Clare Stocker
Associate Research Professor, Developmental

My research interests focus on links between children's family relationships and their psychological adjustment. A great deal of my research has been on sibling relationships in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I have investigated associations between sibling relationships, parent-child relationships and marital relationships, as well as children's friendships and peer relationships. I am interested in associations between the quality of sibling relationships and children's adjustment outcomes and whether sibling relationships can serve as supports or buffers for children in stressful situations. Finally, I am interested in why siblings are so different from each other and aspects of non-shared environment.

I am currently conducting a longitudinal study examining the links between marital relationships, children's relationships with siblings, peers, and parents, and children's mental health outcomes. We have followed families for 10 years as children moved from middle childhood to early adulthood. The primary focus of this study is to investigate how marital conflict affects siblings in the same family differently. I am also interested in the processes that connect marital conflict to children's adjustment and relationships. I am paying particular attention to emotional processes such as parents' expression of emotions and children's regulation of their own emotions. I am also exploring the role of children's cognitive appraisals of and emotional reactions to parents' conflict as mechanisms that link marital conflict and children's adjustment and relationships. Finally, I am examining associations between parents' marital relationships and adolescents' romantic relationships.

Representative Publications:

Richmond, M. K., & Stocker, C. M. (in press). Associations between family cohesion and adolescent siblings' externalizing behavior. Journal of Family Psychology.

Stocker, C. M., Richmond, M. K., Kline, G. H., & Kiang, L. (in press). Family emotional processes and adolescents' adjustment. Social Development.

Low, S. M. & Stocker, C. (2005). Parental depressed mood, marital conflict and adolescents' adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 394-403.

Richmond, M. K., Stocker, C., & Rienks, S. (2005). Longitudinal associations between sibling relationship quality, parental differential treatment and children's psychological adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 550-560.

Richmond, M.K., & Stocker, C.M. (2003). Sibling's differential experiences of marital conflict and differences in psychological adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 17, 339-350.

Stocker, C., Richmond, M.K., Low, S.M., Alexander, E.K., & Elias, N.M. (2003). Marital conflict and children's adjustment: Parental hostility and children's interpretations as mediators. Social Development, 12, 149-161.

Stocker, C., Burwell, R.& Briggs, M. (2002). Sibling conflict in middle childhood predicts children's adjustment in early adolescence. Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 50-57.

Stocker, C. (2000). Sibling relationships. Invited submission: Encyclopedia of Psychology (Vol.7, pp. 274-279), American Psychological Association, Oxford University Press.

Clare Stocker
Ph.D. 1989,
Penn State University

Associate Research Professor,
Developmental
office: Columbine,
Rm. 203D
phone: 303.871.3591
e-mail: cstocker@du.edu
website