower positive parenting predicted blunted responses to monetary reward for some youth who had a parent with depression or other psychiatric diagnosis (Hotz et al. 2018; Morgan et al. 2014). This may indicate that, for youth at risk for depression, maladaptive parenting may lead to more blunted neural response to reward, which then may lead youth to develop depressive symptoms themselves, given that blunted response to reward has been shown to predict depression in youth (Forbes et al. 2006). One study (Casement et al. 2014) of all girls, oversampled for girls with depression, was counter to this, finding that lower positive parenting predicted higher mPFC and ventral striatum responses to reward, and this higher reward response then led to greater depressive symptoms. This counter finding may be due to the inclusion of girls (who are at higher risk for depression) or the oversampling of youth with depression. Future research should examine interactions between neural response to reward and sex predicting depression and other psychopathology outcomes.

4. Empirical Studies: Parenting-Specific Tasks

A few initial studies have begun to examine associations between parenting behavior and child neural responses to parent-related stimuli, including personalized stimuli of their own parents expressing negative and positive emotion. These studies find associations between parenting and child and adolescent neural responses and connectivity while processing parent stimuli in emotional arousal (e.g., amygdala, insula, sgACC), social cognitive (e.g., Temporal Parietal Junction (TPJ)/Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL), mPFC, PCC, precuneus), emotion regulation (e.g., vlPFC, and reward processing (e.g., putamen, lentiform nucleus, mPFC) networks (Blakemore 2008).

4.1. Positive Parenting

Two studies examined associations between positive parenting and child neural responses to audio clips of personalized parent criticism statements toward the child. First, a longitudinal study of adolescents with an anxiety disorder examined adolescent-reported positive parenting (warmth) at age 9–14 predicting adolescent neural responses at age 11–16 to audio clips of their parents (97% mothers) making critical or neutral statements about them (Butterfield et al. 2020). Lower positive parenting predicted higher adolescent neural response in regions involved in emotional arousal and emotion regulation (L amygdala, bilateral insula, sgACC, ACC, vlPFC) to parent critical versus neutral statements (Butterfield et al. 2020). Further, lower positive parenting predicted higher anxiety and depressive symptoms 2 years later through higher sgACC response to parent criticism, suggesting the important effect of low positive parenting on internalizing symptoms through increased emotional arousal region response. Second, in a non-clinical sample of 9–17-year-olds, lower youth-reported positive parenting (warmth) was associated with higher social cognitive network response (TPJ/IPL, PCC, precuneus) to mother critical versus neutral statements (Lee et al. 2015). Taken together, these studies indicate that lower positive parenting predicts heightened activation of emotional arousal and regulation related regions and of social processing regions to hearing parent critical statements. Possibly youth who have experienced low positive parenting have a greater negative emotional response and also require greater regulation of that response. They also overly engage social processing of negative comments, which may be maladaptive. Notably, however, while the two studies above found an association between positive parenting and youth’s neural responses to parental criticism, one study of 11–17 year olds failed to find a relationship between youth-reported positive parenting (maternal acceptance) and youth neural responses to parental praise (Sequeira et al. 2019). Thus, the association between parenting and parental statements may be stronger for criticism than praise.

One study examined associations between positive parenting and a parent versus self trait word sorting task (Van der Cruijsen et al. 2019). In this study, 11–21-year-olds completed a trait word sorting task in the scanner, where they sorted if positive and negative trait words described themselves or their mother, and researchers examined response to positive and negative mother trait words versus self trait words. Lower observed maternal positive parenting (maternal emotional support) was associated with lower youth putamen (a reward processing region) response to mother trait words. Further, lower youth-reported positive feelings about their mother were related to lower vlPFC activation to mother trait words, which may indicate lower engagement of emotion regulation regions.

4.2. Negative Parenting

One study examined negative parenting predicting youth response to own and other parent video clips from a parent–adolescent interaction task and did not find significant associations (Whittle et al. 2012). In a sample of adolescents with a range of depressive symptoms, observed maternal negative parenting (aggressive behavior) in a parent–adolescent interaction task in early adolescence (mean age 12.85) did not significantly predict adolescent neural response to their own and another mothers’ negative or positive emotional video clips (versus neutral emotional video clips) 4.5 years later. This null finding may be because the authors examined negative parenting (and the findings above were for positive parenting) or because they used naturalistic videos rather than more standardized maternal criticism audio clips or maternal trait word sorting.

4.3. Functional Connectivity

It may also be important to consider associations between parenting and functional connectivity of neural networks during processing of parent stimuli. One study examined this in an ethnically diverse sample with a wide range of child ages (4–17 years) (Gee et al. 2014). This study found that higher youth-reported positive parenting (attachment security) was related to negative connectivity between amygdala (an emotional arousal region) and mPFC (which is involved in reward, decision making, and social cognition) during the processing of own mother posed positive and neutral emotional pictures compared to a fixation cross. The authors describe that negative connectivity between the amygdala and the mPFC is characteristic of mature connectivity seen in adolescence and adulthood (compared to positive connectivity in childhood) and may be adaptive particularly for the older adolescents in this sample.

4.4. Summary and Implications

Overall, lower positive parenting is related to higher child and adolescent neural responses in networks involved in emotional arousal, emotion regulation, and social cognition, but lower neural responses in reward processing regions to negative parental stimuli. For one study that included responses to both positive and negative maternal stimuli, lower positive parenting was related to lower reward and emotion regulation region responses. Finally, one study found that higher positive parenting was associated with greater amygdala to mPFC connectivity while processing mother positive and neutral pictures. Taken together, a lack of positive parenting may have an effect on youth’s emotion, social cognition, and reward-related networks responses to parent-specific stimuli. Also, parents who use less positive parenting may have higher emotional reactivity themselves, which could be passed down genetically or modeled for the child, resulting in higher child emotional arousal. Lastly, lower positive parenting may lead to a lowered reward network response to one’s parent, which may indicate that the parent is not a rewarding stimulus, and the dyad may not have a positive relationship.

Clinical Implications

Higher child social-cognitive and self-referential responses to parental stimuli, especially to parent criticism, may lead children to identify with the negative remarks of their parents and “check out” from trying to perspective take with the parent in order to protect themselves, which may lead to negative social-emotional outcomes. Having higher emotional arousal and social cognitive and lower reward region reactivity to parent stimuli may contribute to higher levels of psychopathology such as depression and anxiety (Forbes et al. 2010; Hall et al. 2014), which was found in the Whittle and colleagues’ study above.

5. Empirical Studies: Cognitive Control Tasks

Only a small number of studies have looked at the relationship between parenting and youth’s functional neural response during tasks that involve cognitive control. These studies find associations with regions involved in cognitive control, including the superior frontal gyrus and corpus callosum and in a region involved in detecting salient information and triggering cognitive control (the insula) (Hinkley et al. 2012; Niendam et al. 2012).

5.1. Positive Parenting

Marusak et al. (2018), in a low-income urban sample of 9–16 year olds, examined correlations between youth-reported positive parenting (maternal and paternal care) and youths’ MRI responses to emotional conflict (identifying an emotional [fear or happy] face while the opposite emotion word is on the screen) versus emotional non-conflict (identifying an emotional face while the same emotion word is on the screen). The authors found that lower positive parenting was associated with lower activation in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG), a region involved in inhibition and other cognitive functions (Niendam et al. 2012).

Two studies used risk-taking paradigms in measuring parenting and youth brain response. Lauharatanahirun et al. (2018), in a low-income sample of 14- and 15-year-old adolescents, found that during the decision phase of risk taking, lower youth-reported positive parenting (parental monitoring) was associated with lower adolescent emotional arousal network response (insula) only among households with low chaos. Of note, this fMRI analysis did not involve a contrast. The insula’s role in processing salient information and triggering cognitive control suggests that this activation of this network might be more adaptive for youth during risk taking. Qu et al. (2015), in a community sample, longitudinally studied changes in youth-reported parent-child relationship quality, including positive parenting (parental support), and adolescent functional response during the decision period of a risk-taking task from ages 15–17 to ages 16–18. They found that longitudinal increases in the positive measures of parent-child relationships predicted longitudinal increases in activation from age 15–17 to age 16–18 in the corpus callosum and occipital lobe during the decision period. The corpus callosum is critical in communication between the brain’s two hemispheres, and its structure has previously been implicated in cognition (Hinkley et al. 2012).

Finally, one study (Kim-Spoon et al. 2017) found positive parenting to be associated with neural response during cognitive control. They, in a community sample of 13–14 year olds, measured cognitive control based on neural response during a multi-source interference task (determining which of three numbers differed from the other two when target number was placed in both congruent and incongruent locations) in several regions related to cognition, emotion regulation, sensorimotor function, and emotional arousal (L posterior-medial frontal cortex, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral IPL, R insula, R SFG, and L middle frontal gyrus). They found that lower adolescent-reported positive parenting (monitoring) at age 13–14 was related to higher activation in these regions during interference trials for youth in households with low household chaos (i.e., home disorganization and confusion). This finding of lower positive parenting associated with higher activation in these regions is inconsistent with the three other studies finding that positive parenting was associated with lower activation in these regions. This might reflect differences in the task, as perhaps lower activation is maladaptive when judging emotional conflict (e.g., Marusak et al.) or risk taking (e.g., Lauharatanahirun et al.), whereas higher activation is maladaptive in interference tasks (e.g., Kim-Spoon et al.) Marusak et al. and Lauharatanahirun et al. also used low-income community samples, whereas Kim-Spoon et al. did not, suggesting that perhaps higher activation in these regions is particularly adaptive in low-income samples.

5.2. Negative Parenting

Marusak et al. (2018), mentioned above, was the only study to report associations between negative parenting and youth’s responses in cognitive control tasks. They found that higher youth-reported maternal and paternal negative parenting (psychological control) was associated with lower response in L insula during emotional conflict versus emotional non-conflict in 9–16 year olds, which may suggest lack of engagement of a region involved in recognizing salient stimuli and signaling to initiate cognitive control (Menon and Uddin 2010).

5.3. Summary and Implications

While more research is needed on the relationships between parenting and neural response during cognitive control, most of the existing studies suggest that lower positive parenting (and, in one study, higher negative parenting) is associated with (and longitudinally predicts) decreased activation in emotional arousal and cognitive control regions including insula, corpus callosum, and occipital lobe during emotion related conflict (Marusak et al. 2018) and risk taking (Lauharatanahirun et al. 2018; Qu et al. 2015). However, counter to this, one study found that lower positive parenting was associated with increased activation in emotion arousal and cognitive control regions during a cognitive type of interference task (Kim-Spoon et al. 2017).

Clinical Implications

Overall, decreased engagement of emotional arousal and cognitive control regions during cognitive control and decision-making tasks may be maladaptive, leading youth to lack ability to attend to salient information and initiate cognitive control mechanisms. This may lead them to poor impulse control and increased risk-taking behaviors in adolescence. Importantly, two studies’ findings only held true in low chaos households, suggesting that higher risk family contexts might involve distinct effects of parenting on youth’s brain response to cognitive control tasks.

6. Summary

Overall, the studies reviewed above suggest that the parenting environment is a key social environment that is associated with (and, in some studies, longitudinally predicts) children and adolescents’ neural response (and functional connectivity) in networks involved in emotional arousal, ER, reward processing (including of monetary and social reward), cognitive control, and social-emotional information processing (as shown in Fig. 1). High negative parenting and low positive parenting may act as a social environmental stressor and were associated with higher reactivity in emotion arousal networks to negative emotional stimuli, although this was moderated in some studies by child sex, age, and psychopathology risk. Lower positive parenting was also associated with heightened response in reward processing networks to monetary reward stimuli, again with some studies finding that this was moderated by psychopathology risk or child sex. A few initial studies found that lower positive parenting (and, for one study, higher negative parenting) generally predicted lower engagement of networks that support cognitive control during cognitive control tasks. And, finally, a few studies found that lower positive parenting was associated with lower reward system response and higher emotional arousal and social cognition network response when processing parent-specific social-emotional stimuli.

Fig. 1.

Summary of findings on parenting and youth neural responses. ^aPsych Risk indicates presence of risk for psychological symptoms, including parenting psychopathology or temperament. Emo Emotion, Amy Amygdala, sgACC subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex, pACC perigenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Reg Regulation, vlPFC ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex, esp especially, NAc Nucleus Accumbens, mPFC medial Prefrontal Cortex, dlPFC dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, hi high, TPJ Temporoparietal Junction, IPL Inferior Parietal Lobule, PCC Posterior Cingulate Cortex, SFG Superior Frontal Gyrus

Interestingly, both negative parenting and positive parenting predicted neural activation in response to negative emotional stimuli, suggesting that both high negative parenting and a lack of protective positive parenting act as a social stressor and affect the development of stress and negative emotion processing circuitry. In contrast, most of the findings for parenting impacting response to reward, parent-specific stimuli, and cognitive control tasks were for positive parenting. Positive parenting may more specifically impact the development of response to more positive and rewarding stimuli, to positive feelings toward parents, the development of social reward learning, and toward adaptive social-emotional and cognitive development. Thus, interventions should take care to not just reduce negative parenting, but also work to increase positive parenting in order to promote adaptive development in these important domains.

These altered neural activation patterns may be key mechanisms by which parenting contributes to child and adolescent social-emotional development and development of psychopathology. Negative parenting was associated with heightened neural responses to negative emotional stimuli, possibly particularly for girls. These responses may lead to high negative emotional arousal and rumination on negative emotion, which may interact with environmental stressors to lead to the development of depression or anxiety symptoms, possibly particularly for girls. Consistent with this, Chaplin et al. (2019) found that higher ACC response to negative emotional stimuli predicted depressive symptoms for girls. Also, lower positive parenting was linked to heightened neural response to monetary reward and this high reward system sensitivity may lead to risk for substance use or other risk behaviors (Cope et al. 2019). Notably, for some youth at risk for psychopathology (due to parental psychopathology), lower positive parenting predicted blunted striatal response to reward. Blunted striatal response to reward may be a mechanism by which parent depression leads to risk for depression in youth. Lower positive parenting was also linked to lower engagement of networks that support cognitive control, which may lead youth to risk for impulsivity and possibly for disorders involving poor impulse control. Finally, higher positive parenting predicted children’s higher reward system response and lower emotional arousal system response to their own parent, which may lead to closer parent-adolescent relationships, which may provide a key social environment that may protect youth from development of psychopathology. Indeed, one study found that higher sgACC response to own parent critical statements predicted higher internalizing symptoms in youth (Butterfield et al. 2020). More studies are needed to continue to examine psychopathology outcomes.

7. Strengths, Limitations, and Future Agenda

One limit of the studies reviewed above is that they mostly examined parenting behavior in mothers. Given that both mothers and fathers (and/or other caregivers) contribute to children’s social-emotional development, future research should assess effects of fathers’ parenting and should explore parent sex differences. For example, given theory suggesting that mothers attend more to emotional aspects of parenting and fathers more to caregiving through play (Cabrera et al. 2018), mothers’ parenting may be more strongly related to child neural responses to negative emotional stimuli and fathers’ parenting may be more linked to reward or positive emotion processing.

In addition, many of the studies above (but not all) either focused on middle-income predominantly White families or studied low-income youth but did not fully examine contextual processes related to income and race that may affect connections between parenting and child brain. For example, stern/strict parenting behavior (that may appear as “negative” parenting) may be maladaptive in some contexts but adaptive in others, such as when it may be useful to prepare youth to face racism, economic disadvantage, and challenging neighborhood characteristics (e.g., Nelson et al. 2013). One of the studies above (Gard et al. 2017), in a low-income urban sample, found that harsh parenting and also neighborhood deprivation predicted blunted amygdala response to negative emotional stimuli. Thus, parenting may affect brain development in conjunction with, or possibly in interaction with, contextual factors, and these will be important to examine in future research.

There are several methodological advances in the studies reviewed above and also potential future directions methodologically. First, some of the studies prospectively examined parenting behavior in early childhood predicting outcomes in adolescence or adulthood (e.g., Gard et al. 2017). This design can start to untangle directionality of effects between parenting and youth brain function. However, to better understand direction of effects, future studies should conduct MRI at repeated longitudinal time-points and examine whether parenting behavior predicts changes in MRI responses over time. Only one study reviewed above conducted repeated MRI (Qu et al. 2015). Furthermore, to test whether parenting behavior has a causal role in child neurobiology, experimental studies are needed. Such work could randomly assign parents with high negative parenting to receive (or not receive) a parenting intervention and examine effects of intervention-related changes in parenting on changes in youth brain function.

Second, the studies showed innovation in measurement of parenting. Several examined observed parenting behaviors in laboratory parent–child interactions that modeled real-life parenting situations, such as discussing a conflict topic, which is innovative and adds to the literature on self-reported parenting behavior. One future direction would be to utilize ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine daily parenting behaviors and youth reactivity. This information could be combined with observed behavior in the laboratory to fully characterize the parenting environment in and out of the lab.

Third, the studies showed innovation in the fMRI tasks. Many of the studies used standardized, well-validated tasks, which is useful to show effects of parenting on core emotional and cognitive processes. However, some studies used personalized recordings of adolescents’ own parents’ voices or behaviors (e.g., Butterfield et al. 2020). This novel work gets closer to tapping youth’s neural responses to actual parent–youth interactions. It would be interesting to see if youth’s neural responses to their parents’ negative emotions in the MRI correlate with youth’s peripheral physiological responses in laboratory-based parent–youth interactions, and future research could explore this.

One additional future direction is to probe the neuroscience of parenting by conducting MRI scans of both parent and child. A handful of studies have conducted parent-child scanning and have found, for example, that similarity in neural responses between parent and child was associated with higher family connectedness (Lee et al. 2018). More work could be done in this area.

In sum, emerging findings suggest that the quality of the parenting social environment that children and adolescents experience is associated with, and likely shapes, their neural activation in emotional arousal, ER, reward processing, social-emotional, and cognitive control networks. These findings help us better understand the roots of typical child social-emotional development and can inform our knowledge of how parenting affects the development of psychopathology. These findings also point to potential targets for interventions aimed at improving parenting, normalizing child brain development, and improving social-emotional outcomes.